Too Late

Greg H called and said that the weather was just right for the launch at Cannon Mountain. Dave, Greg C, and Mark also thought Cannon was the right choice for the day. Who am I to argue? We stopped at Ascutney to pickup Greg H's van that he left there before flying yesterday. On the drive to Greg's place on the way to Cannon, we noticed that the wind was NW, not the NNE required at Cannon. After some discussion at Greg's, we decided to drive all the way back to Ascutney.

Jeff and Jake were already setup when we hiked into the launch. The clouds looked good and there was some wind blowing into launch at times. After throwing our gliders together we collectively tried to figure out what was happening with the weather. Obviously the NWS forecast was wrong. The clouds were starting to show signs of building into large "complexes" that might produce rain. I wanted to get off launch so I offered to go first. For some still unknown reason my radio wasn't working. Meanwhile Jake launched and basically sledded to the LZ. Ouch. I wanted to launch right after him to help out, but the tailwind at launch keep me on the ground. Once the tailwind stopped I launched and found some bumps to the left of launch. I kept searching thinking it might be coming up the southwest bowl. Ooops, not there. Instead I got crushed and was soon headed to the LZ with Jake. I found a few pops at the base of the mountain and hung on. I eventually managed to start climbing and drifted to the south. I was about launch height when Jeff and Dave launched. I flew back to the mountain and joined Dave in a rough climb over the ski area. By this time Jeff was floating among the clouds over us. I gave a quick call to Mark to join us, but he had his radio off. The climb to cloudbase was rough so I was ready to leave when I got within 500 feet of Dave and Jeff at the top. We decided to head towards Green Mountain. For some reason Jeff started heading NE instead of SE towards Green. Dave and I maintained our spread by fading north to cover Jeff. Instead of heading towards the nice clouds over Green we were flying into the blue. What the ....? Finally I turned towards Green but not before losing most of our altitude. I found a broken climb that Dave found but Jeff missed. We watched Jeff land as we climbed high enough to continue on towards Green. Meanwhile, the clouds over Green were drying out. Dang, we missed it. We heard that Dan, Greg C, Greg H, and Mark were now leaving the mountain.

I found a good climb in the blue over Green, climbed a couple thousand feet, and then raced off to the still receding clouds. I connected with a good climb at the edge of the clouds. Dave was too low to push on, so I waited for him to get high enough to keep together. I noticed the clouds were continuing to recede and decided to push on towards Newport. I had a sweet glide, gaining 100 fpm along the way. I waited a few minutes and then Dave and I headed towards Newport and the quickly decaying clouds. We checked out a few dying clouds but eventually made our way to the forbidden fields since we didn't have enough to get over Mount Sunapee. I radioed my fate to Kristi, tried to find a flight-saving low climb, and then landed along the road.

I managed to turn around and watch Dave land. A few minutes later the rest of the gang floated in. We radioed the current conditions and that a thermal might be breaking off. They did find a climb and we thought the might get away. However after a few minutes they all came back to land with us. I got many pictures of each pilot's landing. It paid to get there early.

We broke down, got our vehicles, and still had time to get picnic food for the "movie" night party at Camp Rob before going to the VHGA meeting at Morningside.