Woodside March 23

Crossing the powerline valley to St. Benedict.

Another cold but excellent XC day, although it was a late start.  With the lack of wind and high base a bunch of us were thinking of doing the fabled Woodside-Hope-and-return flight, with Martin H having to come through on his promise of a case of beer for the first PG pilot to do this (if a group does it all at the same time, do we all get cases of beer?...could turn expensive Martin!).  But alas it was initially inverted which meant we were not really able to get going until later (2pm-ish) which cost us a couple of usable hours.  And even then we had to work to get high at the beginning...it wasn't a cakewalk like other days.

Dropping out in Norrish creek on the way back to Woodside.

But there was XC all over the place today...I and a bunch of others went west to Big Nick, Dewdney, Haztic Lake, and Mt. St. Benedict, while others flew over the back to Bear, Ludwig, and Bridal.  The clouds were dropping out a bit on the Bridal side and a big one started dropping out behind Benedict...I got snowed on as I tagged Benedict and then got the hell out of there and back to the sun.  Big shade from that same cloud shaded out the entire range from Big Nick back to Sasquatch, so I had to run to Harrison knob to find sun (it didn't work), landed at Eagle Ranch after getting back to Woodside a bit too low to re-climb back out.

Deroche and Sasquatch in shade...run for the sun!

Alex and Rob, after tagging Big Nick and Dewdney, instead of heading to St. Benedict with me, turned around and flew back to Woody in time to do the Woody-Bridal jump, although they didn't make it back to Woodside proper, landing at Harvest Market and Agassiz respectively.  Al chose to land at his property in the Sylvester valley after flying the north side of Deroche and Big Nick, coming out of Norrish creek over the water treatment plant back to the Fraser Valley.  Saw Miguel, Tom Chromy, and Matt J. at Dewdney as well so there was plenty of XC action going on.  We even had a rare Alan-Dickey-at-Woodside sighting, going XC from Woodside to Big Nick and then return.  Spring is here!