Eagles in The Owens Oct 9-11

[SA]

We made our way north to the Owens Valley for another Eagle Paragliding thermal and cross country clinic. The skies of Santa Barbara had been calling us the week before as we looked up to see beautiful cloud streets up and down our range. Unfortunately the TFR (which has now thankfully been cancelled) prevented us from taking advantage of the excellent conditions.

So we were hungry for some airtime, and we got our fill in The Owens Valley with flying all three days of the clinic. We hit up Piute Launch on the first day after doing a warm up flight at Flynn’s. The thermals were taking us to just below 10,000 on day one, and they definitely had some edge to them mid day. The clinic was made up of a mix of newer P2’s, a few P3’s, and a P4. Everybody got plenty of flying and had some nice cross country.

We made our way north the first day. After launching Piute part of the group got up and headed north towards Benton. The lift was working very nicely in the flats as well as up in the White Mountains. There was a really nice low save by George who took his climb well above 9K after almost landing. Everybody flew north and made their way towards Benton.

Kari Castle had the longest flight ending up just south of Benton in a nice green circular field. The rest of the crew was strung out along Highway 6, and Tom Livingston gets points for hanging tough in the foothills trying to make it work. He had a short hike toward the road, but we drove up and found him pretty quickly.

On day two we launched Gunter. We all had nice climbs and were getting higher than we had on the previous days. Some folk were getting up near 12,000. It was great to see everybody making the move north, and working together at times. Cort was getting nice and high on the back range, and Hadley was getting up there pretty good as well. Cort was battling a cold, but managed to put all of that behind him when he spread his wings. We had our favorite flying buddy from the days of old Kiwi flying with us and he made it out to Benton. Kari took the day by flying just past Benton at a nice green field on a farm.

The last day of the clinic we went back to Piute, and we deiced to head south. Everybody had nice climb outs both in front of launch, and even way out front. We ended up thermaling for quite a while together around launch before I began pushing south. The rest of the crew followed and Kari was flying as tail gunner. We ended up moving south toward Gunter and then on toward Flynn’s and Black. Some of the crew landed on the way, Kari landed at Flynn’s while Cort did the out and return and flew back to where his car was parked at the Piute LX. Nice flying Cort.

We have been pretty stoked about our weather karma at our Owens Valley Clinics. We seem to be nailing it every time. Thanks you again sky gods for smiling on us on our trip to the Owens. We will be back in the spring hoping for more.

I got home late Sunday night then ran up to the Skyport with about 20 sandbags early Monday morning. I built up the little diversion wall that was started by the collective when we repaired the Skyport this summer. The rains arrived Monday afternoon, so we should be in good shape. All the water flowing down the road should be diverted away from the entrance to the Skyport and across the road to the culvert.