Personal Best and Worst!

My cross-country addicted flying buddies (Fred, Igor) and I took advantage of a sunny day in Pemberton on Saturday for an attempt at a 100km FAI triangle to be flown dog-leg style as two out and returns.  The extent of inaccessible grizzly bear country around Pemberton is generally too extreme for most easy triangle closures.

The first leg was from launch over the back to D'arcy at the tip of Anderson Lake.  The potential challenge with this leg is that it is usually, by summer time, windy enough for windsurfing on the lake.  Today was predicted for outflow winds switching to inflow which I hoped meant not too much wind until later in the day, but I'm a newbie with the Pemberton weather patterns!  Predictions were also for light-ish winds (at least on the morning run of the models) and a nice and high cloud base.  In the end it was just a "call from the sky" deal... we'd chicken out early if necessary.  The second leg was a short part of the "milk-run" flight to Meager Creek and back.

We got to launch a little late (it was probably possible to launch and climb out by 11AM) and were greeted by a fellow pilot already high over the Lower MacKenzie launch.  He and a couple others had launched from Mt. Currie that morning.

Fred led the way as usual by launching and climbing out first.  I followed second, trying my best to catch up (not impossible to do when someone is leading, even if they have an R10) and caught him on the fourth climb, at which point we split apart again.  I blame it on the stealth blue/white colouring of his wing: it's almost impossible to see.  Igor on the other hand has an easy to see Gradient Aspen 4 but we didn't meet up until D'arcy.

The Pemberton area of the Coast Mountain range with my flight path

The leg toward D'arcy was a fast downwind dash over Birkenhead Mountain (see KML of my flight in google Earth for an idea of the area).  Getting back was going to be the hard part.  As it was significantly past noon, the west side of the valley was getting a bit weaker and the south wind was strong enough to make it a bit of a slog getting back.  Igor and I got stuck lee side on Birkenhead mountain for a moment and had to battle through some nasty air to get out.  The air in general was bouncy, as is usual in Pemberton, and I hadn't taken my half Gravol (Dramamine for the Yanks) before flying.  After some scrapping, I managed to surprisingly dolphin my way back to the front of the main range of mountains across a low ridgeline instead of taking the backup long way around.  All the speedbar usage on this into-wind return leg exceeded the wind resistance of my clothing and tore the heat away from my arms and hands despite the nice mittens I wear.

Having just cleared the ridgeline to the front range, the generally nauseous feeling I had from all the lee side air turned into full on airsickness and I ended up having to rip off my face mask, tilt my full face helmet and dump stomach ballast over the side.  While I've gotten queasy before I've never actually gotten sick --- this is why I "usually" take half a gravol before flying (except, of course, this time!).  Nature took that moment to catch me in a 5m/sec thermal which I passively cored while recovering my center.  The rest of the flight is a blur while I pretty much pointed my paraglider into the distance and let it fly without more than an occasional turn and watched the distance indicator creep up (without using any bar because I was already too cold, so my average speed isn't too high).  Without any further events I made it out and back and landed.  "He looks green!" after landing summed up how I felt.  It took a few minutes before I could undo my buckles due to frozen fingers.  I think I'm going to add a glove liner to my mittens, and get one of those nifty shirts that seals your wrists with a loop around your hand.

After a meal, a couple beers, and some crazy "So there I was" stories (Igor landed at the top of some remote peak to change batteries on his GPS!?), I was feeling much better and after finding the flight was really a 100km FAI triangle I was super thrilled and willing to forget the minor physical discomforts of the flight.  TLDR: A personal best 100km FAI triangle and a personal worst being airsick during flight.  Here's my flight.