Crestline Soaring Society
Serving Hang Gliding and Paragliding in the San Bernardino Mountains
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Sweet Saturday 11/22/08Thanks to the Goddess of Hang Gliding for a sweet day. I launched Crestline about 12:30 and found lots of ridge lift and abundant well behaved thermals. Temperature was very pleasant, got to about 6400 and I never saw the temperature on my vario drop below 60 degrees. Before landing I saw 5 deer grazing below Regionals as I passed over. I was close enough to see that one looked up at me and seemed curious. I was going to circle over them as there was some light lift there, and I really wanted to look at them some more but then I saw one of the deer bolt. It stopped after a few yards and the others didn’t panic but I flew on not wanting to harass them. One of the many things I like about the folks I have met in our sport is their respect for wild life and nature. I heard Gene got to Big Bear. Mike Z Forums > Pilot Reports Surprising dayWhen heading out to Marshall this morning I had low expectations after looking at the Cirrus clouds, thinking it would dampen thermal activity. Launched Marshall at noon with Joe and we climbed to over 6k so we decided to go XC to the East. Topped-off at Arrowhead then headed to McKinley (behind the Indian reservation). I connected there but Joe got the day's best story after being intercepted by the casino police and barely avoiding getting a uniform matching my flight suit. After that things kept getting better and I saw increasing altitude on my way past the dam and to Yucaipa for a 20 mile (33 km) flight. Got close to 8k at the dam. Thanks to Lisa who recovered me as soon as I had finished packing up, went back for a sledder. As I glided over Regionals I saw about 5 guys with orange hats dragging a dear or similar creature. When is it open season on paragliders? What an amazing day! & Videos too!Lots of highs and lows for people today. One of our guest pilots from Phoenix broke his arm. We had ridden up together on the 10:30AM shuttle. I don't know how it happened. Several of my fellow Sylmartians showed up. Chip also flew his Litespeed to Big Bear and back. Both he and Don whacked their landings. I wasn't feeling too swift or I would have gone to Santa Barbara for the X-C League comp and to fly some place new. I was preoccupied with trying to shoot video of my GPS display and got some decent shots of the curly cue breadcrumb trails while thermalling. One highlight of the day was working in real close with Gene in a thermal near the Billboard. I did a quick and dirty edit where I combined my wingtip camera stills with video scenes of Gene of my right wingtip. Here's the video. Be sure to watch it high quality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvM5otsrxAU Here's an earlier wingtip shot of Gene........
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Sweet Saturday 11/22/08
Cool, I happened to see a few deer while I was hiking in Idyllwild today also. Later I booked it out to fly and launched Marshall at 1:00 PM and the first thermal I found on the spine below Cloud took me to 7,300 feet and back to the cutoff where Gene was boating that Fusion of his. Like Mike said the air temperature was about 60 degrees......
Gene said he was able to fly to Big Bear just about gliding the whole way. He stopped to refuel with
altitude just a few times.