Bridal Falls July 13

While Alex and Brett H were hiking and flying from Mt. St. Benedict, I decided to hike up Bridal and meet them there.  Lots of fellow hikers on the road up, and the salmon berries have been replaced with thimble berries!

Up on launch it was nice cycles, and after drying off I took off and immediately beamed out to the saddle area.  Decided to fly east first, with Tom Gregg following me, and we climbed up to cloudbase around 1800m in front of Cheam, at which point we parted ways as I continued east to the Lakes.

There was quite a bit of west wind already (it was forecast to be windy from the west) so I didn't want to go far east, so I turned around and back to launch, where there were a bunch of pilots "knob-bobbing".  Onwards to Elk Mountain and on the way I saw a few hikers on the Gloria lookout, and some pilots already returning from Elk.  Strangely enough, it was less windy at Gloria/Elk that it was at the Lakes, despite the nearby Chilliwack Valley being a wind-funnel, so the going was actually easier than I thought.

Now Alex and I had planned to topland at Upper Bridal to do some maintenance, and invited some other pilots to join us, but it was quite strong toplanding conditions on Upper Bridal.  Alex and I were the only ones to make it in.  The trees on the "usual" toplanding approach to the east are getting quite high, and the trees below launch will be a problem in a few years too.  But launch itself is still quite usable and bare dirt and rocks for the most part.

Upper Bridal launch.

After a hour or so of maintenance we relaunched and it was still quite strong flying conditions and easy to stay up, but very smooth out in the Fraser Valley.  All in all a very nice day with a nice hike and a nice toplanding!