St Helena 4-9-15

Reavis and I went out and played in the sky.  His father David Gray drove for us.  We were only getting 5500' to 6000' before we headed toward the Geysers Geothermal Plants.

Nice clouds in a bit of convergence lift over the range.  Reavis led out for the first few miles and I caught up to him near the first power plant. 

Great cloudbase and above flying,  we could smell the thermals coming out of the cooling towers. We had a south, south east push meeting a little southwest right on top of the range.

I maxed out at 6560' over Cobb Mt. and got out in front of Reavis as I headed NW up the Mayacamas Range.  Pushed it a little to much and not having enough alt. to work the SW faces I had to bail for the east side. 

Nice clouds but I didn't get much to work and put it on the ground 2 miles short of Lampson Airfield for 24.6 miles in 1hr 23mn.

Reavis hit better lift and stayed on top of the range as the clouds filled in in front of him. Over Cow Mt. past Hwy 20 and into Potter Vly for 49.7 miles.   His best flight ever off St. Helena but just a couple tenths short of a new paragliding record.   Nice flight Reavis.



Here's the pics.

We hooked into one together just before the first powerplant.

Nice Glory shot over the plant.

Snow on Cobb Mt

More Geysers putting out lift. Nice!

Over Cobb Mt. with Mt. Konocti and Clear Lake in distance.

A lot of flying above base on a super fun day and my first XC of 2015.