Three years in a row soarable at the Pulpit on New Years Day.? Arrived around 10A to find Shawn Ray set up and Cragin Shelton just arrived.? Conditions were 8 to 12 MPH straight in and completely overcast skies.? Set up and waited for it to throttle up a little more.? Kelvin and tandem passenger showed up, along with Ashley Groves and Marc Fink.? By 11A Kelvin registered peaks of 15 MPH on the ramp, so I launched.? Spent a half hour in relatively smooth air between 200' to 400' over.? Got to see Kelvin and his tandem do an extendo.? After the half hour a flush cycle hit, and there I was on the deck again.? About this time Ashley joined me, and we shared a thermal from the deck to 300' over.? Cragin Shelton joined us on the ridge, and slowly sank for a 15+ minute extendo.? Shawn Ray was the next pilot to join us cruising up and down the ridge from 100' to 300' over.? I kept flying over launch and hollerin' for the pilots below to come on up and join us since I thought that things would end up shutting down completely.? Looked like Matthew and Sparky heeded the call in their paragliders, as well as Mark Cavanaugh in his U2.? Fun sharing some lift by launch with Sparky in his paraglider.? After two hours and a runny nose due to the cold, I left the still soarable ridge and landed.? Looked up as I broke down and saw a glider pretty high near the Rt. 16 cut.? Must have been a Falcon
.? Shawn drove down my truck.? Thanks Shawn.? Back at launch it was pretty light and the sky started finally clearing.? The wind died down and went south, but not before Marc Fink and Ashley Groves were able to do the first tandem, as Sparky noted, paraglider flight at the Pulpit, with a full frontal inflation.? Gary Smith broke out a bottle of bubbly discovered left over from the previous night's celebration, and with a few donated cups from the bar, around 7 of us toasted the new year and a good day's flying.? A fitting end to the day's activities.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Bacil
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