Sat 3/17 Bates Alert

[sd]

10 am Saturday Morning
The cold front has passed through leaving super unstable air behind so there will likely be scattered showers, but not steady rain. We are currently in transition to a strong post frontal blow. Too much gusto in the mountains but during transition the direction is unusually good for Bates. Timing will be important, and the window will be more forgiving for hang gliders compared to paragliders, or perhaps if you have one of those small zippy bed sheets…, but I don’t think their sink rate is good enough to transition across the jumps.
The cold unstable air will be with us through Monday, so we should have a lot of variation.

[Dainsberg_Andrew]

pulled up to lower bates in a downpour but was soon able to break out the hybrid. it was west at 20-25 and i wanted to see if i could literally launch from the sand... not quite; i had to kite @ 1/3 way up the paved path to get enough launch pressure. speedflew all over until it got a little lighter and i saw sd setting up on the top launch. we thought we had a window a couple of times between rainy squalls to pg downrange- but (longstoryshort) it wasnt quite right. we had a couple flights- i could penetrate on bar but couldnt get enough alt to jump. i put the pg back in the jar and released the firefly for another hourlong speed session. A Lone Crow.

[sd]

Colorful day, but I needed a faster glider
http://paraglide.net/log/12/12_03-17/1_bates_variation.htm