Persistance & Patience Pay Off!

Yesterday was a strong pre-frontal day which looked good for flying, so I took a couple hours off of work and took Landon with me for a Short Divide Tandem on Ol' Sport. After pre-flight and hang-checkin', Cody assisted us on launch, as we eagerly took flight at about 16:42 into a hot, 95 degree, gusty SW wind of 17-20 mph. As predicted, there were some strong, punchy, sharp-edged thermals mixed in with areas of definite sink. With Landon beside me, I kept a vice-grip on the control bar as we were forced to do battle with some nasty thermals close to the terrain. Cody launched 15 minutes later, and after some ups and downs, showed us how to bench up over the upper mountains - nice flyin', Cody!

After over an hour of severe ups, downs (and sideways,) Landon admitted that he was "feeling a little sick", so we flew down to the lower 75' ridge just above the bailout LZ and resigned our flight to a few last turns in the lower lift. As we cruised back and forth the ridge lift seemed to smooth out a bit, allowing me to relax my grip and fly closer to minimum sink. As the sun lowered, the thermals seemed to enlarge and soften allowing for flatter, gentler turns. Some time after 6 pm the glass-off began, and the lift seemed to be everywhere. We gradually, almost imperceptibly began to climb and drift back toward the upper mountains in the widespread lift.

I asked Landon if he wanted to go out and land, but by now his stomach had settled enough so that he wanted to keep climbing and flying! Once we had ample ground clearance we drifted back to the upper face and found even more smooth up-air. After an hour and a half of some serious rodeo air and up close scratchin', we finally managed to bench up and join Cody in the sweet glass-off at altitude! We topped out at about 8,800' (about 4,000' over the valley floor) and just boated around, enjoying the cooler, buoyant evening air. I took a few pictures, and some in-flight video of Cody flying in close formation (sorry if it's a bit shaky - it's not easy to record in-flight just hand-held).

As the sun neared the horizon, we pointed east and flew over the back to the Clarkston LZ. We watched from above as Cody got some practice landing with his drogue chute deployed. I had the "big wheels" on my basetube this flight, so we could just roll in for a landing, and not worry about flare timing with our higher wing loading. The wheels worked great, although I picked up a little alfalfa green on the front of my harness! On the ride back up to our vehicles, we came around a corner and saw a large, tan animal crossing the road, which we recognized to be a cougar - with his long tail trailing behind him! As quickly as we saw him he bounded into the thick scrub oak. That's the first time that I've ever seen a mountain lion in the wild!

All in all it was an incredible, memorable flight and adventure - complete with some challenging, rowdy air, and eventually, the reward of a classic Short Divide glass-off! Right after landing, Cody congratulated Landon for showing us what it means to "Cowboy-up", and truly earn his wings! This marks Landon's 6th tandem flight and 8.5 hours of airtime - most of it in thermals - the likes of which would have sent me straight to the LZ with my tail between my legs when I first started hang gliding! Thanks for sharin' the air Cody & Landon!

Airtime: 2 hours 41 minutes x2!