woodstock 1/16

[pink_albatross]

Arrived at Woodstock to see Gary and Tom with almost set up HG.
Pulled out my PG, then hiked the dogs back to the truck at the back gate. Don't know why the road was still closed. There was no significant snow and it was so dry that any melting could not have possibly ended up in ice at night. But there it was.

Got a ride back to launch on a Harley Guy went around the barrier and wanted to see some HG launch. He got to see Tom launch into a nice cycle. Gary passed on the cycle to not interfere with Tom trying to get up. And then it got so light, that Gary backed off of launch. After lending me his balaclava (Gary, send me your address, so I can mail it back!) and setting up my wing at least three times (thanks soooo much!) my forward take off finally worked. Had to work the light air really hard to finally get over the ridge. Tom didn't seem to have had the problems and was playing with 4 and at times 6 eagles who surrounded him closely. I've never seen anything like it. I think they flew with him the whole time he was up, except for maybe the last 10 minutes. He said they were all immature, except for one mature one.

After bobbling around ridge level for 30 minutes, I finally caught one last thermal that took me to about 1000 over. It was coooold up there and four of my fingers refused to move. No bar mitts on PG... Had to come down and then couldn't get up. Tom and I landed in the bridge field about the same time. Air was dead when i landed and instead of thinking "slow down, pre-stall, FLARE!" i thought "darn it... i hate landing in nil wind. i am going to muff this right in front of Tom", and so I did. My belly flop into the corn field was the epitome of style, if I say so myself ;-}

We missed Hugh's flight, who had hiked up the front with his spanking new Airwave PG. He got a sled, but was happy to have had a good take off (running reverse - his specialty), happy to have flown at all and on his new wing at that.

Hiked up the front with Tom, over the hill and to our cars at the back gate. Hiked the dogs until dark and met Hugh at a great sushi place in Front Royal, where sundays you get all you can eat sushi.

Gary, despite earning oodles of karma points, never did get to fly. It just never turned back on. What a weird forecast. And there I thought it might be blown out for PG. Apart from Gary not getting to fly, it was a surprisingly good day! Yee haw

-- ellis

[XCanytime]

The road to Woodstock closes because of the snow on the front (NW facing) side of the mountain, where hardly any sun shines during the winter. It only takes a dusting of snow on the front side for them to close the road, no matter what is on the back side. The back side is always clear because it faces SE and gets sun nearly all day long. Hiking up the back side of the mountain .7 miles from the gate to the apex of the mountain is definitely more exercise than taking a few hops off of the 120' hill at Smithsburg. Gary, I feel for ya buddy. Bacil

[XCanytime]

The Woodstock Gradient Effect generally is much more pronounced in the winter than any other time of year. Countless times I have gone to the Pulpit early, found it cranking already at 10A, and hit the road to Woodstock. 2 hours later I would arrive to zero winds at Woodstock. I did this just two weekends ago, detouring Carlos and Ward from the Pulpit to Woodstock, when I was at launch by 10A and it sounded just like when we were there yesterday afternoon. It's starting to look like a constant with the abundance of bald eagles seen at launch in the past few months by Mark C, Tom, and myself. Something more to look forward to when flying Woodstock. Bacil