Pemberton

Greg and I arrived at the Pemberton LZ at 1pm, just in time for the 1:15pm loads up to launch (there were about 20 pilots hanging out). People had been launching and scratching for several hours already, but only now were starting to stay up.

Up on launch nice cycles, no Whistler Express, and winds up high were NE. The first bunch of launchers (2:30pm) opted to get up on the Dome, but when I launched it wasn't working, so I went for the tried-and-true rock faces to the southwest. Eventually made my way up to the antennas, and once at ridge height the full force of the NE winds hit, and it was going up everywhere (thermals on the SW side, and ridge lift on the NE side).

Greg had launched earlier and was already on his way to the gap (we had planned to do the milkrun, with a possible top-landing at Copper Mountain). So I got up quickly and then on my way to the gap too, all the thermals were pushing us back into the Pemberton Valley so you had lots of clearance when up high. Greg crossed the gap pretty high and connected to the clouds on the other side, I crossed a bit lower and had to scratch my way back up to cloudbase. Onwards to Copper and Greg top-landed at the old mine entrance while I got my highest of the day, 2700m and change.

I opted not to top-land so as to have 1 OR flight rather than 2xOD flights. Onwards to Hurley and then turned around to find a couple other pilots had joined us. By this time it was 4:30pm and the clouds were dissipating, so we boogied it back to launch and people were still playing around down there. Decided to add a few more km's to the flight by crossing the valley to Satellite Hill and played over there for a bit (too late to get up over the Glacier though). Back at the LZ at 6pm it was nil winds so people were landing every which way.

A perfect day: sunny and warm, nice Q's, beautiful scenery, and enough lift to make things easy once you were up high. Just love Pemberton! 3:07h airtime, 2712m max altitude.