Paragliding in BC

Paragliding in BC

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Rat Race - Day Seven

I am EXHAUSTED! Usually paragliding competitions are held for 7 days and they only expect about 4 to be flyable due to weather. We flew every day (except that one windy day) and my flying endurance has been pushed to a new level. Wow.

Today was a cat's cradle course around the valley landing at a local winery so that retrieve would be easy for the last day. I had to spend a lot of time over at Rabies Ridge again, we had 3 points to hit over there and I flew out to land early about 4 times because of some nasty rough patches of air. But each time I left I would end up finding a really nice, gentle thermal that would take me up high and I'd go for one more turnpoint. On my last low save of the day my friend Vikram joined me and helped map the thermal that took us high enough to get to goal together. It was so much fun flying with a friend - we were hollering at each other as we flew into goal.

Overall standings: I was 4th woman out of 10 and 18th overall out of 77 in my wing category. I'm still a little overwhelmed I made goal 2 days in a row and 3 times total this whole week after coming here for years and never making it farther than about 15 km along the course. Hopefully I can retain all the skills & knowledge I received this week and keep flying well at home.

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