Palomar to Anza flight, 32 miles

Forecast looked pretty decent for Marshall and Laguna. Concern for Marshall was late switch from north and NE wind after San Gorgonio Mountain. There was nice convergence along I-10 and Joshua Tree after that. For Laguna surface wind looked a bit strong in the morning, but supposed to get lighter by afternoon and there was also light head north wind at the top of the life.

I picked Laguna just because it's been a while when I flew there. Wrong choice! it was blowing 20 mph gusting to 25 in a morning and we end up flying Palomar instead. This was my second time flying Palomar and first time going over the back. Dmitry outlined a pretty straight forward plan, go to observatory, get high, move to the back ridge, get high and so on.

Palomar launch

Pilots getting ready at Palomar

We launched around 12:00 into very nice conditions and went to 6K right away, but wind at launch switched to catabatic, so half of our group have to wait 20 min before they joined us. Base get higher and after good climb near launch to 7K we moved up a spine and got another climb to 8K, but instead of going to observatory we all split for unknown reason. Phil and Dmitry went west, other pilots east along the ridge and I just stayed in the same area.

Phil on Zeno

On glide to observatory

There was high clouds moving in, thin enough, but still reducing heating and thermal strength. After one more climb to 9K I glided toward observatory. Wind was around 5-10 mph from the north, so I have to fly up wind. As Dmitry predicted there was good thermal waiting for me at observatory. Climbed to 10.5K and went to north ridge chasing sailplanes. There was at least 3 or 4 of them marking thermals along the ridge. It's always intimidating to stay in the same themal with them. I can even see pilot was flying by and taking picture of me!

Sailplane

There was broken convergence marked by small pieces of clouds to the north, so I just try to stay as close to convergence as possible. It was quite turbulent in some places, got a full frontal at one point, ouch. By the time I came to Anza convergence fell apart and thermals was small and nasty. I did not want to push low into foothills and landed into strong 15 mph west wind.

Thanks a lot to Bill and Carolyn for picking me up, no one else flew OTB.

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/1937941