Flight 1. At last!

FINALLY, on 27/05/08 (my log book says so), we woke up to find the sun had broken through the clouds above, and the forecast was for good soaring conditions. This was supposed to be the day where I take the Greyhound back to Calgary to start the long journey back to the UK, but I allowed myself another day in Invermere with the promise from one of the other pilots that he would drop me back at Okotoks on his way home to Calgary the next day. Double win!

Trevor was pretty much fully-booked with glider ride customers, who invariably returned to the ground rather queazy, but having had an excellent flight and some good photos. So most of the day I helped the general operation of the club, running wings and rigging private gliders. Halfway through the afternoon though, I was grabbed towards the club's other two seater (a metal ship called a Lark), with Darren getting ready in the back, and told that I was going flying. Great!



C-GXML, my steed.

This glider has a very long stick and some perculiar characteristics, and even though I hadn't been in a glider for over 7 months, as the tow rope pulled tight I was reminded 'you have control', and off we went! I managed to keep the wings level during the ground run, and then we were climbing behind the Pawnee piloted by Sharn. I was off the ground!

We took a tow to about 2000' above Invermere, and headed into the mountains to find a thermal we could use to climb up to cloudbase which was a little under 10,000'. It occured to me that this was nearly double the altitude I'd ever been before, and usually oxygen would start being considered if this were England. However, living over 7,000' up for the whole winter obviously gave me good resilience to thin air so it wasn't a problem.

I flew us south towards Hoodooville and the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort, happily bouncing from cloud to cloud as I would in the UK. However, as we approched a wall of mountain at our level and the clouds, the lift vanished and I was forcibly reminded that this is not just a soaring playground, as Darren hauled us back up to cloudbase and handed over again.



We turned round Fairmont airport and headed back to Invermere- strange to think that we'd flown 40km, the distances at this height are visibly shortened, and in this medium-performance glider and strong lift, ground is covered very quickly. No wonder so many lengthy flights take place from Invermere...



Is it comfy in the back, Darren?

On the way back, we flew one ridge back from the valley, and got up close with the mountains, which was more than a bit of a rush, since they look very very hard when you fly right next to them... By this time we'd been in the air for over an hour, and my desensitisation to flying, along with hard thermals, intense concentration (and an uncomfortable seat!), I was starting to feel a little queazy myself. So we headed out into the valley, and did what aways takes my mind off my belly- some aerobatics. We looped, chandelled and stall turned our way 5000' back down towards the valley floor, then I took responsibility for the circuit and landing, both of which I was very chuffed with! After putting the glider to bed, I went to find something to eat.