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Ditto

From: Ron Faoro
Activity_Date: 3/3/02
Remote Name: 205.188.196.57

Comments

Well, I'm glad someone had an experience identical to mine! I was going to call Brendan after seeing him limp back toward the high school like I had done an hour earlier. I got up in a beautiful, relatively smooth (compared to everything else!) thermal above launch and pointed West with my 7,000 feet. I was doing 30 mph and had only one thirty percent collapse to show for my efforts at Nordhof - no worse than anyone else. I had watched Benson go down on the Gridley Trail and Diablo's cascade and knew we were in for a wild day.

The glide took me to the bowl that Brendan had been scratching in, just down from the big peak before White Ledge. I displaced Brendan and soon understood why he had left. I thought I would do much better, having watched Sundowner, Diablo, Tom P., Ronnie and the rest have to scratch up from out front to where I got to on the glide. But the rowdy thermals kept trying to blow me over the back into Matlija Canyon. I worked for half an hour. Meanwhile, Brendan skied out on the next big hump down, so I gave up the high ground to look for more consistent lift. Then the same thing happened to me as happened to Brendan later. I got trapped in a back canyon, skimming five feet off the chaparral which was whipped in frenzy by thermals that fell apart as soon as they lifted off. I looked sadly at the long walk out. Then I got yanked up and thrown around in a powerful thermal. It shook me like a rag doll, changed my orientation several times and I started think I'd be HAPPY to walk out now, thank you very much. I couldn't leave the thermal, no way. Not that I didn't try! But my ground speed was 5 mph south. By this time, Diablo had reported his mishap, Sundowner and Tom P. had made the jump and the hangies circling me looked more like buzzards awaiting my demise. Finally, I topped out. I took one look West again; ground speed in that direction was about 10 mph. I thought, "Nordhof sounds good about now!" Still, it was a rowdy trip back across the canyon. At times, my ground speed was zero as I rose or fell precipitously! I made it to the preserve and fought the wild winds to avoid a tree landing. Frustrated once again to fail on the Ojai challenge, but happy to be alive next to my vehicle.

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