Spring in the Fraser Valley

It's finally spring time in Canada! Armed with a venerable Ozone M1 while waiting for my new M4 to get here, I've been weekend warrior'ing in the Fraser Valley in beautiful British Columbia, Canada.

After 6 months in Australia my internal heating system appears to have failed from disuse and it has taken a chilly couple weeks for it to sputter and start up again. Paragliding above the freezing level wondering at untouched snow on sharp peak mountains is sublime and the sharp prickles of cold add to the experience as a harsh reminder of the realities of wilderness and Nature's independent will.

The west coast soaring club has two major sites in the Fraser Valley: Bridal Falls on the south side of the valley and Woodside on the north side of the valley. Both face the predominantly westerly inflow winds. Did I mention it took me awhile to reverse my internal compass so east was inland again? Switching coasts while paragliding, not to mention hemispheres, caused quite a few moments of feeling that everything was backwards. Well, that and driving on the right hand side of the road again. The Fraser Valley is wide and so we rarely suffer from strong valley winds, reducing one worry of flying in the mountains. The sharp peaks on both sides of the valley make staying up some days just a matter of tucking in close to ride the anabatic flow up. The only challenge is focusing on thermaling while confronted with stunning scenery.

Along with the scenery are the friendly feathered companions that often join us in the air. Unlike the mean tempered wedge tailed eagles of Australia, our local eagles are happy to join us in a thermal and rarely spend more than a moment in puzzlement before happily parking themselves on our wingtips where I think they enjoy the contrast of their compact and sleek feathered structure with our billowed and brightly colored mad constructions of nylon and string.

Last weekend my first flight back in Canada was with a bunch of air-starved desperadoes. We stood on launch for about an hour letting the snow settle around us as Nature attemped to absorb us into the still life that was Woodside Mt. Finally a break in the snow let us hurl ourselves off launch into the frigid air. About half an hour of soaring the south knob and my fingers were frozen so I headed in to land. The light snow we had been soaring in had become rain down low which pattered down on me after landing. Not so easily deterred, we headed over to Bridal Falls where at least it wasn't raining. After a bouncy ride up and a short hike through the snow to the top we were greeted with thick snow and visibility of a few meters. Luckily we are all well versed in the art of parawaiting and clever conversation with only a couple of thrown snowballs filled the next while. A desperate and mistimed attempt by a tandem to get off the hill ended up in the trees below launch before the sun finally broke through and we were rewarded with clearing and wind beginning to cycle up launch. I was on stand-by to help land students, but there were several others around too so I ventured off with several other people for the standard Elk Mt. to Ludwig Mt. route.

This was my first real flight on a DHV 2-3 wing, and while the M1 and my modern DHV 2 wing (U-Turn Airwolf) have the same aspect ratio (6) and similar still air glide performance, the M1 is still a sporty wing to fly.  The wing tips are more independent than the Airwolf and it took more focus to keep the wing from exploding (it never did anything crazy, but it kept hinting at possibilities). The behaviour on bar was what convinced me that I made a good change moving up to a 2-3 wing. Pushing speedbar puts the wing into lock-down --- it stops moving and cuts through minor turbulence as if it wasn't there. I was in awe that I could actually use speedbar to get places. The Airwolf, while an excellent performer in still air, is very hard to fly efficiently through turbulence.  On bar it pitches around a lot requiring a lot of active bar usage and maybe I never figured out how to properly fly it, but I always felt inefficient on transitions. The M1 behaves like it is on autopilot. I can't wait to see what its modern descendant is like. The attention required to fly the M1 did not counteract the cold though, and eventually after passing Mt. Cheam on the way to Ludwig I transitioned from paraglider pilot to frozen chicken and turned back to land but too late to prevent the screaming barfies.  Not for the first time, that evening I shared my apartment with an expansive damp paragliding wing roommate.

Mt. Cheam seen from Woodside on an
inverted day that followed the good
flying described here.

Next weekend was warmer and even those for whom the cold outweighs the glory of free flight crawled out of their winter dens and a panoply of paragliders ended up strewn across Woodside launch waiting for the first cycles of the day. The timing was right and Friday April 22nd 2011 delivered. Probably the best spring day this year and those of us lucky to be in the air enjoyed epic conditions. Personal bests fell like pins in a bowling alley. I did my first and second valley crossing to complete a small triangle from Woodside to Bridal and back. From Woodside to Bridal I used the Green Hill route because there are always easy landing zones en route. Probably the best part of the flight was scratching my way up from near ground level to mid-way up Mt. Cheam (see photo). Tucking in close to the snow covered pine trees was all absorbing but the concentration was rewarded with height and finally I was high enough to float a bit towards Ludwig and then back towards Bridal launch.  I attempted mid-flight to top land at Bridal for a bio-break, but conditions were not friendly and I wasn't familiar enough with my wing to force the issue. I found a nice thermal near Alan's Ridge and decided to head back across the valley. On the way back I stopped at Hopyard Hill and then Cemetary Hill before finally heading toward Riverside. I could barely think straight on the last leg of the flight for want of a pee but the desire to complete the triangle won and I finally forced my wing down through the buoyant air at the Riverside landing field and all was well.  My track log is on leonardo. Woo-hoo!

Last few weeks in Australia

It's getting close to spring time in Canada, so I'm soon returning. This includes starting work again, which I'm surprisingly looking forward to.

A couple of the apostles on the south coast of Australia

I spent several days exploring Melbourne and the areas around it. Most spectacular were the Twelve Apostles, rock formations resulting from the continual dissolution of the coast line by the ocean (a couple cm a year gets eaten!). The chunks of harder rock last longer until they eventually get surrounded by water then finally undercut and washed away.

Mt. Elliot launch in Corryong

I spent last week flying in Corryong, Victoria. Corryong is right in the middle of Snowy River country and the town claims that their own Jack Riley was The Man from Snowy River, made famous by the poem by Banjo Paterson (for the rest of the world by the movie). So fundamental is this to the area that during the Corryong Open paragliding competition there was a sub-competition where the flying teams performed (and I use that word loosely!) verses of the poem. As a result I now have a verse memorized, but our team did not win the performance despite our brilliant last minute choreography.

The competition, as with most flying this Australian season, suffered from some marginal weather. Cloudbase was low and winds were high making tasks epic slogs. I spent a lot of time at tree top height scratching up while the competition and top serial wings flew above me to the trigger point I wanted. One day I repeated the cycle of thermal up, glide forward, only to find myself in roughly the same spot enough that I decided to land purely out of frustration. Definitely not a proper competition mindset as it wasn't that much easier for the competition wings. I did not make it even close to goal on any task. Still, fun flying and I got to explore a small part of the area by air. I did get a pretty trophy for 2nd place in the Sports Class to take home to add to my small collection. I had a retrieve team during the competition which made everything easy --- not sure how I'll fly XC without one now!

Cook's Terrace, Northern Beaches, Sydney

My last bit of time here in Australia is being spent trying to sell my car back in Sydney. I had a short flight on the coast at Cook's Terrace to break things up a bit this morning and now I'm cafe-hopping waiting for someone to buy my car.

Goodbye Australia! I'll be back!

Bright

I spent a lot of time in Australia in Manilla, a place for huge downwind XC distances in almost all wind directions. Manilla is a tiny rural town where during a hot spell the temperature can exceed 40C. It's super relaxed and the flying arrangements are perfect: a club truck drives up at least once a day guaranteeing you a way up the hill, and the landing field is where you might be staying (Godfrey Wennes' farm with cabins, swimming pool, etc) if you aren't staying in town (the Royal Hotel run by Vic and Tom is perfect for paragliders). If you go here you'll probably increase your personal best distance, gain a near superhuman endurance against flies, and decide to give up on cities forever. Manilla is a MUST GO for epic flatland flying if you are visiting Australia.

Camp Krusty during the rain.
I never said the weather
 was perfect in Bright!

View from Mystic launch in Bright.
Probably the best shaped artificial
launch I've ever been on.
They graded it, covered it in
bitumin, and then glued on astroturf.

Now, I've discovered the other MUST GO paragliding spot for Australia: Bright. Bright is a cute small town with lots of cafes, restaurants, and stores about 3.5 hours drive north of Melbourne. The town is nestled in a small valley which heads into the Australia Alps mountain range. Temperatures here have been much more moderate than Manilla, so much so that it actually gets chilly at night! The main flying hill is called Mystic, and has a beautiful launch (better than any I've ever seen!), a 2wd track to the top, and an easy glide to the main landing field. The best place for pilots to stay is the Outdoor Inn, affectionately called Camp Krusty which is a short walk to the landing field and a slightly longer one to town. As this is a mountain area, you'll probably be flying in light winds and attempting to fly triangles over large tree covered ridges and mountains. There is plenty of sightseeing to be done on foot and by paraglider. My favorite flight so far was exploring waterfalls on Mt. Buffalo and then scratching my way back over a couple ridges to launch where I got high again and did some acro before landing.

Sometimes the cows get curious.
Landing out during the Bright Open

I competed in the Bright Open here last week (and ended up rather close to last place, though I think I'm well on the way to understanding what I need to do to become a good competition pilot).  The return to flying around terrain was wonderful and I spent a lot of time exploring the forested ridges looking for Koalas and kicking tree tops. It's raining again, so I'm off to explore Melbourne and do some coastal soaring.

EPIC

On the way to Warialda

The weather has taken a turn for the better recently. Four days after my previous personal best of 97km, I crushed it by flying 130km north of Manilla (flight log). The north route is easy to fly as it is by a highway and passes over a couple of towns. I've also done the early parts of this flight many times including defeating the dreaded Tarpoly Sink Hole and sneaking by the Tarpoly Eagle. I landed instead of adding some more kms because it was getting late and my chance of retrieve or hitchhiking back was getting low. As it ended up I still had to use the "call a friend" option.

It doesn't get any better than this!

A couple days later the Manilla XC-Camp, an informal online XC competition began. There are about 70 pilots competing here, including many from overseas.  I've had two long flights during the first three days of the 11 day event (and the other short flight was not too shabby either)! Partially this is enabled by flying with groups of people... think of them as confetti in the wind marking thermals. Daily updates on the comp by Godfrey can be found at Paragliding Forum Manilla XC-Open.

My first flight of the XC-Camp was to the east, a direction I have only gone a couple times before, and not nearly as far as I went this time. I almost landed after the first couple climbs and it was only a low save that kept me going. In this case the low save was actually easy, I was getting hammered with sink while heading toward a slope facing the sun, and as I approached I could feel the drift from the air being sucked into the hill top thermal and I circled in the light lift as it pulled me toward the slope and then up the slope and into the thermal. Due to a failure in radio communication two guys on the ground who were watching me were convinced that I landed (they looked away just as I caught the ripper to base) and spent some time looking for me.  I'll be using my SPOT from now on for live tracking. The later part of the flight involved flying over the so-called tablelands, where the ground rises from 350m to 1000m (higher than launch!). There are very few well traveled roads up there, and quite a distance to fly before the main highway.  Since I did not have an organized retrieve that day, I was focused on keeping landings near houses within glide, even going so far as to fly into the wind once (there was also a potentially soarable hill there too). After some epic adventure flying exploring the tablelands looking for roads and lift from the rocky hills that dominate the scenery, I finally found the highway and landed near it for a 76km flight.

After landing on my Mt. Kaputar flight.
It was 42C in Moree and felt hotter
in this valley.

My third flight was to the west then north passing by Mt. Kaputar, a 1500m monster of a mountain with tree covered fingers extending for huge distances from its peak.

The day was interesting with an inversion below 1000m and slowdowns around 1700m and 2200m. One key to this flight was patience while climbing out of launch as it took three distinct climbs to get up to 2600m. It's important to have a good picture of the day before going XC. I made a potential judgement error early on: the clouds we headed to to the west were big, and I flew without speed-bar and circled in light lift because I thought the final cloud we were heading to was growing too big and might start raining. In the end I lost a lot of time and ended up low at a mountain range crossing because I waited until the cloud started dissipating before getting close to it. That isn't to say my worry was baseless, but over many flights I have been learning first hand how slowly storms grow here.

Later, after crossing the mountain range I worked for quite some time on trying to get out from over the un-landable forests to the flat lands where I could then head north-west to Narrabri. Eventually, a combination of the forests and rough air convinced me to turn tail and run with the south wind away from the trees into a very lightly populated valley where I was happy to see one house that I could land near in case I started sinking out. I relaxed after a few more kilometers, because the valley became more populated (though I doubt more than 50 people live in it) and I found some more gliders around.

A badly chosen landing field.
Filled with thistles.

I figure that together these two bad judgements probably lost me almost an hour of flyable time. I somewhat made up for them later with good but easy decisions late in the day and managed to extend my flight by an hour by simply heading to the sunny side of the valley I was in and scratching at hill height until I found good climbs out. Unfortunately before finding those climbs I was below 1000m where there was a distinct change from somewhat cool air to super-heated full-on Australia summer. I was sweating by the time I scratched up again. My final glide (no more hills with safe places to soar) was gentle and I followed the overgrown fields next to the road until I finally landed in a field full of thistles. Oops. Still, another 100km flight! Woo-hoo! After quite some time in the sun freeing my glider and lines from the thistle I settled into the shade near the road. It was in the 40s as I sat there trying to keep up with my sweating by drinking water. My retrieve team soon arrived with cold beer and an air conditioned car.

Towering Cumulus blocking the
sun at sunset.

This flight was as special as the last one since I was flying terrain I had never been over before and I truly felt like an explorer. With that came new flying challenges, and as well simply new scenery. While I cannot capture the feeling here, these two flights, for me, were epic adventures.

New PB

PB means personal best. It's one of the important drives in Paragliding --- do better than you have done before. The other option is to compete in competitions where you must fly better/farther/faster than other people.  Both are tremendous fun.

I achieved two personal bests yesterday in Manilla.  First, I flew 97km.  Second, I flew for 5 hours and 15 minutes, my longest flight so far!  Also, it was a bit of an adventure flight since I had not flown south-west in Manilla before, so the scenery was new and the flight planning was also more challenging. I had looked at a map before launching and had programmed in the airspace limitations into my GPS, but the details of some of the roads escaped me.

First challenge occurred when I had to decide which way to go from Lake Keepit while keeping my eyes open for sail planes and their tow planes launching from the Lake Keepit soaring club. There was a road toward a town called Gunnedah, and a road that I thought was a short-cut toward Breeza.  I wasn't sure how many cars would be on the short-cut road, so I counted toy cars (they look like that from high up) on the road while floating around. The reason I wanted to know is because the land the road heads through is dominated by mega-farms: huge tracts of land with no homesteads at all. Not a good place to stand by the side of the road. After seeing a handful of cars, I decided it was a good shortcut and followed it toward a town called Breeza.

My flight... best clicked.

My second challenge occurred at Breeza where I encountered a quite grumpy wedge tail eagle who insisted on repeatedly attacking me, then heading back to its home thermal, climbing up, and repeating the cycle.  Aside from my usual technique of pumping/almost stalling the wing as the wedgie is about to hit it (still works perfectly!), I also threw down some acro since I figured the wedge tail would not leave me alone until I got really low.  The problem with that choice was that I was dehydrated (despite flying with water, I hadn't drank any for the first few hours; I fixed that after escaping the wedgie), so after a few cycles of asymmetric spirals and a loop and then some wingovers I started to feel a bit ill.  I also made the mistake of trying to keep my eyes on the wedge tail while doing some of the acro.  This put my neck in a rather uncomfortable position once while I was pulling some significant g-forces. Bad idea. Oh well. I eventually got far enough away that the wedge tail left me alone and I boated along feeling a bit nauseous and beat up for awhile.  Luckily conditions were light and calm and after eating a fruit bar and drinking some water I felt much better. This same grumpy wedge-tail harassed another pilot that day too.

By the end of the flight it was getting late, the sky was completely covered in high cirrus clouds, the  convenient tail-wind had dropped off, and all that was left for lift were disorganized bubbles coming off brown dry fields.  I hopped slowly field to field at low altitude until I came across a crop-duster attending to a pair of fields.  Crop dusters fly super fast and low so despite being rather high, I was not willing to go on glide anywhere near the plane.  So, I waited awhile until the pilot moved onto a farther away field, but he was still close enough to block access to a brown and dusty field I was hoping to use to continue onwards.  I glided away from the crop-duster and ended up landing in a thistle filled field not too far from a town called Quirindi.

A sunset during a drive back to Manilla. Similar to, but not the one
I saw while hitchhiking back after this flight.  If you are hitchhiking while
watching the sunset you've already lost.

My last challenge was getting home. Near the end of the flight I was thinking that I should land early since the hitchhike back is quite extended and takes at least a couple steps (first you hitch to Gunnedah, then to Lake Keepit or Tamworth, and then finally to Manilla).  I decided against this (good) idea because I could see my distance from takeoff was close to my personal best.  In the end my open distance (that is straight line distance from takeoff) was 1.4 km longer than my previous best, while my total distance was an improvement of 8.9 km.  Well, this came back to bite me as I ended up getting dropped off at Lake Keepit just as it was getting dark.  My first hitchhiking failure.  I used my "call a friend" out and Mik picked me up and drove me back to the farm.  Phew.

I'm still aiming at 100km and the next couple days look perfect for it.

It's raining paragliders

I'm still here and haven't been washed away by the huge floods in Queensland.  But, I have not posted for a long time because it has been raining in Eastern Australia for the last month or so leaving me with nothing interesting to write about. You would think that I would pick up a different hobby, or otherwise explore the world, but no... my version was to explore the pie selection at the local bakery, sit in the library, read books (finished all Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series), and stare at weather charts in a failed attempt at mentally manipulating the universe.

As a high point of the rainy season, I spent the holidays with Lawrence (paraglider pilot, erstwhile Canadian) and his family up on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Don't let the name deceive you --- it was still raining almost the whole time I was there. Lawrence just moved to Australia a couple months ago, in the midst of the worst rains Queensland has ever seen, so I felt compelled to help him find a place where there was sunshine and heat.  After all, you could tell he was Canadian just by how pale he was. We hopped in my paragliding-adventure-mobile and chose a route down South that bypassed all the current flooding in Queensland.  About 10 hours later we arrived in Manilla, NSW where it was hot and sunny (this was a temporary aberration).

There was a strong inversion present most of the days we were there which made climbing a bit of a patience game. My personal goal is still to fly more than 100km. I did not succeed this time around, but did improve my personal best distance besting a flight I had last year in Golden, BC back in Canada! On this day in Manilla, I launched a rather late into beautiful conditions and I had a real fun time in the air bouncing off the inversion and occasionally getting above it.  I did not have any company in the air as the other XC addicts had left earlier.  Here's my track log for 87km. The next day I wanted a repeat, but on my first glide from cloudbase my speed-bar line snapped (bad pulley in my harness). I still kept going and experimented with pulling the speedbar lines with my hands but found it too hard as I could only hold them for about 30 seconds before my arms and fingers gave out. Anyway, it was too rough to fly on bar without my hands on the D's anyway. I figured without speedbar I wasn't going to make much distance so after 10 km, I turned around and punched into the head wind without speedbar, which made for a very slow but interesting return flight to the landing zone.  Lawrence made a personal best flight as well!  Three cheers for Manilla, my favorite Australian site!

The Playground in Maleny, QLD.

We headed back from Manilla to the Sunshine Coast just as the air became super unstable and thunderstorm-y.  Our plan was for Lawrence to start driving back to Queensland and for me to fly as far as I could and he'd pick me up on the way. Well, despite the epic planning, I ended up bombing out after launch!  There were some epic flights posted during those next couple days.  Oh well... I'm not into dodging storms too much anyway.

Ridge soaring at the Playground

After returning from Manilla, we decided to find out about flying inland of the Sunshine coast.  I've gotten used to easily finding information on flying on the internet, so was frustrated a bit with the lack of details I found. We talked to a local pilot on the phone, but in the end we finally found the sites by driving to where we thought the sites were and looking for paragliders. First we found a coastal flying addict on the coast by spying his paraglider in the distance. Unfortunately conditions got too strong as we chatted and we didn't get to fly. Next day we found a local paraglider pilot near Maleny who took off in the middle of the day to show us a local site, The Playground. Miraculously, it was on for ridge soaring (though very light) when we arrived despite the general rainy and overcast conditions. Lawrence and I soared for awhile in gentle conditions. I top landed next to a cow who was looking even more bored than they usually look... not even slighty interested because there isn't much difference if it is raining paragliders or water.