The forecast was calling for a short window between systems so we took a chance and went out to Woodside, arriving on launch just before noon. It was sunny with nice cu's, but we could see that the shade was going to hit within the hour (since we had just driven through it on the way from Vancouver) so we decided to fly right away.
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Some of the desperadoes getting ready to launch into the last blue hole of the day.
It looks very black to the west! |
The air was very nice and "fat", with lots of bald eagles out enjoying the sun and light winds. Cloudbase was around 1000m and some of the thermals were suprisingly strong for early October...2m/s in some places. We were able to fly around for an hour before the shade hit, at which point things shut down quite quickly.
As I was landing in Riverside another wave of pilots was just arriving and I believe they got extended sled rides. Later in the afternoon I went back up to drive a vehicle down, and the last wave of pilots was just getting ready to take advantage of a small blue hole that was approaching...behind it was a wall of black that we couldn't see beyond. We weren't sure if it was rain or not, but the air was certainly "moist" and everything west of Sumas Mountain was obscured.
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| Final blue hole of the day before it shut down for good. |
The window we had at noon seemed to be the best one of the day so we lucked out with the timing. This time of year the flying is so hit-n-miss!
