Whoo Eeee!! Is about all I can say after today's race.... What a fun, exhilarating workout in the sky with my friends!! 5 hours and 15 minutes in the air today. The race was only 66k in distance, but the forecast winds from our weather guru didn't pan out and we ended up flying into the wind for the entire race. You definitely knew you were on a paraglider today as they just don't go very fast into a head wind.
The scenery was beautiful and the course took us along Mt Nebo which is a beautiful mountain about 25 miles south of Provo in the Wasatch mountain range. The racing was very physical and the adrenalin was pumping in many places. I climbed a total of over 40 thousand feet over the course of my flight which is a good day of flying! Usually that much climbing would take me twice the distance!! Conditions were strong but enjoyable for the most part. Spent a little more time closer to the terrain than I would have liked but things were pretty predictable with all the wind we had so conditions were manageable throughout.
Mads Syndergard, a visiting pilot from Denmark, is flat out kicking our butts so far after the first 2 days. He is a long time world cup pilot and is a test pilot for UP paragliders.
My mentor, Bill Belcourt took a big whack just below me - first an asymmetric collapse, than a full frontal which ended up in a horseshoe, and then a pretty big cravat on the right side. He wasn't all that high off the terrain but he was very cool and worked things out before he got so low that he had to throw his reserve... He lost a fair bit of altitude through this maneuver but still managed to beat me into the goal!! I looked around when I was on my final glide to see if anyone was trying to catch me. The only other pilot I saw was my host Pete Schaeffer. Bill had tucked in right behind me and much lower so I couldn't see him without turning or really turning bending my head around.
I made it into goal in the top 10 or so.... Mads had already been in goal for over half an hour ahead of the 2nd place finisher!! When I reached goal I had a new experience in a paraglider. I couldn't find any sinking air... literally, it was all going up and getting stronger and stronger. All I wanted to do was come down and land. It seemed like the farther I flew, the stronger the lift got. I climbed over 7000 feet AFTER I made goal and was about to give up and just start flying back up to the north from where I'd come and just land whenever it would let me down. I flew 4 kilometers into the wind across the valley where goal was located, and then eventually flew back downwind back the way I'd come until finally finding some sink. Never seen anything close to that through the years of flying paragliders. Some said that the entire valley was "glassing off", but I think it was some kind of wave or something. Took me over 45 minutes to make my way down....
The conditions, although already good, are getting better each day. Tomorrow is calling for lighter winds and climbs up to 15 thousand or so....
Today I energized myself out on course with some kind of gooey energy booster .... kind of like eating honey only different flavors. I think it really helped my concentration through the race and I'll defiantly continue to do this in the future. We have several pilots here who are flying quite well now.... A few of them flew comp gliders in the past, and then flew serial class gliders for some years, and now they are back on the newest generation of competition glider. They are quite fast, 2 of them in particular who have both flown in the world cup in past years. I kept up pretty well today but still need to push more speed bar... I also need to work more on being the pilot in front who finds the next thermal, and less on being behind a bit and using the gliders in front of me.... this can be a good strategy to a point but pilots and gliders are getting too fast so if you aren't right there with them they many times will pull away....
At this pace I should be good and "warmed up" for the Superfinal in Italy!!
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