The Stratus Finally Broke

I had to wait until the second day of 2010 to fly and it ended up an iffy way to start the new year. Gerry and I drove through a thick layer of clouds to the Towers Launch high atop Mount Diablo. We arrived to find a beautiful but surprisingly unflyable view. The stratus layer extended from the Pacific Ocean to the Sierra Nevada mountains.

After several hours of observation I became anxious enough to believe the National Weather Service. Their updated forecast called for a breaking of the cloud layer at 1400 I wanted to believe them. I somehow managed to convince Gerry to set up beside me. We were rewarded with large holes in the cloud layer to fly through as shown below.

We launched in light cycles and headed north over an obscured Bald Ridge. We flew over a sea of white and circled down through holes in the clouds popping out over Meridian Ridge. Below Gerry appears as the speck in the middle the broken cloud layer.

We then flew around the east side of Eagle and Twin Peaks to a nice light tailwind landing at the Mitchell Canyon LZ, which we managed to pull off (on our feet even) this time. Below Gerry parks his glider at the Oak Tree where we waited for our retrieve.