... and some days you're a rock

Nath and I arrived in Bright full of big plans for today - the forecast was great, the sky looked great, we launched into a thermal that straight away took us to 1,600m...

We decided to head down to Harrietville and back and then see how far we could push out towards or past Mt Buffalo. So off we headed for Goldmine...


...got over there ok, looked around for a climb, nothing there hmmm, keep on going I guess, on to the next good point but half way there I was in lots of sink realised if I didn't get a climb I'd be landing on the other side of the hill to the landing paddock (and my car) and stupidly turned around. Now I was low, in sink, and flying upwind towards the lee side of a hill - not the smartest flightplan.... Of course there wasn't any thermals around there, just some rough air, but I got around the hill onto the sunny face that the wind was on but by now I was very low and a long ways from the landing paddock. I scratched around but didn't find anything, although from the movement of the air I'm sure there was a climb around there somewhere. Grrrr.... I ended up landing in a small paddock a few km's from the car. Packed up and hiked back to it to go and pick up Nath, who was still in the midst of a heroic super-scratch that drifted him way up the valley but unfortunately not way up high. He kept in the air for another 40min though, which wouldn't have been easy at all.

After a lot of chatting in the LP, and some food, we went back up the hill that evening for a ridge-soar. Once in the air it wasn't that hard to stay up, and there were bubbles of lift blowing through as well.
If you turned very tight and drifted lots you could stay with them for a bit - one took me up to 1,300m, which felt very high after skimming along the ridge above the trees. A sailplane nosed around the hill underneath me...

...looking for the final climb of the day but he was too late - I was just leaving it! Besides, it would have been far too narrow for him so he headed off around the hills back to Porepunkah. The lift died and the wind picked up so it was time to land - but the car was still up at launch. Out in front of the take-off there was a narrow but strong lift-band, but after going out the front and spiraling down to below launch I was able to fly through it, aiming to crash into the hill below take-off but using it to lift me as I got close so that instead I landed on the new astroturf. Top-landing at Mystic is often not possible, but it's nice when you get it right. Not the epic day we had planned, but the airtime was still good - especially the evening fly.