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.

Apsley Falls

It is raining. We are a few days into 10 days of expected rain over most of the eastern parts of Australia.  There is no reliable place to escape to, though I might try.

So, here are some pre-rain pictures of Apsley Falls near the beginning of the Apsley-Macleay river system that at some point in the past cut a huge gorge through the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales. The Northern Tablelands are part of the Great Dividing Range, which separates the interior and the coastal areas of eastern Australia.  The Tablelands are what you might think, a huge (18000 square km) highland area about 1000m high with highpoints above 1500m.

Part of the Apsley-Macleay Gorge

Apsley Falls

Laurieton: Four sites in two days

The North Brother launch in Laurieton.  Faces NE.

Another outlanding with the skies still looking epic.

After repeated recommendations, I finally headed to Laurieton in New South Wales where there is an informal and quite active paragliding club centered around the High Adventure paragliding school run by Lee Scott.  There are an abundance of sites nearby suitable for all sorts of conditions.  The first day I was there, we flew from North Brother, a NE facing site about 10 km from the coast. Since we are near the coast, cloudbase is typically low with 4000 feet a good day and only slightly rising as you move inland. You also need to outrace the seabreeze to stay up. We launched in windy conditions, and I found myself going up and backwards after launch --- I'm blaming the 2 kg of sand in the trailing edge of my glider from flying at rainbow beach (people on 1-2's were penetrating no problem, and I'm heavy on my glider). Things settled after I pushed out of the compression, and I took the first strong thermal up and over the back of the hill, wandered around a bit with a couple other gliders in a second light climb, and then floated in zeros for awhile downwind until I started getting scared of the forests and wind and landed in an empty paddock. After packing up my wing the land owner, Stan, showed up and we had a real nice chat over coffee before he drove me back to my car.  Yet another interesting and friendly Aussie. I could grow to like this place... if they lowered the thermostat by several degrees.

After that flight we went for a brief coastal soaring session at a place called Harry's Lookout near Port Macquarie, which has a super tiny launch which is great fun to use. I had some continued issues with launching. I was using my trusty A's and D's launch which has kept me under control in high wind and strong thermic conditions, but this time I got picked up and dragged backwards into a tree behind launch (only about a few feet of dragging in reality since the launch is very small). I've put in some time since using the A's and C's instead which I am now fully converted too, including usage of the C's only for killing in high wind instead of the D's.  I think the two kilos of sand in my trailing edge played a role in this as well since they acted a bit like pulling the brakes.  After some wrangling, I managed to fly my wing out of the tree it had gotten snagged in and I was instantly flying and, once again, going backwards.  This time I quickly added a small amount of speedbar which got things right and I had a nice long soaring session (no bar needed outside the launch compression).  After landing I finally dumped the Rainbow Beach sand out of my wing.

Bonny's!  Another coastal ridge soaring site.

Next day we had a quick fly in the morning from a another coastal flying site called North-East Bonny's.  Afterwards, we headed inland to Katabunda, a small hill about 50 km SW from North Brother. We set up to launch halfway up the mountain since it was blasting with strong wind and super strong cycles on top of it.  We spent some time waiting for lulls and I had another launch event as I lifted my wing with a big cravat in it, stabilized it over my head with the A's and C's and then pumped the cravat out with the brake. When that side reinflated I stopped the resulting surge with the brakes and was quickly launched up and backwards.  I killed the wing with the brakes as fast as I could while managing a somersault through my lines.  At least I am entertaining people!  Never give up the C's in strong conditions (and put the wing back down to fix the cravat)!  That aside, my second launch attempt was a lot more tame.  So, Katabunda, another site I launched from first time and went XC without a clue where I was (and my GPS has no road names in this area!). Luckily there were two others who went XC, the first a new pilot with 10 hours and the second, Michael, a true para-addict.  After the other two ended up landing (the shade monsters got Michael, and a lack of vario got the new pilot), I continued on my way blundering over valleys and small mountains.  There was at least one helicopter wandering around at the same time.  Anyhow, I ended up about 20km away from launch after following what looked like a decent road through some hills and valleys.  I lost my XC mojo due to a combination of the strong winds, committing glides I would have had to do to get further, and a desire not to stretch out the retrieve any further.  A local, with a full on Australian country drawl picked me up and dropped me at the local general store where I met some interesting locals.  It turns out the helicopter was likely looking for pot plants, and at least one of the locals I met was probably growing it.  Lee and his crew picked me up and we headed back to civilization.  I've got to say, having a retrieve team makes XC flying so much nicer!

The next day, another flight off North Brother where I ended up being forced down by a pair of nesting Wedge Tails again (no damage, but I had to leave the thermal I was in since they kept diving at me; the technique of flapping the brakes just before they hit works well, but a few times I ended up just at the edge of spin or stall before the wedgie finally turned away.  I'll have to tweak my eagle-defense timing!).  Finally, the winds picked up too much and I headed on my way.  I'll be back though, since the people are great and the flying super fun!

After a quick roll of the internet weather dice, I ended up in Manilla gambling on light winds the next day.  Turned out the predictions in this case were correct, though in general weather predictibility has dropped close to zero in the last several years here according to the locals who all blame human induced climate change for that.  The wind was light east, and on my first launch attempted I floated off the launch only to be gently deposited in soft grass about 30 feet further on (it's a shallow launch).  I kited a bit, but decided to stop there and walk back to try again.  Second launch attempt went perfect with me going up instead of down.  I finally got my first real big and nice climb in Australia, a 5 m/sec (average) perfectly formed thermal all the way up to 2100m (of course I was dressed for a sled ride).  No wedge tail eagles, and I had a nice flight during which three of us attempted to make distance into a light North headwind (7-10 km/hr?).  Our resulting flight was about 20 km at a 10km/hr average speed before it finally shaded in from high cloud.  I floated around in zeroes at the end of the flight for awhile hoping it would clear up, but laziness won and I headed in to land next to the road in what looked like a beautifully soft tall grass field.  Well, about ten feet up I realized the soft tall grass was really very tall scrub brush.  I did a bit of a cartoon run trying to keep my wing above me while bush-bashing through the field.  Finally I ended up in a dead end where the bushes were too big to leap over and I had to bunch up my wing and continue on with my wing over my shoulder.  Plants, including evil invasive species like the Scots Thistle (a spiny painful mess that was imported here as an ornamental plant, but have subsequently taken over many fields), have been growing like mad here since last I flew here.

I'll be here in Manilla another couple weeks probably, then maybe onward to the Conondale area a bit North of Brisbane (the local club website is titled the Conondale Cross Country Flyers: no politics, no bullshit!).  In sympathy with my Canadian friends who have been enduring snow recently, tomorrow looks unflyable here and right now I'm sitting outside a laundromat in Manilla while my laptop screen is being bent by the crazy winds while I wait for my clothes to dry (a nice change from having to line dry stuff  only to discover bird poo on your clothes).

Ridge soaring

Ridge soaring
Beechmont Mountain in Canungra, QLD Australia

While the weather has been somewhat unsettled, Elena and I have managed to get at least a couple days of flying in the last two weeks. All recent flights were ridge soaring. The first was off Beechmont Mountain in Canungra. First flight was an intro flight for Elena in moderate winds and she landed in the "bombout" landing zone. The "bombout" landing zone for Beechmont is a 40 minute drive from launch, making a roundtrip retrieve about an hour and a half. There is a short-cut hike up the hill which takes about an hour, though I haven't done it yet.

Nerang and the Gold Coast seen from above Beechmont

After the intro flight was done, the winds picked up enough to make ridge soaring easy. We boated around a bit, and I got bored and started playing with my wing. I had already added "do not practice wingovers while ridge soaring or close to the ground until you have them dialed perfectly" to my list of rules, but somehow I forgot it once I was a few hundred meters above the ground. Well, suffice it to say the onlookers got quite an unexpected show when I got a bit too aggressive in wingovering.  Let me say it again: "do not practice wingovers while ridge soaring or close to the ground!". High winds while ridge soaring make mistakes potentially very dangerous, even if you do have a lot of height. Anyway, we continued ridge soaring until it started getting dark, and by the time I picked up Elena in the bombout she was busy winding up her flashlight and starting to worry about getting attacked by bats (a not so unreasonable fear since this actually happened during one of our evening hikes, though it is up to interpretation whether the bat was just doing a fly-by or attacking).

The launch for Rainbow Beach; the Carlo Sand Blow
where the sand is gradually drifting over the top of
 the ridge into the mainland.

A few days, and probably 1000 km later, after an interlude of small hikes and tourist drives we ended up at Rainbow Beach, about 4 hours away, a 12 km long ridge above a beach. This is one of Australia's more famous coastal soaring sites with a beautiful sandy launch.

Elena ridge soaring Rainbow Beach.  Not enough room
to land on the beach; so top landing only except exactly
at low tide.

We both put in some time ground handling and ridge soaring over a couple days of flyable weather. The Rainbow Beach season evidently starts around now (November). This was my first wing plus sand experience, and I've got to agree with everyone when they say that you never get all the sand out of your gear.

Elena's first landing in high winds at Rainbow Beach was quite entertaining. After a couple back and forth of me shouting "Do not flare!" and she responding "Why?", Elena managed an unintentional backwards somersault which was captured well by a visiting pilots camcorder.  Hopefully this comedy show will show up on YouTube.  Learning by experience, I think she gets it now.

Coastal ridge soaring at Rainbow Beach.

I also had some trouble getting my wing under control after landing.  I can get my wing on the ground no problem with the D's, but then being able to walk to the side of the wing (which folds it up and allows you to rosette it up) is tricky.  I will try the C's or collapse one side stall the other side next time and see if the resulting pile of wing I get is better (EDIT: the collapse one side, stall the other worked great!  The wing ends up in a nice pile with no tendency to reinflate.  EDIT2: Not every time.  EDIT3:I've settled on A's and C's for all strong launch conditions now, though I still use A's and D's for moderate conditions, and A's and brakes for light stuff, and C's for killing the wing in high wind.  I've learned a lot coastal soaring and also flying the coastal thermic sites which have conditions I would never have considered launching in in the mountains before, whereas here they do it all the time).

Rainbow colored sand dunes?  Maybe.

Rainbow Beach is named after the "rainbow" colored sands on the dunes behind the beach. Well, I couldn't find any purple or blue or green, but there were many shades of yellow, red, white, and black. There is an even longer, but 4x4 access only, beach called Teewah a short distance from here which is flyable as well. Without a 4x4 we didn't try it.  There is a great collection of 4x4 beach misadventure photos near the tourist information spot here.  In fact, walking on the beach we ran into a recently destroyed 4x4 (it doesn't take long for the salt water, waves, and sand to turn a brand new SUV stuck on the rocks into a rust bucket).

More rainbow sands cliffs --- they look solid but it's all
just sand.

Sometimes the weather was not
so nice.  This day it was rainy so
we walked on the beach in the wind.

Surprising myself, I actually swam at the beach.  I got slightly sunburnt having my shirt off for only 5 minutes!

Self portraits never look good, but that's me squished
into my helmet.

Australia Tourist

When I arrived in Australia, a 10 year drought in New South Wales ended. When my friend Elena, also from Vancouver on the Wet-Coast of Canada, arrived, it started raining each day and crops were getting destroyed by flooding.  Flying was out of the question most days, so we played tourist.

Brisbane central business district (CBD)
or simply downtown.

Kangaroo point cliffs.  Including
top roped climbing routes.

First we explored Brisbane, a car-centric city on a river (16th on world livability scale).

A big Australian spider in Brisbane

There are cockroaches in Australia, but they do not build huge colonies inside of houses because it's warm enough outside. So instead you just see them wander in and out of restaurants when they are hungry. Makes them easier to like. And finally I met a big Australian spider --- though I was told that this one is just a baby.

White-capped Noddy Terns
on Lady Musgrave Island

A coral...dead one.

A must see on the Australian tourist list is the Great Barrier Reef with its tropical sea life, so we went on a tour boat to Lady Musgrave island, a coral cay that is part of the GBR southern islands. I tried snorkeling only to be reminded that I can not see anything without my glasses, so all I recall was blurry big fishes, blurry little fishes, and blurry coral. The cay started as just a collection of ground up dead coral bits and birds would stop there for a rest and leave behind droppings. After many years the bird droppings got thick enough to support plants and by now there is a whole forest of Pisonia trees filled with birds. Walking through the island without a hat is a risky activity.

Barking owls

Rainbow Lorikeet feeding.  They are
too wily in the wild for me to have
captured them on film yet.

Then to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, where we petted koalas, fed kangaroos, talked to parrots, and met various other animals.

Meeting a local lizard

Big python at Purling Falls while
hiking

Kangaroos are not that lazy in the wild (left; including brush turkey). This is the result of being fed all day long by generous zoo visitors (right).

Koalas!

Awwww.  Elena and Koala.
Note the two thumbs.

While koalas are possibly the cutest animals in the world, they make a quite ugly noise, try this: Koala Grunting.  They also have two thumbs, and their pouch for the young faces downwards to avoid getting branches and twigs stuck in it.  Yes, they are soft (and heavy).

Scenic Rim --- you can make out the
volcano rim here.

Purling Falls; a nice several hour
hike.  Saw a big python too!

Found out through hiking and viewing various waterfalls and viewpoints that the Canungra  mountains I was flying from are just part of the rim of an extinct huge volcano!

We went shopping for opals.
I gave this one a pass at $60500

Glow worm cave... you have to go to
see the glow worms.

Australia is known for opals, so we had to go and get some.  And finally, we visited the world's largest glow worm colony in a cave close to Canungra.  I completely recommend it --- it's a special experience (and almost impossible to capture on camera).  You see a constellation of tiny glowing spots in the cave.