Rained last night and it's likely that it will rain most of the day today. Lots of fun activities being considered and at the moment we are listening to Australian Brian Web providing an excellent overview of CompGPS.

Tomorrow is also looking to be a rain day so this probably will wrap up this competition with three valid task days out of seven. Two days of extremely light conditions and one decent day.

Next stop, Pemberton Whistler Classic north of Vancouver. Hope the weather makes a turn for the better!

The day was another grey overcast day with light conditions. After setting the task we waited up on coopers launch for a couple of hours before a time was finally set.

About half of the field bombed out in the light thermals including myself. The other half made a good go of it with six or so making four of the six way points before the conditions became too light.

Overall quite a frustrating day for most.

Day 4 turned out to be an epic looking day and a 52.5km task was called for the second task of the competition. From launch there was an upwind leg of 5km to Lumby Ridge then out to the Camel Hump which has two or three valley crossings depending on your track. From there back to Saddle Mountain, Lumby Ridge, Camel, and back to Saddle to make two triangles. Goal was out to the north east another 8km.

Due to airspace restrictions, the normal ceiling is 7000 feet but on day 4 we asked for clearance to 12000 feet.

The wind was about 10+ knots from the south west which meant that Lumby Ridge was upwind and getting up there was on lee-side thermals. Getting there twice was hard enough and then getting up in the rotor was quite the trick. I bombed out early today and didn't even make the start cylinder as the idea of flying in the rotor wasn’t too appealing.

I did launch a second time for fun from Saddle and semi-joined in on the race. I got up to 9000 feet and boated around the area using the cloud streets as my guide. I managed to make a 25km triangle in a couple of hours flying and watching the other competitors who were on course.

Two lessons for the day: first, don’t take risks when the conditions or locations are adverse and second, don’t get caught up in the competition aspects and try to focus on good decision making and having fun.

The last two days were called due to weather.

Yesterday, we were treated to beautiful display of changing weather which kept us up on launch for 6 hours. Rain, lightning, thunder, gust fronts, hail, towering cummies, 180 degree wind switches, you name it. Lots of hacky sack, chess playing, reading and napping were the activities for the day. The launch site was the Vernon Launch.

Today was easier to predict as we awoke to a uniformly grey sky with rain and more thunder activity predicted. We went to Coopers Launch anyway and after an hour the 60 of us or so hucked off for extended sled rides.

I posted a couple of pics from yesterday and today in the Canadian Nats Album

A 27km task was called in very light conditions with a 30 minute launch window. With 70 pilots, this made the choice of when to launch quite interesting! Of course we all waited 10 minutes until Will Gadd showed us that there was enough lift to sustain at least one pilot and the rest of us launched. Craziness.

Four made it to goal including Nicole McLearn with about 15 others along course. The other 35 including myself made minimum distance.

Today starts day two with similar but windier conditions. I snapped some pics of our first two days and some from up on launch yesterday:

2005 Canadian Nationals

We had spent a couple of days in Seattle finally to be treated to an excellent flight from Tiger on Thursday. Greg Babush is working on his tandem so he was the pilot in command as we soared up to cloudbase. Knowing that we had to get to Vancouver that evening, we ditched thoughts of cross-country and made our way around the Tiger Mountain "Tiger Tag" turn points before heading down for an eventful landing.

As the wind was from the south, we had to set up over Marc Chirico's house (Seattle Paragliding) which has some mighty tall trees above it and of course the LZ is boxed in with big trees and power lines anyway. We went for an extended ride passing over the spot and finally found sink just at the end of the landing area. Whew!

On our way in to Lumby yesterday afternoon, Tin Ilacovac, Greg, and I immediately spotted a couple of gliders soaring a hillside about 10k west of town. Called "Baldy", we threw our wings into Matt Dadam's truck (he had just shown up) and drove the 15 minutes to the top. Punched off and had a nice 15 minute soaring flight before coming down and heading into Lumby to find our camp spot.

Today we were greeted with an epic looking sky and headed out the main landing area. The hangies had already went to the launch above Lumby so we booked out to get there too. Arriving at the top, we found mostly down (west) winds with some very sporadic cycles coming up.

I punched off into a nice cycle and went up to cloudbase at about 8k feet. The air was pretty rough down low and several others who launched after us had some good collapses and ended up landing pretty early. About 5 of us did a quick tour of the area following the cloud street west and then back to the east, but as the winds aloft were at 10-15, it didn't take long for us to decide that landing soon would be a good idea. Mid day was a-coming and the day's weather called for OD conditions and thunder storm clouds.

We can only hope that the next few days are going to be as epic, sans the wind of course!

Last day of the Rat Race here at Woodrat Mountain in Ruch Oregon and we're in the middle of our daily pilot's briefing. The organization of this event is top notch and I've been impressed with the level of professionalism and quality of work. From the pre-printed labels with pictures and names to the daily schedule complete with the pros giving mentoring talks at the end of the day.

I've decided that I'm racing today as opposed to "finishing to goal" which has been my focus for each day. With nothing to lose, I can test the "speed to fly" theories - launch early, fly the course with the pros. If I dirt out, I dirt out but I'll have gained more practical insight into the mindset required for "racing" paragliders.

After today Greg Babush from Telluride and I are heading on a 2-4 week road trip touching three more events in the Northwest. The first event we’re signed up for is the Canadian Nationals in a week then we’re competing in the PWC (Pemberton-Whistler Championship), and finally joining in on the US Nationals in Chelan, WA.

This next week is a freebie and with a front coming in we are heading to Bend to fly Pine Mountain and then on to Chelan for some practice there before the US Nats. Then on to Pemberton a couple of days early for some practice days there.

More later as we hit the road tomorrow!