First flight at Kalispell, MT

Flew around 4 hours. I was ready to takeoff at 2pm, but tow plane had only Schweizer tow ring, and we spent 1 hour looking for TOST double ring. We finally found it, and I launched around 3pm. I found a good lift just north of airport, and went up to 10,000 ft, which was about the cloud base. I headed northeast towards Glacier National Park, but the wind picked up as strong as 22 kts from west, so I turned back. I caught another good thermal, went up to 10,500 ft again, and headed north this time. North didn't look too good either, so I headed east again towards Glacier National Park, this time following slightly northern course than before. I went further than before, but got low again, and turned west. Got back up to 10,500 ft again, and headed northeast gain towards Glacier National Park, this time taking a course somewhere between the two courses I tried earlier. This one worked best, I passed Lake McDonald, and got pretty close to Harrison Glacier and I was still at the cloudbase. Going to the next cloud would have given me an arena view of the glacier, but that would put me too close to the mountain peak, so I decided to stop there and turn back home. Besides, it was reall COLD. At this was the coldest flight I've had, even compared to many flights at 18,000 ft. My feet was almost freezing.

I had to fight 24 kts of headwind and lost quite an altitude before getting out of the park, but caught a good lift west side of the ridge where hwy 2 enters mountain area. There was a factory or something in a large black rectangular property, and it was generating a strong lift along the ridge surface. After gaining enough altitude to get back to Kalispell, I flew south along the ridge to see if there is any ridge lift. I was probably about 1,000 ft above the ridge, so it wans't really a ridge soaring, but I flew without loosing any altitude for 6 miles or so and back. On a west wind day, probably this ridge is a good reliable source of lift to get a final glide back to Kalispell.

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Harrison Glacier

Flew 180km