I hiked the five minutes from the road to launch. The sun was shining. The wind was light. Thermal (rising warm air) cycles were starting. Another great day to go paragliding.
For various reasons, Five Springs, Wyoming is my current favourite paragliding spot. It's small enough to hike up, has a good landing area, no bureaucracy, and I've never seen another person paragliding. (That might be a negative to some people, but it's a plus to me.) At a more popular area, I'm always the newbie. Here, by myself, whatever I do is an adventure. I don't have to feel bad or jealous that I'm not doing as well as everyone else.
I dropped my bag on the slope and looked around. Glancing down, I realized there was a snake about 6 feet away! All I could see was part of the body stretching between two clumps of grass. The big question was whether it was a rattlesnake. I circled it cautiously trying to find the head or tail. I found the tail - no rattle, and the head wasn't the shape of a rattler. I think it's a bull snake, which is cool because I've never found one in the wild before.
I started to wonder if it was dead since it hadn't budged since I arrived, even as I circled it (more closely after determining it wasn't poisonous). But I couldn't see any damage, and the eyes looked alive. I found a stick and when I went to touch it, it slid into motion. It was probably just sluggish after a cold night. And I was rudely interrupting it warming up in the sun.
Of course, it headed for the nearest shelter, which was my gear. I headed it off. At which point I realized I'd better get some photos/video. It was quite long maybe 4 or 5 feet?
With the snake safely out of the way, I got back to getting ready to fly. The thermal cycles were picking up and I figured I could launch fairly soon and have a good chance of staying up. Mid-day here in the semi-desert can be pretty rough so my rule of thumb is to try to be down by noon. Which meant the earlier I could launch, the more time I'd have.
I picked what felt like a good cycle, brought the wing up, turned, and ran off the hill. I started going up right off launch, nice!
But it wasn't a big thermal and a few minutes later the cycle ended and I started to lose altitude. Darn! Did I launch too early? It would be a bummer if I just ended up with a 10 minute flight. I scratched back and forth across the slope, picking up bits and pieces of rising air to slow my descent. I looked back to where Shelley had been watching and she was gone. She figured I was sinking out and headed down to the the landing area to pick me up. Hah! Ye of little faith. I managed to hang on long enough to catch the next cycle and was soon back up over launch. Not long after I found a decent thermal and took it up about 400m over launch. I would have liked a little more height but that seemed to be the top of the lift that I could find.
Now my "gas tank" was full (with altitude), the question was where to go? I decided to have a try at going south to the next two mountain peaks. There were places to land along the highway going over the mountains. I didn't really have enough height but I hoped for more thermals along the way.
First I had to pass the Five Springs canyon - heavily treed, deep, narrow canyons are not where you want to fly! I made it past, but I was getting low, and not having any luck finding lift. Instead I hit some strong sink. That probably meant there was a good thermal somewhere nearby, but I didn't find it. I started to look for a landing spot. I passed low over a car pulled over watching me. There was a flat area for road construction that looked good for landing. I caught a few more little bits of lift to stretch out my glide, but not enough to climb in. Some of that was probably coming from the black asphalt of the highway heating up. Just as I was lining up to land, I found a bit better lift that I managed to turn in. It turned into a slow steady climb. I circled round and round, slowly climbing (less than 1 m/s)
The last few longer flights I've started to get queasy from the turns. Today I was a little more careful where I looked as I turned, and I was fine. Shelley was calling on the radio - she'd lost sight of me and was wondering what was happening. But I didn't want to let go of the controls to answer. The climb was getting stronger and a little rougher. Although the rough air was probably because I wasn't staying in the centre of the thermal and was hitting the turbulence at the edges.
I started to hope that I could get high enough to go "over the back" and land up on the plateau, somewhere near the highway where Shelley could pick me up. When the thermal petered out I was above the ridge, but not by enough to feel comfortable heading back. I decided to follow the ridge back towards launch and hope for another thermal. It was slow heading back against the wind (about 20 km/hr). There was enough lift along the way to maintain my height, but no big thermals. I arrived back still above launch altitude. I could have found another thermal and kept going, but I decided I'd had a good flight and cruised down to land after an hour in the air.
It was a tiny flight by paragliding standards (records are hundreds of kilometres) but I was pretty happy about it. I'd actually gone somewhere, not just hung around the launch area. And I'd had a couple of low saves, which always feels good. I had to make decisions and judgement calls, decide where to go and figure risks. Maybe next time I'll get higher and the wind will be lighter and I'll make it farther.
For various reasons, Five Springs, Wyoming is my current favourite paragliding spot. It's small enough to hike up, has a good landing area, no bureaucracy, and I've never seen another person paragliding. (That might be a negative to some people, but it's a plus to me.) At a more popular area, I'm always the newbie. Here, by myself, whatever I do is an adventure. I don't have to feel bad or jealous that I'm not doing as well as everyone else.
I dropped my bag on the slope and looked around. Glancing down, I realized there was a snake about 6 feet away! All I could see was part of the body stretching between two clumps of grass. The big question was whether it was a rattlesnake. I circled it cautiously trying to find the head or tail. I found the tail - no rattle, and the head wasn't the shape of a rattler. I think it's a bull snake, which is cool because I've never found one in the wild before.
I started to wonder if it was dead since it hadn't budged since I arrived, even as I circled it (more closely after determining it wasn't poisonous). But I couldn't see any damage, and the eyes looked alive. I found a stick and when I went to touch it, it slid into motion. It was probably just sluggish after a cold night. And I was rudely interrupting it warming up in the sun.
Of course, it headed for the nearest shelter, which was my gear. I headed it off. At which point I realized I'd better get some photos/video. It was quite long maybe 4 or 5 feet?
With the snake safely out of the way, I got back to getting ready to fly. The thermal cycles were picking up and I figured I could launch fairly soon and have a good chance of staying up. Mid-day here in the semi-desert can be pretty rough so my rule of thumb is to try to be down by noon. Which meant the earlier I could launch, the more time I'd have.
I picked what felt like a good cycle, brought the wing up, turned, and ran off the hill. I started going up right off launch, nice!
But it wasn't a big thermal and a few minutes later the cycle ended and I started to lose altitude. Darn! Did I launch too early? It would be a bummer if I just ended up with a 10 minute flight. I scratched back and forth across the slope, picking up bits and pieces of rising air to slow my descent. I looked back to where Shelley had been watching and she was gone. She figured I was sinking out and headed down to the the landing area to pick me up. Hah! Ye of little faith. I managed to hang on long enough to catch the next cycle and was soon back up over launch. Not long after I found a decent thermal and took it up about 400m over launch. I would have liked a little more height but that seemed to be the top of the lift that I could find.
Now my "gas tank" was full (with altitude), the question was where to go? I decided to have a try at going south to the next two mountain peaks. There were places to land along the highway going over the mountains. I didn't really have enough height but I hoped for more thermals along the way.
First I had to pass the Five Springs canyon - heavily treed, deep, narrow canyons are not where you want to fly! I made it past, but I was getting low, and not having any luck finding lift. Instead I hit some strong sink. That probably meant there was a good thermal somewhere nearby, but I didn't find it. I started to look for a landing spot. I passed low over a car pulled over watching me. There was a flat area for road construction that looked good for landing. I caught a few more little bits of lift to stretch out my glide, but not enough to climb in. Some of that was probably coming from the black asphalt of the highway heating up. Just as I was lining up to land, I found a bit better lift that I managed to turn in. It turned into a slow steady climb. I circled round and round, slowly climbing (less than 1 m/s)
The last few longer flights I've started to get queasy from the turns. Today I was a little more careful where I looked as I turned, and I was fine. Shelley was calling on the radio - she'd lost sight of me and was wondering what was happening. But I didn't want to let go of the controls to answer. The climb was getting stronger and a little rougher. Although the rough air was probably because I wasn't staying in the centre of the thermal and was hitting the turbulence at the edges.
I started to hope that I could get high enough to go "over the back" and land up on the plateau, somewhere near the highway where Shelley could pick me up. When the thermal petered out I was above the ridge, but not by enough to feel comfortable heading back. I decided to follow the ridge back towards launch and hope for another thermal. It was slow heading back against the wind (about 20 km/hr). There was enough lift along the way to maintain my height, but no big thermals. I arrived back still above launch altitude. I could have found another thermal and kept going, but I decided I'd had a good flight and cruised down to land after an hour in the air.
It was a tiny flight by paragliding standards (records are hundreds of kilometres) but I was pretty happy about it. I'd actually gone somewhere, not just hung around the launch area. And I'd had a couple of low saves, which always feels good. I had to make decisions and judgement calls, decide where to go and figure risks. Maybe next time I'll get higher and the wind will be lighter and I'll make it farther.
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