Higher

Monday, August 22nd at Lookout Mountain. Forecast was for N winds at 11MPH. We're in the midst of a little draught which, coupled with some Northerly cold fronts rolling in, has been good for the thermal outlook. Arrived in the LZ at about 1:00 and met up with Brandon and James. Conditions up top already looked really good so we hurried up, and once we got there it looked GREAT so we set up right away. For such a nice day, there was only one other pilot.... Steve.

Steve launched first. Great launch but the air looked rough. He was getting his butt handed to him for the first couple of minutes. After that he was approximately 400' over and it seemed to smooth out. He was climbing fast. I launched second, about 10 minutes later, and didn't have nearly the amount of turbulence that Steve got. I quickly ascended in ridge lift and in less than a minute had hooked the first thermal which would take me to about 2k over. James launched right after I did but I was already skying out when he got off. Brandon had to wait through a gusty cycle and couldn't get launched for about 10 minutes.

It was a blustery day. The wind was blowing about 10-20 mph anywhere from NW to NNE depending on your altitude. The thermals were strong. I saw moments of 900 feet per minute and 600 fpm on the averager was the norm. Despite their strength, the thermals didn't have the kind of cohesive cores I would expect. You could climb fast and well for 1500 feet and then it would slow down to 100 fpm. Look around for a bit and you could often find the core again somewhere else. It may be that the thermal drift was snaky because of the varying winds at altitude?

Anyway, once I got up there was no going down. There were clouds everywhere and almost every one of them had lift under them. I got up to about 4k, then 5k. At about 20 minutes into the flight I hooked a nice smooth thermal at about 5k and it carried me up through 6k before it started to peter out. My previous best was 6400' and I really wanted to break it so I clung to that area hoping to reconnect with the core even though the lift had all but gone. I went into a clover leaf search pattern. I hit mighty sink for a moment and was down around 5500' and losing fast.... just as I was running to escape that I hit the core again.... YEE HAAWWWW a nice strong climb about 500 fpm all the way to cloud base at just over 7k!!! I eventually had to run out of it because I was right up in the cloud. There wasn't evidence of cloud suck as the lift got progressively weaker the higher I got... although I was still climbing at an average of 300 fpm when I finally pulled VG and ran for the patch of sun.

It was over an hour before I got below 6k after that. I experienced every kind of thermal there is from light to strong, wide to narrow, smooth to rodeo. It was a kind of thermalling smorgasbord where you never had to be without lift... it was just a matter of finding the good lift pockets in the middle of the pervasive light lift of the day.

Total flight time was about 3 hours. After the first 1h 30m of epic fun things calmed a bit, got smoother, and it became harder to find thermals that would take us above 6k. I would have loved to have flown longer as the day was glassing off and getting smooth by then. Would have been fun to practice wing overs and just enjoy floating around but I was getting fatigued and knew that I should land while I had the energy to do it right. Three hours seems to be my cutoff point. I need to build more flying muscle so I can stay up longer!

There was a bizarre reverse wind gradient in the LZ I had never seen before. I'm guessing there must have been a thermal lifting off? It was quite smooth until about 300', then it got quite turbulent until about 50' and then it was just a strong, consistent head wind right down to the ground. I haven't experienced landing conditions like that since flying the South Side, POM. Easy to pull a no-stepper in that kind of wind, so I did.

All in all it was one of my best flights! I got higher than I've ever been before. I had a huge amount of fun riding those thermals. I can never find words to adequately describe the feelings I have during and after such flights. Imagine a combination of the feeling you get after a profound spiritual experience mixed up with the excitement and adrenaline of a roller coaster ride. Add to that the strong personal feeling of pride and accomplishment that come with excelling at something you've worked hard to perfect and you will begin to understand what it's like for me.

In short, it's good.