Final Results
Photo Album

Saturday was a day for free-flying, with pilots heading to the Peñon in the morning. In the afternoon, the competition organization ran free shuttles to La Torre from where pilots flew out over the lake to perform acro for crowds in the LZ.

I took the morning off to do some gift shopping, passing by the shop looking for Day 6 results.

The organizers posted the task results, but not the cumulatives which they would announce at the awards ceremony.

I did well on Friday, coming to goal 30th.

At the awards ceremony, plaques were given to the top 3 pilots in three categories: Mexican pilots, Women, and Overall.

Frank Brown from Brasil took overall 1rst—and this was his first time flying Valle. Second was Louis Gomez of Venezuela. And the Bay Area's own Josh Cohn took 3rd in a stunning comeback.

At the end of Day 4 Josh was ranked around 15h, but he crushed tasks 5 and 6 to push a mere 14 points ahead of Farmer (Matt Beechinor) and take 3rd.

Congrats Josh!

In general, americans placed very well with Josh, Farmer, Nick Grece, and Len Szafaryn all in the top 10.

Eric Reed just missed the top 10 with 11th place.

Tom Moock came in at 27th. My final rank was 33rd—just outside the top 25% and well over my goal of hitting the top 50%.

After the awards ceremony we had a party in the landing zone with video and stills of the week's flying, DJing, burn barrels, fireworks , and a lot of tequila—not unlike a good night at Burning Man!

The party slowed down around 2:30am, just when the towns clubs get going so a crew including Brad, Frank Brown, myself, and the local RedBull girls (doing there best to take care of Frank, their sponsored athlete).

Around sunrise I headed home with a great comp and a bit more tequila under my belt.

Tomorrow I head to Australia. I have a week of sightseeing in Sydney, and then I fly the Bright 3-2-1.

Day 6 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

First off an update on yesterday's scoring. I pretty much had my worst showing—54th place.I was 3 points ahead of Tom, but he wasn't happy with his day either.

By lucky fluke, I moved up one spot to 35th. This was was critical as it kept me in the express line at launch.

Jug, on the other hand, found a new and creative way to void his task. At this point he's just plain embarrassed and didn't tell us about his mistake until this morning when we saw the scores. Rather than go into details here I'm going to post a special entry on Jug's troubles.

Onto today: the weather was beautiful. "Classic Valle" as they say here every day. The sky was blue with nice cummies forming by 10am, not to soon as they had the previous two days. It looked like over development and shading would not be problems.

Len had threatened a long task with few turn-points so that the field of pilots would have a lot of leeway in choosing routes, but in the end the committee picked a long task with many way-points. They created a cats-cradle pattern of zig-zags across the main mesa and valleys, bringing us to the lake-side landing field as goal.

The nice thing about this sort of route is that you are constantly flying with other pilots, whether coming, going, or just crossing paths.

There were a few tricky spots and low saves, but for the most part people spent today's 64km task at or near cloud base and flying fast.

Josh Cohn won the day with a blistering 1:40 time. I made goal as well—in 2:07, with Jug and Tom seconds behind me. In fact the entire Bay Area crew made it. Eric Reed in the top 10 (I think), Eric Broyhill a few minutes behind me, and Peter Rexer a few after.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the flight was flying with Jug for large portions of the course. Although we flew together often and arrived in goal within a minute of each other, we did choose different lines and make different decisions at several critical junctures. In the end, my decisions brought me a few hundred meters closer to goal at the last turn-point, hence my sub-minute lead on Jug. But all-in-all, we made different but good decisions and will end up with nearly identical scores.

Other incidents of interest included watching Chris from Taiwan attempt to correct several massive riser twists while I was thermalling low over the San Ramon knob. After a valiant effort, Chris gave up and tossed his reserve. It opened well and he had a gentle glide into some trees. No damage to Chris or his glider.

We've averaged about one deploy or incident per day—today we had Chris's reserve and a glider ball up and splash down in the lake without reserve while attempting acro. But there have been zero injuries during the comp.

I'm excited to see the final scores tomorrow. I'm sure I've finished in the top 3rd and there is some chance I hit the top quarter.

Tom will almost certainly remain about 100 points ahead. And Jug, had he correctly scored all the days he flew, would probably have topped Tom.

All-in-all a great time and a great competition.

Day 5 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

News of yesterday: my second best showing. I didn't make goal (landed just past my favorite piece of dirt), but made 29th place. That means that before today's task my standing was 36th overall.

36th... that meets my goal of finishing in the top 3rd, should I hold onto the position. But even more importantly, today, they extended the VIP launch line to the top 40 competitors. Instead of having to race into my gear and wait an hour or more in line, I hung out with the big dogs, and hopped into the fast lane when the sky looked good.

At least that was the theory. In reality, the top 20 have priority over the next 20, so just as I was readying to launch, about twenty people pulled ahead of me. No matter, I still made it off the launch in plenty of time. Folks in the bottom 80 had more trouble with some competitors not reaching the end of the launch line into after the start time of the race... bad news...

Today's task was the longest yet, ~65km. Starting with a dash to the end of the 'Espina' ridge, back to the launch ridge and then my least favorite leg—out to the towers and back.

I started out well—hitting the start cylinder less than a minute after the start, at base, and on course for the first turn-point. I hit it, climbed well and cruised out toward the (dah dum) towers... Over the 'wall' I took a ride to base, picked a good line and headed across the valley toward Maguey. Arriving high I circled a few times with the leaders, then cruised easily to the towers just behind the lead gaggle—who had taken off a little earlier and much faster than I.

Coming back from the towers was also relative easy, until the Maguey knob. Arriving low and desperate (the only landing options are cliff or tree...), I joined a scrappy groveling gaggle bouncing in and out of bullet and blown lift. It was chaotic, it was desperate, it was not fun. Eventually the disorganized gaggle crawled back over ridge height into nicer lift. As soon as I had enough height to run to the next thermal generator, I booked.

Hitting the next knob (Cerro Gordo) with decent height I found a turbo-boost up and reached base with the crew that had left Maguey with me.

Then it got hard. We had to cross the edge of the mesa and a good chunk of the main valley upwind to the next turn point.

Tom Moock and I left Cerro Gordo together and at the same height. He chose to go right across the edge of the mesa. I headed straight into the valley where I saw sun. Neither worked very well, but the valley worked better.

Here I had my first tough decision of the flight, deep in the valley, there was a gaggle climbing well. But it was far away and downwind of the turn-point.

To my left, also downwind, but closer, a single glider desperately low worked a tiny mound that I've christened 'The Savior'. The Savior never generates very strong, but if you are gliding low to town it's consistently good for the 50 or 100ft boost you need to reach the lake without kicking in the windows of the houses in between.

I went left for the miserable but closer lift. It was very very light, less than 50ft a minute up, but it was going up. After taking a few turns and gaining a tiny amount of altitude the rest of the crew from Cerro Gordo came racing in. I was top-of-the-stack by virtue of getting there first, but the pack saved me. We circled and smeared out looking for stronger lift.

After working the light stuff for what seemed like hours (especially for someone trying to figure out how to unzip his flight suit and relieve himself...) I got high enough to find some stronger lift. With two other gliders, I stuck a core and hit base. An amazing feeling after scratching for so long.

At base, one glider, Eva Wisniervska (a distant relative from the homeland perhaps, and world champion) slammed on her speed bar and took off straight line for the next two turn-points. I followed behind, and then Keith from Canada behind me.

We all hit the next turn-point high and without a moments hesitation, Eva continued onto the next. I wavered looking for a little lift before making the crossing. That was my first mistake of the day. After finding nothing, but losing altitude I turned back on course behind Eva and Keith.

My second mistake was a distinct lack of cajones, and an unhealthy fear of eating trees. Eva and Keith, on their nice gliding comp gliders, and with their competitor nerves hit the next turn-point (the last before the run to goal) low, but high enough to work their way out. Both made goal.

I on the other hand flinched. 214m short of the turn-point, I fell off toward the valley, afraid of treeing myself.

In the valley I caught a very low save. A great ride up toward base and downwind toward goal. If only I'd pushed it into the turn-point this would have been my express ride to goal. Instead I was going up, but drifting downwind away from my turn-point.

Now it was time for my second mistake. Having to pee very badly now, and not liking drifting downwind , I left lift, pushing upwind back toward my missed point. I made a kamikaze, but clearly doomed, run back at the turn-point, but made it no closer than 1km away from the point. Giving up, I turned back to the valley and landed in the same spot as yesterday, next to my favorite lunch spot.

After watering the trees, I went to fold my wing with Amir, Nicole, and Jug who all landed at the same spot.

We all headed to lunch, where we found a not-very-happy Len.

Back in the LZ a pleased Keith told me that, in his opinion, I couldn't have stuck his route with my DHV2 glider. I congratulated Eva, telling her she had bigger balls than me. Frank Brown (current leader, and first to goal today) laughed and told me he thought lack of balls helped women fly faster. I'll let him be the first to test the hypothesis...

In the end I think I scored between 40 and 50th place. I hope my cumulative is high enough to keep me in the top 40 for tomorrow's launch.

Day 4 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

First a bit on the scoring from yesterday. The good news is I scored 28th place, ~800 points, my highest scoring day ever. Not only did I make goal, but I flew reasonably fast.

But as a reminder to stay humble, Len, who I was flying with on the way to the 3rd to last waypoint arrived at goal TWENTY minutes before me. Clearly there is a huge gap, not just in time, but in tactics, skill and glider speed between top 30 and top 20.

As for the bad news, Jug and Eric Broyhill continued to help my standing by messing up the small things.

Jug, after entering the start 4 seconds too early on Monday, entered the start 1 second early yesterdayt.

Eric, on the other hand, got so excited by the BBQ that he—and I am not kidding—forgot to hand in his GPS. He had a full track to goal, and it was never scored. He received zero points for the day.

With this in mind the task committee changed things up a bit by calling a Speed Run instead of the usual Race-to-Goal.

In a speed run there is no specific start time—you launch, get high, and head out on course as fast as you can. Your individual course time is calculated as the time you reach goal minus the time you left the start cylinder (called an 'exit cylinder' rather than the typical 'entry cylinder').

This has two main effects:

1. Because you don't have to hang around waiting for a start time, the field tends to spread out with people leaving as soon as they are well positioned to go.

2. It's impossible to tell who is winning. You may be ahead of a large group of gliders, but since they left later they could be flying the course quicker.

That said, there general is still a lead gaggle as the best pilots get positioned quickly and leave first.

The main problem today was launch. Winds were light and as 100+ pilots waited nervously watching the sky fill with foreboding gray clouds and listening reports of rain at goal, pilots on launch dithered.

It became a serious problem with those of us toward the end of the line possibly missing the entire flight and the launch director politely letting people take there time.

When I went to complain I learned about a rule that should this ever happen again I will certainly invoke: Push.

Seems that if pilots are taking too long on launch, you can yell PUSH and walk to the front.

Once push is invoked, the pilots on launch have 1 minute to launch. If they don't, they go to the end of the line and you as the pusher are given 1 minute to launch. If you don't, you go to the end of the line, as is only fair.

But unfortunately, I didn't know about push and so I waited impatiently for my chance to launch. When I did I immediately got high and cruised to the start cylinder.

Getting to cloud base wasn't a problem—that the clouds were so developed and so low was the problem. Base was no more than 9,500ft for most of the day which made crossing a 8,600ft mesa difficult.

The first turn-point was a real struggle. When I arrived a gaggle had been working light lift for almost an hour. I came in mid-height but soon found myself kicking trees with the desperate crowd. But luck struck, a cloud opened, the sun shown throw to a patch of trees and WHOMP we all caught a ride back to base.

It was a hectic ride with the core squirreling around, hard to track, and I was unfocused, watching all the gliders around me, but not paying enough attention to what was ahead. B-Rad woke me up with a loud "fuck Fuck FUCK WATCH IT" as I nearly tagged his helmet with my tip. With a quick evasive maneuver, shake of the head to clear the cobwebs and a yelled apology we were good and on glide together to Cerro Gordo, a nice sunny hill in the distance. It's hard to stay focused day after day, but you've got to be on the ball in these gaggles. I was very close to causing a mid-air.

Cerro Gordo was good to us, boosting the entire pack to about 10,000ft, to where base had risen. We bobbled along pretty much at base to the next turn-point.

My line was good—I stayed higher than pretty much everyone but as we neared 'La Casa', our turn point, the shade had shut off the thermals and we all sunk quickly to just a few hundred feet off the mesa. Brad and I zigged left, the rest zigged right, but it didn't matter. Within a few minutes all of us were down.

Brad and I landed just short of our favorite lunch spot and consoled ourselves with a tasty meal and the view of gliders falling out of the sky everywhere we looked.

In the end only 5 gliders made it to goal (compared to 80 yesterday). The clouds had just gotten too thick—only the earliest launchers and fastest pilots had any chance.

Tomorrow the meet director and launch coordinator have promised a faster launch, and I now know the magic word: PUSH.

In other news of the day, Jug exited the start cylinder without incident and Eric Broyhill assured me just before he launched that his GPS and track log were both on. Now if he can just remember to turn it in...

Day 3 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

Some days are all about low saves. I should have known today was going to be different when B-Rad greeted me on launch:
"See you in a light thermal... low..."

Because is paragliding nothing seems to happen the way you expect. Yesterday was supposed to be dry and cloudless. Instead it was full of big cummie clouds, overdeveloped and rained.

Today, there were no low saves. The challenge today was trying to stay out of the clouds.

I definitely wanted to make goal. Landing at a bbq with locals, kids, and the mayor sounded a lot more fun than riding up in a sag-wagon. I was worried about the distance—it's a long time to spend in the air.

But it turned out that the hardest part was before launch. The launch cylinder was set such that the waiting gaggle would form back at the 'Crazy Thermal Place' but there was a strong inversion around 10,000ft.

That means that, unlike yesterday and the day before when everyone circled gently at 11,000ft or so waiting for the opening, today it was fight scrape and claw.

I had a number of close calls as pilots turned tight, or wide, or hit a poppy gust and popped in front of me, or as I did the same to them.

On top of that some pilots were not well behaved. A certain French woman on a blue Arcane decided she owned the entire sky and pushed in and of thermals, even cutting straight across packs of circling gliders—seemingly oblivious to the rest of us.

Today was the first time I have ever been red-faced angry at another pilot. I'm sure more experienced competitors run into this all the time. Tonight I'll ask them what they do—let it slide, prepare choice words, complain to the meet director, or take knife-to-glider.

Once the start window opened there were a couple of tough climbs, but the sky developed big and quickly the challenge became two-fold:
1. Keep warm. My gloves are not thick enough to keep my hands from chilling over at 12,000ft.

2. Stay out of the clouds.

I made my final run for the goal field at over 11,000ft with big-ears pulled and speed bar fully engaged (a silly combo designed to make me sink away from the cloud that was sucking me up and let me keep some decent forward motion).

One final reminder of how the sky can play with you, as I crested the final ridge, goal clearly in view, something hit me in the face. Then again. And again. "Holly cow! It's hailing!". So Eric Broyhill is now just one among many who has been hailed on during this meet!

I made goal with tons of altitude. Threw down a few asym-spirals and wing-overs, landed, received a flower and card from local kid, and stuffed myself with chorizo and potatoes.

Tell me gain why I plan to return to the states??

As for the rest of the Bay Area pilots, Josh Cohn and Eric Reed did well. Definitely in the top ten, likely the top 5 (Josh thinks he's second). I think I came in next with Jug, Tom and Eric all coming in a few minutes after me.

I'm not sure what happened to Peter Rexer—I think he may have still been flying when I left the goal field. I'll find out tonight. Hope he made it!

Q: How is the gaggling with so many pilots?

A: Frickin' intense! Actually, the pilots are very well behaved and cooperative (a certain blue Arcane excepted...). No one wants to cause a mid-air and risk injury to themselves or others and a likely reserve toss.

That said, people can be aggressive and full of tricks: cutting close, pushing others out of a thermal, screaming, cawing, flying erratically, inducing collapses. Pretty much anything that will cause you to give way and hand the good position to them.

But usually those sorts of games are reserved for the smaller gaggles after start—and are usually more playful joking than an actual pushy maneuver.

Bottom line: enter in a gap, stay in pattern, keep aware of all 3-Dimensions, avoid a hit even if it means leaving and coming back, and respect the other pilots—generally the gaggles work smoothly.

Day 2 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

First off, some news of yesterday: I was fine on my start and scored high enough for 43rd place out of 114, I made top half!

And now for the bad news:

• Jug who flew beautifully and reached goal, started FOUR seconds early. Normally that would zero his points, but because of a fluke of the course, he passed through the launch later along the task and received some points—109th place when he flew well enough for the top 15.

• Eric Broyhill, who also made goal, flew with his track log OFF and received ZERO points for the day. Ouch.

As I told them, there are two ways I can beat them:
1. Train hard and get better than them.
2. Let them mess up.

Option 2 is a lot easier.

In all seriousness, it's a big downer for both of them and more evidence that it's easy to make little mistakes even for really good pilots and experienced comp. flyers.

Up on launch the task committee called a task off the mesa in the main valleys, hoping to avoid the worst of the overdevelopment.

But by 12:00am when I got to launch the thermals coming up the launch face were screaming. Comp gliders where twisting spinning like angry snakes and I nervously yelled at the helpers to not open my wing until I hand breaks and C's in hand.

My launch was clean and Raoul screamed an encouraging "Rock and Roll!" as I moved 10ft forward, 50ft up and wobbled my way from launch.

Establishing myself for the start was easy. Thermals off launch were screaming up at over 1300fpm. The difficulty was turning and running fast enough to stay in them.

But it didn't matter as a huge cloud bank formed over the mesa, just where I wanted to sit and wait for the start. The problem was not reaching the cloud but staying below it.

Trust me, it's an amazing site to see a 1/4mile diameter circle of 120 gliders turning wide and slow, with big ears and the occasional hard-spiral to stay out of the white room.

After the start things got difficult. I was hoping this would be an easy "bobble-around at base (~11,500ft) tag points as you go" kind of day, but the development was too big and shaded out a lot of the lift.

By the time I hit the first turn point I was down at 9000ft and desperately running for a sunny field. At 7700ft (a couple hundred over the deck) I started to set up for landing, screaming "Fuck fuck fuck" as loud as I could. I did not want to bomb out 5 minutes into the task.

Luck was on my side and as soon as I hit the sun I found some bubbles which grew into an express ride back to base. As I climbed I saw that most other gliders were in the same situation I had been—low and groveling for sun. Which meant that within 2 or 3 circles dozens of gliders raced toward me to join the saving thermal.

Back at base I bobbled over toward the first turn-point, but nothing was easy. Playing it conservative I let the chase gaggle go ahead as I tanked up in a light 50fpm thermal. Back at base I struck out for the first turn-point, tagged it, and struggled for 10 or 15 minutes in zero-sink waiting for a ride out to form.

It came and B-Rad, Prentice (I think it was him) and I rode back to base, turned and headed back to my least favorite turn point, the well named 'Mesa de Dolores'.

Just shy I met up with the gaggle behind which had found a good thermal, turned a few circles with Andy Gravity, and then headed south to tag MesaD as Andy headed north to hit the point I'd just left.

So far very good. I'm flying well. I'm climbing well. I'm back with the chase gaggle which means I'm flying fast, but there is still a lot of course to cover and the sky is a circle of shaded over-development surrounding a big-blue hole.

Deciding to play it smart, I head south, away from the next turn-point hoping to hit Sacamacate, tank up, and head toward town.

But I dilly-dallied, took a short detour off course to where I saw some gliders climbing lightly, and then decided they were too far and cut back. This lost me several hundred critical feet and I couldn't cross the ridge to Sacamacate.

Falling off toward the side of the valley which Raoul describes as "The place that never works" I caught a possible saving ride with Keith from Canada and David Prentice, but I couldn't stick it. They climbed out a thousand feet or so, and I landed on my favorite piece of dirt—just one field further than yesterday...

I think about 20 gliders made it to goal, but a lot of good pilots dirted near of before me, including Len, Josh Cohn, Tom Moock, and Eric Reed.

On the bright side, Raoul found me right away and dropped me at El Jovan, my favorite restaurant where I ate and chatted with Eric, Tom, Wes and Gavin from San Diego, Jug and various other pilots who stopped in.

And then, about an hour into lunch Jug looks up and says "I think it's going to rain."

He was wrong, first it hailed. Big pea sized ice, and then it poured.

"Boy am I'm glad I'm not still up there" was my only thought.

Later tonight, in the town square, I ran into Eric Broyhill.

"How was your flight?", I asked.

"I launched late but reached Los Saucos and was having a great climb out until it started hailing on me. I was fine with the hail, even though it was bouncing off my glasses, but when it started raining, my glider got soaked and I landed", was his reply.

Damn. That sounds like a crazy flight. I am sure glad I was early and happily down eating flan before the weather came in.

I'm hoping for epic tomorrow with all the water in the ground just waiting to rise up and become big puffy clouds...

Day 1 Results Posted
Cumulative Results
Photo Album

I woke up early today too nervous or excited to wait for the 8am alarm. Too antsy waiting around the house I walked into town for a morning liquado (smoothie) and sat in the square people watching.

When we got up on launch, it was clear we were in for a good day—after a week of high pressure blue sky flying, the puffies were out: big, white, and happy.

The task committee called a tough 59.5km task starting with my least favorite leg--a trip to the 'towers'. Might not sound like much, but this is an approx. 10km trip down the south edge of a mesa, most of which has only two kinds of bailout: rock or tree. It is, what we in the business call a 'committing' route.

Last year, the first time we took a trip to the towers, the task was cancelled after 6 people treed themselves.

But today was different—cloud-base was high, lift plentiful and I was feeling it—out coring people, and flying out toward the front of the chase gaggle (the group of wings behind the screaming fast leaders).

But wait, I get ahead of myself. I forgot to mention that the committee chose a particularly late start time which meant that we had 120+ gliders swirling around in a great big mass over the spot we call 'Crazy Thermal Place' for AN HOUR. I was so ready to fly the course, and already needing to pee, that I may have jumped the gun and started early—I think I'm ok, but I find out for sure when the scores go up tomorrow.

Aside from fears of a miss-start, it was a great day. I was flying well, had a great low save tip-to-tip with Brad G. (B-Rad) from Salt Lake, made all the turn points, but dirted short of goal. I didn't get the brass ring, but I outflew a lot of good pilots.

As for the rest of the Bay Area crew, they did great: Jug, Tom, Josh, and Eric Broyhill all made goal. Josh came in second. Eric Reed made an early dash with the lead gaggle and dirted a few turn-points back. Peter Rexer had a kick ass day successfully making the trip to the towers and back and pushing out across the mesa to the third turn-point before meeting the dirt.

There was one incident (frontal, spin, the-breaking-of-tree-branches) but no injuries.

Don't forget to check out the photos:
http://www.pacskyways.com/albums/189f3d2a37c70403