Last Friday Patrick and Tyler pioneered a new flying site in Horse Shoe Bend. They still need to come up with a name but I'll call it Runaway Ridge because the launch is situated between two runaway truck ramps on the "new" Horse Shoe Bend grade.
Clancy and Tyler at the Runaway Ridge L.Z.
Hiking through sage brush on the approach.
Monday's forecast looked lame with a discouraging positive number on the
thermal index chart, and high pressure. John Todd, Clancy, Tyler and I were willing to risk a sled ride however and we made the steep hot trudge from the last truck ramp up the north face to the new launch.
"Yea, I would like to sell all those Kyrgastani Som's I purchased two years ago and buy back my American dollars. Oh, really? I made that much?" - Tyler placing currency orders on the hike:
John Todd killing the kids on the hike:
On the hike up we observed one Red-Tail climbing out in light lift from the parking lot, and one crow playing in equally light lift just below launch.
John Todd's second launch attempt worked out well, and as he flew towards the highway we watched him fly through two small speed bump pockets of up before flying out over Horse Shoe view subdivision and drifting down to the rig.
Soon after Tyler cleaned some sticks from his lines and made a few boaty turns before heading to the l.z.
Clancy nailed his launch during a fairly decent cycle, but rolled unlucky dice flying into sink and bombing out.
I clipped in for a sledder, launched in a near calm lull, flew out over the road-cut and found some very slow rising air. I barely climbed above the ridge, took in some view of Bogus, scarred up a couple deer, had a look at a sheepherder's wall tent, and tried to fly to the gutter to see if I could convince any paddlers to learn how to fly. I didn't make it that far. If you have Google Earth you can download my
track log.Thanks to Patrick and Tyler for finding a new launch, and Clancy for driving. Hope to see you in the air more often John.
Whatever you do have fun.
More after the jump...
