Grouse Mountain Oct. 16

Had a nice flight at Grouse today.  Nice cu's but a bit shredded-looking, not as good-looking as yesterday's.  On the way up in the gondola I saw Fedja and Peter Graf already flying but I had the launch area to myself.

Even though there were cu's overhead it was tough to stay high...I was able to maintain indefinitely around 600-700m, although Peter mentioned getting to 900m earlier in the day.  Best lift was around the Cut, and nada over the gondola cliffs.

I ended up with about 50 minutes and Fedja and Peter had over an hour.  Nothing epic, just nice to fly some autumn air and watch the ships and planes in the harbour.  Cold though...time to switch to winter mittens soon!

Woodside Oct. 2

The forecast wasn't looking too great (stable-ish), but it looked like it would be worse on Sunday so I went out.  Cloudy skies clearing up and very light winds, and when I arrived at Woodside Dennis was just getting in the air after cloudbase finally rose high enough.

On launch it was crowded with 5 HGs and a pile of PG pilots setting up, and the cycles were initially very cross from the south, enough so that some pilots were actually laying out and launching that direction.  In the air it was nice though, lightly soarable and soft fluffy clouds to play with that rose as the afternoon went on.  By the end of the day I was able to get to over 1000m before it completely dried out and the lift died as the sun set.  2h:43 airtime.  I was pleasantly surprised...I thought it would be a rather lame day but it turned out much nicer than forecast!