Sunday, August 15, 2010

The first flight at King Mountain

Flew for 3 hours at King Mountain. There was a nice cloud street towards northwest, so I followed it to Castle Peak, went west a bit to checkout Sun Valley, and turned back. When I turned back, I was 300 ft below the glide path to King Mountain, but when I arrived at King Mountain, I was 4,500 above the glide path. The cloud street was working very well. Some lifts exceeded 10 kts on the average. The cloud base was probably near 17,000 ft. But I had to keep myself under 14,000 ft because my body hadn't adjusted from the sea level to the high altitude. In fact, I managed to throw up in the cockpit eventually. This commonly happened to me when I moved to a high altitude place, hadn't had good sleep, and was tired. I just used a prepared relief bag and there was no mess at all. I do use oxygen from 10,000 ft but apparently, that's not enough. This problem usually goes away after a few days.

After coming back to King Mountain, I used the extra altitude to visit Craters of the Moon National Monument. These lava flows are only 1,000 years old and look very fresh. The area was totally blue, but had good amount of thermal activities. On my way, I had 15 kts of tail wind, but after I turned back to King Mountain, it decreased to 8 kts. There seemed to be a wind sear between the mountain range and the flat area.

After everyone landed safely, we had the first potluck dinner.

Click here to see more photos.

Following the cloud street

Flying over Crater of the moon National Monument

The sunset on the Invisible mountain range

Flew about 270 km


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