Hardwear Sessions

By linking together a series of climbs and glides we are able fly 'cross country' (XC). Going XC is committing. The pilot has to constantly evaluate a very dynamic situation and make thousands of decisions. Obviously two important considerations are where the next thermal will be and keeping a viable landing area within glide. The best conditions for XC are midday in spring and summer. Big lift can mean big turbulence, so a pilot needs to be comfortable and competent with active flying, meaning that they actively control pitch, roll, and maintain cell pressure in the glider. Get a bunch of like minded XC addicts together and you have yourself a league.

This year I flew in the Northern California Cross Country League, a series of informal competitions that run one weekend a month from March until October. The meets are held at flying sites that are all within about 4 hours of the SF Bay Area. We meet in the morning, assess the weather conditions and forecast and a committee sets the day's task. The tasks are races along a series of turnpoints to a goal. The turnpoints are typically quarter mile 'cylinders'. Pilots launch over the course of about an hour and at the designated start time everyone heads out to the first turnpoint, much like in sailing races. Three dimensional sailing races that is. The average courses are 20 to 40 miles and the flights are typically two to four hours long.

Paragliding competitions have become a technological marvel. In the old days (the early 90's) competitors would photograph turnpoints from the air and everyone's film would be developed and analyzed to verify that they actually flew the course. Now we simply program the turnpoints into GPS units, or powerful vario/flight computers with integrated GPSs, and at the end of the day everyone turns in their instruments. The tracklogs are downloaded and a complex piece of software analyzes them and assigns a score.

Sounds easy right?

Over the course of the year I've had many great flights, and a few technical blunders that cost me in the scoring. I don't really care so much about the scores. I'm in it for getting out with friends and having great flights. However, I found that it was getting late in the season and I had not yet made goal. This bothered me.

The October meet was held, as it is each year, in the Owens Valley, outside of Bishop CA. It is a huge valley between the White Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, known for very strong conditions and spectacularly high climbs above the high peaks. It is not unusual for soaring pilots to reach 17,999 feet in the Owens. Of course they never go higher, since FAA regulations forbid it. Last year the XC League tasks in the Owens were over 60 miles with pilots in the air for 4 hours and climbing to over 13,000 feet.

This year's Owens Valley meet drew a large number of pilots, around 45 over the weekend. Among them were some of the top ranked pilots in the US. Now for some name dropping: Dean Stratton, current US National Champ, Josh Cohn, placed 8th in the 2007 World Championships, Bill Belcourt, former US Champ and world team member, Kari Castle, Red Bull sponsored athlete with multiple world and national titles and all around badass (Happy Birthday Kari!) And the list goes on and on. People traveled from far and wide. There were pilots from Utah, Wyoming, Northern and Southern California, and one Peruvian from Virginia.

The meet ran for three days. Saturday was blown out. (That's what we call it when it's too windy) Sunday was sort of crappy, definitely not the typical conditions the Owens is famous for.

The morning of Monday October 8th things still weren't looking too good. The soaring forecast called for climbs around three hundred feet per minute and lift topping out around nine thousand feet. Launch is around 7400 feet, so this meant the thermals would not be taking us very high. Everyone was a little bummed. The forecast from the previous day had been almost identical and we'd all sunk out after leaving the mountains to reach a turnpoint that was a couple of miles out on the flats (the valley floor). We called a task from the Paiute Launch to Benton CA, a 26 mile downwind run with no intermediate turnpoints that required us to fly out over the valley until the final glide.

Watching the first pilots in the air things looked pretty grim. But eventually, very near the start of the race a handful of pilots were sustaining at launch level or just above, so about 10 minutes before the start of the race I headed up to give it a go.

I was on a mission. This was my last chance... the last task of the last meet of the year. Although some of the other pilots were able to climb higher than forecast (10K ft) I never got much higher than 8600 feet, but I kept going, risking a long hike out to the highway if I sunk out. I scratched along the ridge quite low for the entire second hour of the flight, half expecting that I would be hiking through the sagebrush to the highway and so making sure I scoped the possible routes I'd take if I found myself on the ground.

When you're working hard just to stay in the air it's easy to forget this is a race. It's not just getting to the goal, but getting there first. The two gliders behind (and above) me had already left the lift of the mountains and set out on glide to Benton. I needed to put the pedal to the metal which, in paragliding, means using a foot actuated system to decrease the angle of attack and increase airspeed. As I pushed out on the speed bar, the cord and pulley system that acts as the accelerator, it broke with a loud pop. The frayed end of the cord dangled in the breeze. I swore. Loudly.

Unfortunately, I had stayed on the ridge a little farther than I should have. This tactical error cost me as it made my final glide out a little too far across the wind, while the other two closest competitors were enjoying the benefit of a faster downwind glide. I coasted into goal.

Of around 35 pilots who launched 11 made it to Benton. I was 8th.

Oh, and I wore my Transition Jacket and PowerStretch gloves from Mountain Hardwear. Good stuff.

See results of the race with Google Earth animations.