Potato Hill XC League 2024-06-08

Selected entry from my paragliding logbook

Day 1

I arrived to camp late Friday night and did a workout with kettlebells. I couldn’t sleep to save my life because of the noise in the campground at Lett’s lake. I’d like to do a better job of sleeping before flying tasks in general.

No cell service at camp, but I looked at weather the morning of the first task. Potato is a lee side site, with winds prevailing from the West mixing with valley and anabatic winds from the East. Saturday I saw a convergence line setting up between the West winds over the back and the East winds from the valley, starting far West of launch near the ground and rising to the east with altitude. HRRR predicted the winds to shift from the east to west at launch around 1:00 p.m., so I wanted to be one of the first off the hill.

There are two mountains near Potato launch, Snow and St John, which both rise to around 2000m. From talking with folks I learned that the way to get out from potato to the valley was to get very high off of Snow, glide to St. John then get high off of St. John.

My goal, as it’s been for all of these tasks so far this year, was to be one of the first off the hill, and one of the last to land. On Saturday, since it was a new site to me, I decided to wait for another pilot of two to go first.

On launch we had high clouds blocking the Sun and the day didn’t turn on until around 11:45. The task for the day was to go to Snow, come back to launch, tag a waypoint in the valley directly to the east, then a waypoint to the north.

Once I saw cycles coming in around 5 minutes apart, I got my stuff ready, and timed a cycle right off of launch. I followed the ridge down from the left of launch and connected with a thermal maybe 500 ft from launch. I was the third one in the air.

After following the gaggle and scratching to Snow, back to launch, then back to Snow, I had a rough time climbing out of Snow in a lee side thermal to get high enough to glide out. There was a single climb there and it was determined to make my life miserable. Once I had the altitude, I went on glide to St. John, found a climb out front a little, and worked my way up to the top of the mountain.

I spent 20 or 30 minutes patiently on top of St John looking at clouds to the West. I learned in retrospect that I was the only one to get up to the top, and that I was nearly 2,500 ft above everyone else when I eventually left to fly to the east.

As I went to the east, I paid attention to my ground speed should try to figure out where the convergence line was for the trip North. Unfortunately the convergence line was to the west of the only viable terrain, a low ridge. I chose to connect with the low ridge instead.

I followed the ridge, climbing in whatever I could, and got a nice long drifty climb about in the middle of it. I continued on glide North, hoping to find one final climb to get me to goal. Unfortunately that didn’t materialize, and I landed about 2 miles short of goal.

Everyone else, except for Pam Kinnard, Alex Honda, Jug, and Doug Anawalt had bombed out much earlier.

In the evening, I went on a run and then gave Muuo a fishing lesson. From my prior experience the night before, I decided to leave the campsite and I slept in a pull off on a NFS road.

Day 2

The next day was nearly similar conditions, but without the high clouds. The task for the day had a similar beginning to Day 1, but once in the valley, the task went North for a short while and turned around to the south.

Once again I was off the hill very early, right after Muuo who launched first. Muuo had a tough go with it. He had turned to the right after launch, where there were no clear triggers. I waited for a really strong cycle, then went to the ridge to the left, and connected with a climb that took me up 700 m.

Once in the air, the day was quite similar to Saturday. Getting up at Snow however was significantly more difficult. I ended up needing to very, very tightly core a lee side climb that was ratty as all hell. Once I got up though, I was able to transition to St John, where the air improved.

I climbed up the East side ridge of St John, then made the decision to try to work my way around the top of the mountain to the west side, below where I had found the best climb the day before. I thought that the winds at the top would be from the West, giving me a nice glide back to the east around the mountain if I failed.

After making it most of the way around the mountain and not finding the climb, I found instead that the winds were venturi-ing through the canyon from the East. I had a terrifying time dolphin flying along terrain trying to get back out. Thankfully I got a few lucky climbs, and I was able to return at nearly the same elevation to where I had first connected with the mountain. From there I followed the same general path as I had today before and worked my way to the top, with plenty of altitude over the top. In the time I spent faffing around, the winds had switched from East to West around 400 m off the top.

I glided out to the valley with tons of elevation, and a nice 20 kmh tailwind from the West. I made it to the northern point without a climb, then found a few bubbles to get me 3-400 m up on the way south. I was nearly about to land when I went for the only possible trigger I could see in a field, a a tiny bump with trees on the downwind side. I found a light climb here which led me to a slightly stronger but still light climb that took me back to a comfortable altitude.

At this point my instrument said goal was on a 6:1 glide, so I pushed into the headwind. This was not the right move, and I got nailed to the ground. I tagged ESS, but turned and landed 2 km short of goal. Goal was on the other side of a river, and I didn’t want to chance it.

I took fifth on Saturday and third on Sunday!