Second day at Durango

Today, a couple of local pilots showed up. Dennis flies Hornet, and Bob flies 17.6m Ventus B. Bob went up first, then me, and Dennis followed. There were many good Cu's slightly north to Val Air, but we all had hard time getting the first real thermal. I followed the ridge to the west of Val Air to the north, and finally caught a workable one 3.8 nautical miles north of Val Air. The ridge had three exposed surface, and apparently got heated better than others. I went up to 17,600 ft, and headed east north east where clouds looked good. We had about 13 kts of north wind at 15,000 ft near Val Air. But when I reached Mineral County airport, the north wind increased to 24 kts. There were still good-looking Cu's to the east and north, but I couldn't go further in either direction because thermals were all chopped up and were hard to climb in consistently. After struggling for a while, I turned back, and came back to Val Air. I hanged around a bit, but decided to pull the spoiler and land so that I have enough time to disassemble my ship before BBQ.

After flying only two days, I think that ridge soaring is one of the most interesting form of soaring you can do out of Val Air. Because the airport is at the bottom of a rather steep valley, there are so many ridges you can fly by even without going out of the glide range to the airport. And there are ridges with various different texture - rocky ones, ones covered by trees, etc. I myself is not a ridge soarer, though.

I flew for 4 hours 42 minutes, and the distance was about 300km.

After the flight, we had a BBQ party hosted by Durango Soaring Club. Staffs were friendly and helpful. Local pilots Dennis and Bob were very kind to share local knowledges and their flight experiences out of Val Air.

Animas Valley to the north of Val Air

Climbing over a ridge south of Needles

Flew 300km