Willi Muller XC Challenge July 29

Big clouds in the Bugaboos spilling out into the main valley down by Brisco/Radium.
A bit of a change in the weather with possible showers forecast for the afternoon.  For Golden this means possible big clouds with associated OD so I was prepared for a shorter day.  The air definitely had a bit of an "industrial" feeling to it and more south wind vs. other days, so the going was slow.

I was mentally keeping an eye on the clouds as I flew south, also looking back occasionally to see if my return route was being compromised, and prepared to turn around at Spillimacheen in any event.  But the clouds were getting quite big in the Bugaboos and several large cells had formed over Kapristo over the past couple of hours, so I was feeling a bit hemmed in.  Coupled with a bunch of sink at the 49 km mark I opted to turn back and head out to land.  The valley and lower spines were actually working quite well (possibly due to the large clouds over the middle of the valley) and I was able to essentially glide north until just past Parson where I landed for around 66 km.
Also getting big back towards Golden!

Looking up I could see a large cell spreading out around Radium and a cell had just dropped out over Kapristo, so I was pretty glad to be on the ground.  Other pilots with different tolerance levels decided to keep flying and I'm pretty sure there will be some 120-130 km OR flights done today.  In the end nothing happened and the skies pretty much fizzled, but this is Golden where big clouds are to be respected!


The Parson forest fire.  It hasn't gotten much bigger in the past 3 days, fingers crossed!

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