house of nut: 8/5

[andy dainsberg]

1030 nordhoff: for some nut-ritious ojai paragliding.
should be on the warm side hiking; bring mucho agua.
we have a decent spread and simon has graciously offered to retrieve us from st. thomas aq. so that'll be our minimum goal.

[andy dainsberg]

Nice at launch. chris p. fought back from ½way to the road and was soon high eastbound. I was up and away fast. Edging past the leeside of the pyramid ~ Boom! Hard left side collapse, then right and back and forth. she wanted to spin clockwise. Losing alt and close to throwing, she finally came around.

Flying away, I saw why the collapse felt so odd; the first impact of the collapse snapped my left trimmer strap… I keep my trango’s trimmers fully on/in in light conditions (as in this case) slowing to max lift~ and let them out/off on glide. The clips that hold the straps in place can wear them out. The strap breaking probably made the collapse harder to control, as the left side wanted to fly faster than the right.- it did not occur to me to check those during the collapse. ~Fyi if you have trimmers.

Anyway; back on track~ I hooked a fatty over nord ridge and took it from there to stooges. chris was fighting v low in front of twin peaks and flushed out. I needed mas alt from stooges. Snagged a bullet. connected chief spine high enough~ thermalled up to chief peak in a few minutes.

I surfed a couple 100 over the high road over to upper W repeater, easy glide out and down to E repeater. steady thermal @ boyds. 1.5k over st Thomas Aquinas. Fair enough~ fun flight to goal, under an hour. Max alt 5400. Super active pg conditions. Viva La Nuthouse!

Thanks again to Simon and Kristin for the retrieve…

[Simon]

It was fun watching Andy descend to St Thomas Aquinas from my backyard, that was the first time I have seen that happen. It helped knowing where Andy was with a radio and a print out of Southside's "Santa Barbara XC -- A User Guide." I'd attach a link to the user guide except my internet is down and I am typing this from my iPhone.

[andy dainsberg]

Here's southsides permalink : http://www.hanggliding.org/weblog_entry.php?e=253