A-Shift and Big Wave

Not Engine 41, Truck 41 and certainly not Medic 41; Felipe and I selected the Duo Discus "Mike-Golf" for riding big mountain wave. We towed to East Park Resevoir and climbed high in what was likely secondary or tertiary wave off the Mendos.

I pushed towards the Mendos but never caught the primary wave, only an awesome view of sun beaming upon the mountains.
A cold front was advancing and at 16,500' MSL; wind WSW at 50+ KTS, air temp 14 F. Snow showers moved in, obscured our view and with vents open the cockpit became a giant snow globe. Time to race South away from the front.
We ran in and out of wave all the way down to Lake Berryessa where we turned the Towers.
Over the ridge to The Cache Creek Casino and Golf Course.
Back North surfing good wave off Capay Valley's Western ridge until we hit the Rumsey Gap.

North over the foothills to the 20 Gap and a fast final glide to Williams. A three hour flight is condensed into a one minute video of 41 A-shift surfing the Northern California sky.

High Pressure Option "B"

This particularly nice April day brought Gerry, Ian, Robert, Mike, Bob and myself to Diablo to battle high pressure. With warm ground fighting a stable atmosphere two logical strategies exist off the Tower Launch. Head straight for Eagle Peak and arrive as high as possible or turn right off launch and try to bench up Ransom Peak. With mediocre success displayed by others I chose option "B" as I pulled below Bob who made it work.

I scratched, gained, lost and played. Since I had chosen this option I was determined and went down the ridge stopping at everything for a couple hundred up here and down over there.
Working the upper mountain was fun but put me below Eagle as I arrived. The steep West slope put up the usual fight with strong, rough cores making for exciting circles.
I managed to fall out of a tight core and after a solid turn in sink I scrapped through and out of Mitchell Canyon pretty low.
I worked the lower hills and benched up Mitchell Rock. The thermals were weak, but smooth and relaxing.
The crowd soared Eagle Peak well and reported it's typical high pressure rock and roll. We all landed at Mitchell LZ where Teri and Janet faithfully arrived. Although I don't know if option "A" would have resulted in a longer flight I thoroughly enjoyed my half hour on this gorgeous spring day scratching upper and lower Mount Diablo.

Big Mountain Air

With wind blown clouds over the Mendocino Range, energy was in the sky, so I decided to take a mountain tow aboard "Juliet Hotel." Close to the mountains the air became rough and we hit widespread sink, actually loosing altitude on tow over a seven mile stretch. My nose is pointed towards Snow Mountain but our ground track is crabbed towards Goat which is out of the frame to the left despite an 80 Knot tow speed.
As we neared the ridge frequent slack line occurred and I worked to keep in position. At 8000' feet my computer indicated I was below glide slope to WSC at 32 miles out due to 52 knot North-East wind over the ridge. With the strong head wind, big sink and slack line I was so puckered up I made an ultra-conservative release at 10,000' which was one of the highest tows ever out of WSC. I knew I could some day break a gliding record. I then contacted weak wave and climbed high so I could finally take a deep breath and enjoy the spectacular view of the snow covered mountains of Snow and Hull as well as Lett's Lake and Lake Pillsbury.
I reached 13000' above Goat and was frequently flying backwards in this high performance glass ship. I pushed the nose over to 90 KIAS to penetrate and found myself high over Bear Valley in lighter winds and I was able to breath real easy.
With good altitude I pushed North-East into the wind and contacted a weak convergence over the middle of the valley. At Maxwell I hit good lift and spun it up.
With the convergence I pushed a little further upwind and followed HWY 5 with Willows in the distance.
After flying the convergence I took a fun and fast downwind glide to WSC where I found the reason for the convergence as I landed into a light South wind after 4 hours in the big air.

The Front With Texture

Conflicting soaring indicators had me bewildered as I set up at Mount Diablo. A strong cold front was due tonight. A visible marine layer over the North and East Bay hills led to good development south. Tattered Cu would form just above Juniper Launch but also below out in front. A nice SSW wind at 15 would occasionally lull to nothing. Only one way to find out.

After barely ridge soaring Juniper Launch I was off to the South-West Bowl which should collect thermals in this wind direction.
Once up in a small, strong, wind blown core all of Moses Rock Ridge seemed to be semi ridge soarable.
With the lift working only a couple hundred above launch, that is where I decided to play.
...and had fun diving at launch.
I played until my nerves couldn't take the scratching and texture any longer. Out to the 1000 Footer. With a decent South Wind I knew the rotor would be handful. I looked at my straight down tubes and promised to try to keep them that way. I set up high, dove through the rotor into the smooth wind above the hill top for a no stepper, phew.