Over the Tawonga Gap

Short flight today, but satisfying.
I got to Bright late and arrived on launch to find a really light drift from over the back. After monitoring conditions for a bit I launched in a light puff up the face and got a climb from a bit further down Marcus than usual. It did feel a bit lee-sidey at first, but after going up through a bit of a rough layer 400m up it was a smooth elevator to 2,000m. The drift was from the SW and by the time I had maxed the climb I had drifted a fair ways to the NE, enabling a straight glide to Little Pyramid. I was in a bit of a hurry, because while climbing all of mystic had shaded out and I wanted to get a climb off Pyramid before the fast approaching shade shut it out too.
The shade was just marching up the slope as I flew in to it, and I was expecting that to trigger off residual heat from the slope but if it did I didn't find it. Instead I ended up scratching around the high points, ecking out little height gains here, loosing them there, hoarding all the altitude I could as I waited for the sun and a thermal up into the blue again.
Several minutes later an orange and white UP glider wandered around the corner to join me - Chappo was in the same situation. We gradually scratched lower but then the sun came out again and we started scratching higher - the light lift was drifting fast over tiger country and it was tricky knowing weather to stay with the lift in the hope it strengthened or keep close to safe landing options and risk landing. Anyway, I caught a good bubble up several hundred meters (then lost most of it getting back to the trigger point), then Chappo caught one and stuck with it to around 1,800m before heading over to Mt Beauty. I flew right through the area he climbed out of less than 3minutes after him but couldn't find it - however I got my own climb soon enough and although it was a tight, squirmy little thermal, blowing over no-mans land I stuck with it and rode it up to just over 2 km's. Heading downwind it was an easy crossing, not much sink for the first half, but heaps once over the other side, and I didn't find another climb until I was setting up to land near the Mt Beauty Bakery. By then I was wanting to land in time to hitch a ride back to Bright and had to fly away from the core (big, wide, thermal) and spiral down through the lifty air all around!