Friday, Febuary 12 - I finally made it back to the lake today! The day was another beautiful sunny day with Cu's popping up in all the usual spots. I had it in my mind to be patient and just work the thermals coming up in front of launch for a long time before committing to XC'ing. I launched rather late in the morning (probably at 11:45) as I was taking pictures of my fellow pilots getting ready and launching. They all quickly took off into the distance while I patiently worked on my thermalling skills. I am starting to make a 3D mental image of the moving air as I fly around in the sky. As I feel lift or sink I make a map of it and then try to remember where it was, where I've flown since feeling it and also how far has the prevailing winds have shifted it from where I first experienced it. My usual technique is to first fly to the normal thermal trigger spots. This is where having local experience with a flying site is invaluable. Second to that I try to estimate where thermal collectors and triggers might be located. I'm slowly learning how to do this. It's really straightforward stuff - usual collectors are fields, the darker the better, rocks and rock faces. Triggers are the downwind edges of those fields and rocks. Also points on ridges, bowls of ridges, ridgetops, peaks, rock outcroppings, tall tree lines and cloud shadows have proven to be triggers more often than not. Even though that all sounds simple enough it ends up being quite difficult to not just end up wandering around bouncing into and out of thermals and spending as much time in sinking air as you do in rising air. First the prevailing wind takes everything and puts a slant on things - and different slants depending on where you are, what time it is, how big the thermal is, etc. Then there is the sinking air to contend with - however big the thermals are, there is an equal amount of sinking air very close by!
I spent over 2 hours just riding thermals as high as I could over launch. I watched as Jeff, the local tour guide for gringos, headed over the back. And one by one everybody left and I was all alone.
Finally I tentatively moved out front from the top of my last ridge thermal. As I poked toward El Peñon I was waiting to hit the sink that is usually there - at which point I was going to do an 180 and head back to the launch ridge. But as I slowly continued into the headwind I hit a couple pockets of rising air and soon it became clear that I would make it to the face of El Peñon at about mid-height.
That rock is intimidating! As I got closer and became a speck of nylon in front of this huge beast of vertical rock and trees I could tell that there was warm air just flying up the face of the rock. I tentatively got closer and closer to try to grab that air but even at what felt like 50 feet away I was not feeling ANY up air, and even some sink. I was way too scared to try to get any closer, the thought of half of my wing grabbing that upward vertical cascading air while my other wing sat in this still air further out front had mis huevos en mis throat. After poking around for what seemed like forever, I finally started grabbing bits and bits of up air, mostly out front of the rock on its SW spine. When I got above the rock and started turning circles again I felt really excited - I might actually be doing the right things today!
The next objective was to move around this rock to the large cliff behind it. I was very worried about hitting rotor or turbulence behind it, next to it, near the large cliffs I was supposed to be going toward and from another band of cliffs that form a 60º angle with the first one. Basically I had no idea where to go safely, so it required that I slowly poke my wing around here and there in the places that I thought were safe and wait to be proven wrong. Luckily, even though I was in fairly rough air and closer to the trees and ground than I like to be in these conditions, I had only a few minor blips of nastiness and soon I was climbing up again. As I got closer to the point where the two cliffs converged in a saddle (locals call it the G spot) I hit some incredible climbs and was soon up at around 3100 meters where I noticed Gui flying in a nearby thermal too. I kept playing it safe and now I could relax a bit since the prevailing winds were blowing in the direction I wanted to go, more or less. I just tried to stick to the thermals and drift toward my next objective, which was a small hill on top of the mesa I was over.
I knew that if I made it to this next small hill (and the thermal that I heard was always over it) I would be entering the convergence line where winds from the south (the valley in front of Peñon launch) collide with the air from the west (coming across the lake). There was almost always a long cloud street at this convergence and sure enough, right as I reached the hill I got taken up high again and there was lift pretty much everywhere. It was Thermals for Jocks 101 and now I could more or less point it toward the lake and just stumble into thermals surrounded by more thermals!
I was pretty excited to say the least. I probably went about 20k but I am mostly excited about the realm of flying possibilites this seems to open up. With the combination of good weather, and my newfound knowledge of thermals it almost seems that the sky is no longer the limit! I can imagine going wherever I want across the land, just staying up on the rising air alone. And with a faster wing (which will be my first purchase as soon as my business starts to pick up again!) an even greater range of freedom will be available to me.
I called Rulo as I was gliding to the lake, and I took a few pictures to capture the moment. He was waiting there for me with a beer in hand, a smile and a congradulations! It was cool that he was stoked for me even though he can do this flight without problem almost everytime he flies. My flight took 4.5 hours and I was very exhausted - there's rarely a moment of rest when you're flying in air like this! I got a ride home from him and got a very good night's sleep this night.
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