Crestline Soaring Society

Pretty bumpy up there today, what with 15-25 MPH winds and a decent lapse rate. I launched the UltraSport 166 from Marshall at 14:30, worked north of Cloud Peak slowly to 5400 in a start-and-stop thermal, then a bouyant glide to Crestline. Windy there, but once in a while a solid core would make it up past Billboard. Easy glide from 6200 over to Pine, which wasn't working that well given the mostly south flow over there. Got to 6200 again after not quite catching a few little cores that came through. Drifted west of Pine at trim with impressive groundspeed; turned back before Sugarpine and basically stopped. Back to Marshall and another lap in the circuit.

I had to really throw my weight sideways a couple of times to stay in ornery cores, but there were several 800-1000 FPM ones where I banked up steep and just shoved the bar out. I waited until 16:30 before even looking at top landing, hoping the wind might have abated a bit. Got to 5k above Marshall waiting out a lift cluster and within 2 minutes found myself at 3k on the Cloud spine. Eerie. The next thermal through took me back high enough to go check out Marshall again. I went round and round waiting for no lift and at least a little slack in the sock. Finally it happened and I did a quick approach at 16:50. It turned out the wind was very benign on top. I came in my usual way, from the NNW, so the filled-in pit made no difference, but I flared over the soft cleared dirt and that was real nice. Softer on the feet and no distracting bits of brush. A little flatter too.

There were a couple of other pilots at Crestline, and one of them (green/black BS - Mike Z.?) joined me for the second lap. That was fun.

This is the third time in a row my little Garmin Geko 201 hiking GPS has had a real choppy track, showing me making out-and-backs to far flung points at Einstein-defying speeds. The thing might be 'going out' on me, but I don't have any idea what's in there that would wear out.