Rat Race - Day Five

This one's for Veronica....the Dreaded Rabies Ridge got me again!

It was a tough day weather-wise with sharp-edged bullet thermals & no way to get high unless you had the cajones to cross to Burnt ridge low & scratch out of there. I never got high enough over launch to get to Burnt at a height that felt safe to me so I went on glide directly across the valley to Rabies with a couple of friends. We spread out to attack the ridge side-by-side so if one of us found lift the other two could also get saved, but we hit that invisible windshield right in front of it & slid down to the Hunter's landing zone. I found the 3 of us a little thermal over the LZ but the winds had picked up & the thermal just pushed us back towards Burnt low so we had to admit defeat. We weren't the only ones though, it ended up being a low-scoring day due to a lot of pilots bombing out & not many making goal (I think only 12 did).

The task was pretty exciting though - the "baby" Sprint group's task was 93km! It was a cat's cradle going to Mount Isabella behind Rabies Ridge, then back to the mountain behind launch, and then a pass over Burnt ridge. We were supposed to do the course twice then land at Longsword Vineyard, and the Race group had to do it 4 times so everyone was going to fly together. The cylinders around the Sprint's group were huge though (6 km around the 2 big mountains) so the course only ended up being around 30 km when you flew it cylinder to cylinder. We all got a big adrenaline spike looking at the task board in the morning though!

It was disappointing to not even get the first turnpoint today. There are a few of us who have made goal for the first time on different days this week and we're all pumped to do it again. With the weather and conditions switching every day you can really see who the best pilots are and it's fantastic getting to fly with the top guys. Both Nick Greece and Matt Beechinor flew their whole course plus did a tandem with local camera crews right before or after flying their races. That's a level of endurance beyond me right now, between the physical & mental workout of even trying to fly the task I can barely crawl to the keg at the end of the day!