After a couple of additional days of shit weather, it finally looks like a flyable day. We head up the hill and set-up on the east launch with a few wind techs already in the air making it look alright. When I say “alright” I mean there were gliders in the air not going backwards or running from storm cells. It seems our definition of what a good day is has been modified a fair bit by the bad weather. A 60k task is called with 5 possible starts and no turnpoints, just a start and a goal. The usual massive gaggle forms as few want to take the earlier starts and there are 2 mid-airs resulting is 3 reserve deployments within 45 minutes after the launch had opened, traffic’s a bitch. I was still on the ground in no hurry to churn with the big groups. I finally get out there and have a relaxing climb until the gaggle decides that the thermal I had looked pretty good, and soon it’s a mess. It only lasts for a few minutes and we all went on glide to the edge of the start cylinder for the 4th start. It was about as good of start as I could of had, but I got dropped like a bad habit on the first glide anyway, making me wonder as to why I bothered timing the start at all. I take the first climb I come to and screw around before finding the core that goes through the inversion. There is a small cell overdeveloping just east of the course line starting to shade out the next section. I was hoping to get through there before it happened but it was going to be close. A few of us got to cloudbase at the end of the ridge and went on glide into a big valley full of shade with patches of sun that were quickly disapearing as we got closer. We were late, and we were gonna pay. The group split, some staying in light lift in the middle of the valley, others making a desparate run for the sun shade line on the far end. I stayed with the closer group as we were climbing a little and the sun was starting to break though again. It turned out to be a mistake as the thermal never really turned on but the drift ended up pinning us against a large forested area that had no landing options. We reached the point where it was going to be a desparate low glide over the forest, or just scraping back to the valley we were trying to get out of. I was spinning my head around guessing at the glide, and calculating the odds and the intelligence of both options. Our group split again, and as much as I wanted to get off the last page of the comp results, I pushed back into the valley of shade and landed. I had heard later of some interesting landings in the forest as some made it across and some didn’t. Around 25 in goal with Tom and Kari making it in and Josh about a km short. Kari made the best choice of taking an earlier start and beating the shade. It starting raining last night, and I was alerted to this fact immediately by the leak over my bed. At the moment, I’m waiting for it to stop pissing down rain so I can go for a run. Today is certainly out for a task and tomorrow doesn’t look good either.

Bill