EPIC Double Banger

[Chip Bartley]

Meet time 8 am says Taliban Chris. Everyone I called to see if they where in gasped and said "He's crazy!". Anyhow, we met and actually left for Pine at 0840. When we arrived at launch the cycles where light and variable and seemed to be organizing well. At 1030 Chris launched and headed out in boyant air toward the spine. He interceped at the saddle and immediately hit a nice smooth 4 to 600' thermal and seemed to lock in and didnt stop until he reported OTB @ 10,500. I launched about 5-10 minutes after Chris and Art was close behind. I missed the saddle and actually didn't hit lift until I was even to the bonsai. Once I hooked it I was at 10,300 smoothly. I headed over the back and went on a great glide toward the bad lands. as I was crossing there was no lift at all and I ended up at 5800 over the spines at the beginning of the river bed. Right when I thought it was over I hit some very light pops and worked in to it and ended up tanking up to 8800. The problem was anytime we headed out toward the badlands sinkwas very abundant and I ended up cratching trying to hang in. I saw Art and Chris landing out behind me and It seemed we all just hit a wall. Anyhow, the bottom line is that we had a great flight and flew for about an hour and fifteen.

After pine we took off and Art was headed for the grade with Andy and his new Addict and Chris was going home for A NAP??? I called to see if Bates was on and ended up talking to Parma Chris and he was at Wilcox with the usual suspects and some Topa pilots from the past. I decided to head to the Wilcox and boy was I glad I did. Got to launch and the conditions where great. Kevin was demonstrating some really great handling right at launch as he played cat and mouse with all of us on the ground. Some of the old vets where saying that today was the best they have ever seen at Wilcox. Not the strongest, the best. People had been flying since 10 am and where going back up when I left at 4. I launched and headed straight up and on the upwind leg I climbed above the trees and it was on. The rest is what it is....... Fun . I headed home at 4 and smiled all the way home.

[Chris G]

Chip more or less summed it up but I'll add my 2 cents worth. Lovely cycles at launch and while it was still relatively early, there were birds going up FAST over the top and lots of swifts out front. I launched at 10:45 and immediately had a dead GPS. Go figure. Hit the spine high and the vario didn't quit beeping until I hit 10,800. Super smooth lift between 200 and 1000 up, nice soft edges and it widened out in that typical pine way. Got greedy at 10.8 and went fishing but didn't find anything better so went OTB with 10.5. GPS was still dead so had little idea where the best line was. Finally got up the courage to swap batteries while diving OTB at pine. Not my first choice of places to be hands off for any extended period of time. Smoothed out once I hit the flats and arrived at Dry Canyon with 7k. Found one that boosted me up to 8500 but we were trapped below the San Joaquin inversion. Dry canyon was clearly HOT HOT HOT and the air texture got progressively worse. After nearly an hour of struggling for that magic 10k to cross the badlands with I gave up and spiraled it in. Pretty rough about 1k over the LZ. Plenty of hot air available if only it hadn't been trapped. Fun day though and definitely one of the nicer climbs I've ever had at pine.

Got home and made the run to Bates where Pauly and I flew until 6:30. Very buoyant though it looked very cross at launch. Lots of seams running out to the surf that you could work well over launch.