Italy PWC: task 1

Conditions for the official practice day on Saturday couldn’t have been any nicer, booming thermals (5-7 meters a second) smooth climbs and the highest cloud base we have experienced since arriving. The other Americans (Matt Dadam and Todd Weigand) along with Jamie and a few other pilots and I decided to do a triangle around the main valley and try to learn the area a little. It was a fantastic day of flying that ended with a little chaos. A Swiss pilot hit some turbulence and had to throw his reserve parachute. Jamie and I witnessed the incident and decided to spiral down, land in a clearing near him and start a search for him to see if the pilot was ok. Long story short… the Pilot was just fine but we didn’t get home until midnight after hiking lots of miles in the mountains.

Task one found me tired and frazzled. PWC tasks take place fast, from the pilots meeting to the racing. There isn’t as much time between the meeting and the start of the task as I am used to, I was struggling to make sure that my instruments were set up right and my gear prepared, I got off the hill a little late. A 73 km race to goal task was called. A weather front was pushing in that produced very mixed conditions. Once on course we had everything, strong thermals (but once the clouds shaded the ground half way through the course, very weak) lots of wind, corn snow at cloud-base, and “the canyon of despair”. At one point on the course conditions got weak and we were forced to fly into a steep canyon with very limited landing options in pursuit of a turn-point, most managed to climb out and continue. I was excited and exhausted to make goal after 4.5 hours of challenging flying. About 50 pilots made goal, official results should be posted on the PWC website.