Date: August 30th, 2006
A big cold front is rolling through Sun Valley along with the usual high winds, which put a stop to the meet for the last two days. That’s OK, as it was time for another climbing day–we’ve had three days off from climbing to let our skin heal. We gathered up a good posse of grounded pilots and friends and went back into the lava tube yesterday. It’s still hard to believe there’s a good climbing area out there in the flat sage brush, but the tube again delivered a lot of desperate pumped climbing and shredded skin. I managed to onsight the remaining 5.12 I hadn’t done thanks to some good crowd particpation—I kept blindly dynoing over a lip to a hidden hold, guided by the yells from the crew “An inch higher!” “An inch right!” “No, you halfwit, the OTHER right!” It was comedy. A lively debate ensued about whether an onsight still counted as such with people yelling hold locations to me–none of the crowd had done the route or seen anyone on it, so they couldn’t exactly give me beta, but on the other hand it wasn’t entirely my skills that got me up it… The debate was solved with beer, I forget how, but that sure was a fun climb, made more so by the group participation. We all shredded our skin to the point where it was impossile to hang onto the sharp basalt for even one more route. I did battle with the tube’s hardest established line and got reasonably far on the on-sight before pitching off, a great pump. Lots of fun in a hole in the ground. It’s still blowing a hoolie today, so we’re going hiking, BASE jumping (not me, I’m done with it), working, etc.
There are some good photos of the PG meet from John Clifford up here, as well as results here. I’m back in a reasonable 9th place and only 230 points out of first after two days, but I know the pace is going to be aggressive the next flying day, a lot of the top pilots failed to make goal last task day and will be in full starving dog-pack mood when we get to fly. The complaint over the conditions on the last task day was resolved, primarily by the big smiles of everyone who got out on course and found the conditions big but definitely reasonable. I have no idea why it was that windy on launch, it was one of the best days of mountain flying I’ve ever had, just a bit weird off of launch. I’m hoping for three more big tasks, but if we can just get two more flown after the front passes I’d be happy. We need to fly tomorrow or we’ll have to go climbing again, it sure does suck to be here in Idaho, grin…
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 29th, 2006
Sun Valley, site of one this year’s US paragliding Nationals, is one of those ultra-rich resort towns in an incredible place. Kim and I arrived a couple of days early to fly, but the first day was too windy so we went for a hike and then headed down south to a very unusual climbing area–a lava tube. There are no mountains around the lava tube, just a huge flat sage brush plain for as far as the eye can see. We couldn’t believe there was climbing there, it was odd to walk through the sage and find a pit in the ground. The climbing was super-steep thuggery out the side of the pit, lots of fun. We had a good crew and a good session, only leaving at sunset with lots of ripped skin and sore muscles. I was psyched to send two hard routes (for me), I’m starting to climb decently again and it’s a lot of fun.
Day one of the nationals was fantastic, about a 100K task north over the mountains. I was slightly in front of the field as neared about the 15K mark, and had to choose between taking the line with clouds or staying close to the road. I went for a line directly over the heart of the Sawtooths with Len, and the next two hours were simply stunning flying from cloud to cloud with nothing but alpine lakes and big granite cliffs below us. Unfortunately our line was less direct and we ended up being a bit slower to goal, but just flying over such stunning alpine terrain was absolutely worth it. Len landed a bit short of goal, but I was paranoid about my final glide and worked a last thermal higher than I needed to before going on glide and made it in a bit late but with tons of altitude. I’d rate the flight along the Sawtooths one of the top ten flights of my life–I saw a hundred places that I need to visit, and I like flying deep in the mountains. It would have been a very full day walk out if we hadn’t found the next thermal, but I was loving the terrain and wouldn’t really have minded a nice walk out. Len and I never got low, and of course my oxygen system promptly stopped working so I spent a lot of the day over 15,000 and had a hypoxia headache at the end of the day. Well worth it.
Day two brought an even longer task–125K to the west and north. Launch conditions were a bit erratic and windy, but I watched the pilots in the air and it looked OK so I launched. Unfortunately I just couldn’t connect with a good climb for the next 30 minutes. I was wondering why some pilots weren’t launching as it was a bit windy but not too bad, I think the combination of less than stellar launch conditions and the prospect of a long task preyed on peopele’s minds. Flying is mental, it’s always a trick to correctly match one’s perception of the conditions with the reality. I know conditions over launch were reasonable as I had to take a pee, so if the glider flew fine for a few minutes without input then it wasn’t that whacky.
On course it was tricky as the tops of the climbs weren’t that high, and we struggled a bit to get established after crossing the first valley. The first turnpoint took down most of the lead gaggle, and I came in just as they were dirting. I had one of those stupid lucky thermals low and got out with Brian and Dean, then went on one of the most entertaining flights I’ve had in a long time. We cut the corner between the roads, and were, as they say around here, “deep.” The terrain was sun-blasted sage and rolling hills so landing would have been OK, but we were for sure a 20K walk from any reasonable road. Even at 16,000 we would have had a long walk… But there was a good cloud street, so deep we went, and the clouds worked perfectly. About 20km from goal I got low on a after a valley cross, and for some reason it just didn’t work despite being perfectly west facing… I realized as I sunk lower and lower that I didn’t have a glide out of the bowl I was in, but it was possible to slope-land if I had to. It was frustrating to watch Brian and Dean fly away at base, I’m not sure if I was tired or just had a bit of bad luck. In the end I grovelled out and made it to goal for the longest comp task I’d ever flown, and possibly in US paragliding history. Pretty cool, about 12 people made it in, with Abby, who flew most of the task by himself, winning the day. Nice one Abby!
Unfortunately there was a formal complaint about the launch conditions, and an effort to get the day cancelled. Conditions were a bit windy and messy, but it was far safer yesterday on the Baldy launch than it normally is at other “big” sites such as Chelan. You had to wait for a reasonable cycle to launch in, but there wasn’t much chaos once in the air–I’d say the air over launch was mellower than it had been the first day, but the perception on the ground was that it was bad so about 30 people didn’t launch. I respect their decision, but the complaint was a bit much given that the air was fine. Each of the previous two days of flying had brough at least one reserve ride and injury, yesterday was totally safe, so I think the people who didn’t fly made a good decision for them. I’m not sure Sun Valley is the best place for a non-selective paragliding competition–it’s fine for those who enjoy flying “deep” and are used to high-altitude big-air flying, but it’s full-on flying for sure. In the end each paragliding day, whether in a competition or not, is up to individual pilots to evaluate. Those who didn’t fly yesterday lower the potential points for the day, so that’s a legitmate form of saying, “Conditions were more than I wanted to do battle with.”
Today is blown out, so we’re going back to the lava tubes for another afternoon of skin shredding action!
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 17th, 2006
I’m a news junkie, and today the habit is getting fed with some very interesting news.
First up, a US Federal Judge has ruled that President Bush’s NSA surveillance program is unconstitutional, and in even simpler language, flat-out illegal. This is a slight sign of sanity from the US, and I am actually rejoicing in the news. Bush has long held himself above the law, aruging he can do whatever the hell he wants with the pretext of fighting terrorism. I read a lot about his eavesdropping program and it seemed clearly illegal, but I had about given up on the US ever reigning the Bush adminstration in. Well, it doesn’t get much clearer than the judge’s words: The program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.” Hell yeah! Finally it’s clear that actual freedom counts for something in the US, and that turning into a police state to fight terrorism is no victory for actual freedom. It’s time to impeach George Bush, a fitting end to the worst presidency in US history.
Second, I lived down in Boulder when a little girl named Jon Benet Ramsey was murdered. It was huge mainstream news and tabloid fodder for years. We all speculated about the case–I used to ride my bike by the house regularly on the way up to the mountains, it was beyond weird. Today some psycho teaching school in Thailand confessed to the murder. It all seems a bit weird to me and I’m curious what actually happens in the long run, but if true this confession answers some questions and removes the huge cloud of suspicion that had lingered over the heads of her parents.
Now it’s time to go climbing, but the net is pretty damn interesting this morning.
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 15th, 2006
I’ve done several stellarly pointless things lately. The first involved a bouldering session up an obscure drainage. It wasn’t Bishop, it wasn’t Joe’s Valley, but it was a super fun afternoon. My bud has created terraced landings with engineering skills that would have make any red-blooded man grin. Perhaps one day archaeologists will spot the terraces and wonder about the obscure religious rituals practiced by early twenty-first century Bow Valley residents…
Paragliding yesterday was also really, really pointless. On launch I loaded a sleeping bag, food for two days, insect repellant, maps of the entire Rockies for 300K in every direction and a big bag of food into my paragliding harness. Perfect cumulus clouds filled the sky, it looked epic, and I planned to go big. There are a couple of deep wilderness flights I’ve wanted to try, the kind where you could spend a couple of days walking out if you couldn’t find the next thermal and went down deep in the range. This year has been frustrating for big flights at Golden, but finally base was high and it looked ON. I launched and spent the next hour scratching 20 feet over the trees before landing in the normal LZ with all my gear. I tried again later that day and sunk out again, the first time I’ve ever failed to get up reasonably high when launching mid-day from Golden. I’m pretty goal oriented–pick a mission that looks cool, do it. Yesterday no mission was accomplished, in fact it was the least rad paragliding I’ve done in years, and it was super fun. We did handstands in the LZ and threw the ball for Chili until she and we collapsed. Somewhere in there is a metaphor–Chili has chased the ball thousands of times but still goes at it with total abandon and joy. I’ve sat in LZs around the world and still like it. Both activities are pointless, but it’s the sheer fun of doing them that makes them worthwhile. Someone made the point that a lot of the world is a mess, and that we’re incredibly lucky to have days where we can do exactly what we want all damn day. Doing something pointless is the finest expression of luxury and freedom that I know.
So here’s to doing pointless stuff, whatever it is.
wg
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 11th, 2006
This page has all the scores, plus some notes and links to various commentary and some photos.
Thanks to everyone who flew in the Willi, both HG and PG pilots, it was a lot of fun.
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 9th, 2006
I’ve been in Golden running the Race Willi Paragliding competition, a five-day event held in conjunction with the Willi XC event. It’s been a really fun five days, with four good competition days. Right now we’re downloading the GPS tracks and scoring the last day, I’ll put up a link when it’s all done. I haven’t run a meet in almost 10 years, this one was generally a pleasure thanks to the collective effort. Some competitions are high-stress, this one followed the Willi XC style of “Get it done, have fun, fly safe.” Randy Parkin has run the Willi XC for the last few years, and as usual he cooked, flew, and generally kept things happening. Without the Willi XC the Race Willi would never have happened, nor been half as much fun. Where else can you get breakfast every morning, a couple of free dinners and two comps for under $100? Bill Hughes did all the scoring, Kim was co “meet head,” it all worked out. We hope to run it next year, it was a good experience thanks to all the help we had frome everyone here.
-wg
Posted in: Blog
Date: August 2nd, 2006
OK, this is a disgression from the normal mountain sports action–I really enjoyed watching the Tour de France this year. I don’t even own a road bike anymore, I just like watching the Tour. It was a real race this year for the first time I’ve watched it, with many leader changes, lots of drama, everything a great sporting event should be. Watching Floyd Landis was pretty damn entertaining, especially after Lance Armstrong’s “I am the ice man” routine. Floyd has a bit of country in him, a lot of the geeky bike guy, and a bit of everyman. His collapse and recovery in the Tour was spectacular and heart-warming, which makes the doping results all the more maddening. It’s like getting done wrong by a friend–we all expect to get worked by used car salesmen so it’s OK, but when a bud does you wrong it feels worse. I cheered for Floyd, and the bastard let me down. “Wait!”, says Floyd, “the Tour is making a mistake!” Well, if he didn’t cheat and is actually innocent then the Tour de France is a joke–it’s either one or the other, and both smell like the ass-end of a rhino. Today the media is reporting that the testosterone found in Floyd isn’t the same type his body produces, and that he was almost three times over the limit. If this were a drunk driving case he would have been way too drunk to open the door, never mind drive. It’s not a borderline case anymore, so either Floyd was doped to his eyebrows or the Tour de France is making a horrendous mistake. Either way the Tour sucks. Maybe it’s time to stop the charade of heart-warming victories and admit road racing is like body-building on 26-inch wheels. “Take all the drugs you want, let’s see who can mix the right cocktail for today’s stage! See a man ride with blood like honey from all the EPO! See quads explode on live TV!”
Tyler Hamilton says he’s innocent also. Either these guys are con artists who have had their scams exposed, or drug testing is ridiculous. Either “truth” stinks.
We will now resume the mountain sports commentary…
Workouts:
I’ve been climbing a ton, Yoga, even starting to run again. For the last three weeks I’ve battled this sinus infection, it’s just now totally clearing out. I’d forgotten what it was like to smell anything.
Will Gadd, drug-free but revved well past the sane limit on Red Bull.
Posted in: Blog
