conference sunday

[timobarker]

A full van departed from Parma at about 10:40. We headed up to Skyport as the peak was still blowing NE. Upon arrival, we discovered a smooth base wind of 2 - 5 mph from the S. As we ready to launch the base wind died, but some light cycles were wafting in. Kevin Howe launched first and made quick work of climbing out and heading to the RandR. I launched after him, worked slightly harder at launch and made a quick decent to saddle between the r and r and the tit. After working that spot for a minute, I pushed out and thought my day was done. But, above the wires, I got some sweet lift that only got better as I got higher. I was soon above r and r chasing down Kev, who was maintaining in a zero sink situation a couple hundred below EJ launch. I met him there, as did the lift and we quickly climbed out and headed to La Cumbre peak. At each spot from here on out, I only saw the side of Kevin or the bottoms of his shoes. He out climbed me everywhere. We headed down to the VOR. Kevin waited for me there and we decided to try our luck at painted cave. We left the VOR with 38. We arrived at the burned out slide with about 3400 and found some light lift that we boated around in for a few minutes. At 3400, I decided to make the play back to the VOR. I had to remind myself to keep the high ground. It was so tempting to try to cut the corners of the canyons to go straight for the VOR spine. Instead, we kicked bushes all the way there. I came into the VOR just under the bouldery bump, pretty low 2,200 or so. Kevin came in just above the boulders. We found light lift there, that as we climbed in it, grew to substantial lift. Soon enough we were headed to Noname. From there our paths separated. Kevin got some good altitude at No Name and headed toward Alternator. I was stuck around 35 - 3600 and was getting impatient. I glided to west bowl worked that to 3100 and continued to Cathedral. I love this spot! I came in with some altitude and surf the west face ridge lift up to the pyramid top, surfed that some more, and was on my way to the tit and parma. Kevin on the back ridge, kept his altitude up and went all the way to Romero and back. What a flight.

On a side note, the out and back from skyport is a super fun challenge both on the high road and and low road back. The best part of today, though, was that we went west while the wind was directly south. We got great glides all the way to painted cave. Then we turned around and got increasingly better glides as the wind clocked to the west and started pushing harder. The only reason I was able to climb cathedral like i did was because of that wind.

Hope to see you out again today! MLK