Capital Reef

 

Dead Horse Point

 

Canyon Land National Park

 

Arches national park

 

Red Rocks Wide Open PG 2022

In terms of competitions my plan was to fly Chelan this year, but I was few hours late to register and could not get a spot. This is insane how fast 130 spots are gone after registration is open these days, you need to be clicking on the button right that second when it opens. Process reminded me of Yosemite campsite booking. Exception is for top 30 or so pilots they can register whenever they wish. Anyway the second comp in US was in Monroe Utah, which is a nice spot and I have been there few times, so I went there without any hesitation. 

There was an excellent weather just before the comp started, but during the comp we was not so lucky with only 3 tasks. My performance was not that good, I took 80th place out of 104, but scenery was certainly worth coming. And during the 3 rainy days I went to mini-trip to Moab and nearby parks, including Arches, Canyon Land, Dead Horse and Capital Reef.

Monroe launch

Monroe LZ

Rainbow on I-15

Storm clouds

Results: https://airtribune.com/red-rocks-wide-open-22/results

Pine to I-5 flight, 31 miles

Good weather forecast, but not many takers, in fact there was only me and Chris Gulden with Fast Eddie driving. It was unclear if we should use north or south launch. We picked south, but wind was still OTB, so we have to drive back to north launch, which also requires a short hike.

Pine north launch

Chris Gulden

I launched at 12:13 climbing right to 12K under the perfect cloud street. Launch was definitely at least 1 hour late, but I was glad to be in the air. Chris joined me shortly after, but we flew separately. Cloud street was south from Lockwood valley following Pine mountain ridge to Alamo mountain to Pyramid lake and probably all the way to Marshall and beyond.

Bad lands and Mt. Frazier in the middle

I made mistake south of the Frazier Mountain by not following solid cloud street curving toward Pyramid lake and trying to use lonely cloud near Hungry valley. Cloud did not work and I encountered strong north wind feeding convergence. My motivation was absence of LZs under the solid cloud street and my general unfamiliarity with terrain in that direction. Another factor was our plan to fly toward Mojave. But in retrospective right choice was staying under the clouds and adjust the plans accordingly.

My LZ in Hungry valley

Chris was more conservative and topped out higher 14K(?) near Frazier Mt., but it did not help him much and he also landed not far from me unable to get into Antelope valley. Crossing I-5 is the trickiest part of the flights from Pine Mt. Basically there are 3 air masses mixing in this spot. Air from the ocean (and Pine Mt.), air from Central valley and air from the desert.

My track:

https://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/3125697