Deadman's Savona July 21

Another road trip, this time to the Savona/Cache Creek area, for some desert and heat!

This area is smoking hot and dry this time of year, so you have to be careful about where you park (not on dry grass, for example), and we are always looking for swimming spots.  Launch was its usual dry spot, and we came upon the Sea-to-Sky Paragliding school on launch with some students.  And over on the HG launch we could see a few hang gliders set up.

The forecast was for north wind up high, switching to east, and in the air it was definitely north!  It was scrubbing down from the Deadman Valley, making the thermals hard to track, and they were very spotty and broken up.  It took a very long time to get high enough to push north, and there was lots of sink in between the lift.

Sunset at Deadman PG launch.

To the north of launch are several small lakes up on the plateau so that's where I spent most of my time, since I had decided I didn't like the conditions enough to want to go XC.  But I was able to get to 2900m (cloudbase seemed to be maybe another 100m higher) and keep an eye on Simon and Alex.  Several times I considered toplanding in the upper meadow, but with the north wind (actually going east as the afternoon went on) and the slopiness of the meadow, I wasn't sure it would be an especially good idea and decided to eventually land at the International LZ and the car.

The International was very active with moderate east wind and the S2S folks were over at the Dump doing kiting and waiting for the east wind to increase enough to fly.  Off to pick up Simon and Alex, and then it was time for a swim since the temperature was near 35C!