Thursday 1/17

From: Brendan
Activity_Date: 01/17/02
Remote Name: 207.178.212.115

Comments

Bruce and I launched from Chief's around noon. It was cold, but not real cold. Couldn't climb out. Tried twice to get on top of Chief Peak and came limping back both times.

An hour after launching I was sliding down the ridge in front of launch thinking that the day was going to be a bust. But I caught a decent thermal over the second bump and got to 54. Not exactly sky'n out, but I had planned it to be a xc day, so I headed East. Bruce soon followed.

We maintained altitude pretty well, but were rarely more than a hundred or two AGL. I decided to take the chance and go back to the Bluffs with low altitude figuring I would be in for a nice hike if things didn't work out. Bruce stayed out front within reach of Summit School.

Got to base at the Bluffs, but since base was 4K, I was still below the top of the hill. Nice place to scratch though.

Clouds were forming between the Bluffs and St Thomas Aquinas so it wasn't too tough staying up across that section. Pretty much broke even with about 4500.

The bowl behind St.TA was under a huge cloud, but the lift was consistent and smooth through the whole thing, really nice. Bruce was trying to claw his way back into it from lower on the ridge by the school, but he eventually ended up at the school.

There is a collection of small oil wells on the other side of the large bowl, and there were some nice thermals there as well. I rounded the corner into Fillmore still with 4K, but the lift quit as soon as I came around the corner and the draw up the canyon left me crabbing.

Initially the ball diamonds looked appealling. There's lots of 'em, Fillmore people must like baseball. But there were enough people on them to make them unattractive as LZs. Plus my headwind had me limited. I ended up in a small field on the West end of town. My approach was fairly vertical and varied between -7 and 4 mph, but the landing was fine.

Chris arrived with door-to-door chase service before I finished packing my stuff and then we picked up Bruce at the school.

Fun day, heading back for more today.

Brendan