You know you flew badly when you barely make St. Mary's! A crew went up in Andy Palmer's rig on a day that looked pretty good despite the overdevelopment. I launched first at 10:45 and went straight up to cloudbase - only 3,300 feet. I swung over toward the Thermal Factory only to hit a sinkhole. As I turned to fly toward the Round House in the sun, I noticed I had already lost five hundred feet and was having a hard time penetrating into a southeast wind of 10-12 mph. It was time for some praying at the Holy Hills. Caught a two-turn thermal that lifted me enough to clear the powerlines. Then it was all kinds of weird air and rotor as I tried dipping into the crevices on the west side of Rattlesnake Canyon. The wing went where it wanted, often pinning me backwards in a draw. But there was just enough convective heat to barely clear each successive ridge. At the third draw, my wing took a small assymmetric and as I dropped in a turn out, my harness pushed through the top four feet of a small scrub oak. A few S-turns on the last bump above St Mary's allowed me to reach the LZ at all and avoid a tree landing.
Everyone else did much better!