Above the snow!!!

Sometimes, when you fly, it's like you somehow sidestep all the rules and slip into a place not made for people - a wonderful place, breath-takingly beautiful, sometimes scary, a place run on laws you can't see and only dimly sense. No visit is the same, nor lasts long enough - for we are but foreigners in this wondrous place - but once you have been there the memory sinks deep and is never fully forgotten. At every chance you will strive to get back, and, if you do get back, strive to stay a little longer, to learn a little more, see a little further. Each visit fills, to the exclusion of all else, the moments that measure it's duration and overflows into a deep satisfaction that lights all else for a time afterwards. But only for a time... until the vividness of that memory is burned through by everyday living and you wonder did it really happen? Did I do that? Surely such sights are not for men but for eagles and angels and the winds and the stars. But the memory is still there, however deep, and when the chance comes once again - to slip by the rules and re-enter that wonderful place - you leap for it with anticipation.

So yeah, you could say it was a pretty good day's flying yesterday. A lot of the boxes that go into making a 'great' flight were ticked for me - flying with friends, a good recovery from a bad place, flying difficult air and flying it well, taking off early and landing late, trying new things, wonderful views... Something I've wanted to do for a long time now is fly above the snow, and as I was thermalling above the ridge near Mt Ebeneazer I looked down and there it was - snow all under and through the trees along the shadowed side of the ridge! I've flown to Harrietville a number of times and several times to Harrietville and then onto somewhere else but never (until yesterday) there and back again. It was a good decision to turn back to launch when it looked like I wouldn't make the crossing to Goldmine - despite the others all being ahead. It was good to get a bit more of a feel for the air before heading over - and then heading over in good air. It felt great to find a climb where I thought there should be one - and then to stick with it through the light inversions and to pick it up again after the wind shear layer nearly to cloudbase. It was good to stay over the high ground - and to set the goal of flying back to Bright. It was great to just clear the last ridge and glide slowly to the landing paddock as the few clouds in the sky faded and the thermic part of the day ended.
Yep, the whole day was pretty good!!

The stats:
flight time: 2hrs 15min
max height: 1,912m
peak vario: 6m/s, steady around 1.8m/s (thermals were not small, but very unorganised air and difficult to 'core'. There seemed to be several light inversion and there was a wind sheer layer around 1,600m)