Canada Day at Grouse Mountain

The snow makes launching really nice.

Canada Day which means it's time to fly Grouse!

Up on launch there is still tonnes of snow, which makes the launching super-nice...a huge area to lay out on with no mud or sticks, and the snow also covers the boulders so you can lay out way to the east if you wanted.

Eye of the Wind

In the air it was feeling east; cloudbase was about 1600m.  We'd get bands of sun and use this to get high.  At one point it got very shady and I had to go into "survival mode", hanging out over the west cliffs and their residual heat until the band of shade passed and the sun reappeared.  I stayed in the air for about 1h:15min before heading out to land.

Looking out over the city.

On the way out to the LZ we had Whistler Air fly by us in their seaplanes; they were taking the shortcut from Whistler to Vancouver Harbour via the Capilano valley and popped out right at our altitude.  I saw the first one (Whistler Air sports bright yellow on their aircraft) below me but the second one was right behind and higher, so I was able to wave to the pilot as he flew by (after doing a hard spiral to show him where I was).

Dave Merrick being patriotic.

 The North Shore Paragliding tandem guys were operating in full force today; they expect this coming week to be busy for them.  Lots of happy tandem passengers in the LZ this afternoon!