Savona?

[DTN]

C'mon Fred tell us what your flight was like! Sheesh, how come we have to beat this out of you?

Savona to Spallmucheen is pretty good!

[Fred Wilson]

Updated with a few pics from the flight I just found. Savana's Oscar's Site Guide

Ok, I'll post my story, but in return:
==> A bunch of Kamloops PGers headed up to fly Wells Grey Park that weekend. Sure would like to hear the story. <==

Doug!
How in the heck did you hear about this? (Small world dept.)
I got picked up by my driver, headed strait back to Kamloops having been witnessed by Snafouver HGers only. Next night I drove straight to the Kooties, never having told another sole about my flight! You've got a good spy network, chum!

I did it my favorite way:
a) Taking "what god gives you" and;
b) Hitting a sequence of flying sites: going from one known house thermal to the next. Okanagan Site Guides

I took off last
(I was having a bugger of a time with the VG ([i]aka a PGer Speed Bar) on my HGer... never did get it fixed, flew with it locked off[/i]) ... into some of the trashiest air of my life. 1200 to 1800 up cannon balls surrounded by plummeting, pounding sink and slam dunk trash.

The flight had lots of real low saves. Got low below launch and took a shit kicking to get up. Nice view! Glided to the Copper Creek valley on the north side of Kamloops Lake (a few Km's east of launch) and got so low in the trees on the SW facing slope I doubted I could have made the bailout LZ by the lake. (1 hr retrieve all around Split Rock ... or by boat.) Scratched to get above the ridge, then the thermal took a particular dislike to me, trying to spit me out every which way possible. Worked it to about 8000' and made glide along the north face of Kamloops Lake for the "Pimple" launch NW of the Kamloops airport.

From this point I learned to live with sink alarm: to the point where my hearing was probably damaged. 800 fpm drilling allowed me to just slide past the Pimple LZ to a low hill north of the airport which has a beautiful NW facing bowl. Again half way down in the bowl, seriously in doubt of making it back to the bailout, and not wishing to piss off the Airport folks by landing on the tarmac, I scratched up to 6000 and made a B line for The Dome, just north of Mt Peter / Paul - NE side of Kamloops following the Yellowhead Hwy. (Mt Peter / Paul is now closed due to airport approach, plus its part of the local Indian Reservation.)

Rule for Mt Peter / Paul is to arrive above the top. Nada. I was kissing power lines along the freeway (not a sole seemed to notice) when it zapped off a smooth beauty scraping up the hillside. I worked the lift from 50 fpm right past a couple of hikers near the top, (the guy nearly had a heart attack when my shadow went over him. I was maybe 100' above him when I heard the scream.)

Ah the joy it must have been to have been a Pterydactyl.
The Chickie with him was yummie stuff. (If only I had claws!)

[gabion]

Nice tale Fred - thanks for sharing!

[Fred Wilson]

Continued...

So one of two nice, smooth, enjoyable thermals the whole day got me to 10,000' over the Golf course where Ian had just landed (north of Barnhartville, on the north side of the river east of Kamloops.)

Photo looking east from North of Barnhartvale, over the Golf Course Ian Landed at. Chase is way off in the distance to the east. Speargrass launch is almost immediately below, Pritchard Launch is closer to the end of the ridge to the east.



Slid down over Speargrass and Pemberton Hills Launches (near Pritchard)
(See Pemberton Hills (near Pritchard) Site Guide info) before heading south down the highway 97c to escape over-development, scraping low again till I got saved near the Weigh Scale station. That took me to 11,000. Then that cursed sink alarm yet again...

View from over the Weigh Scale Station, looking west back to Kamloops. Barnhartvale half way there, on the south side of the river.



The place to aim for is "Tiger Country" (forest) NW of Monty Lake.
There is usually a boomer there, if not, the E-W facing ridge just east of Monty Lake will get you safely into the Faulkland valley. The boomer was there in spades. Maybe the nicest thermal I've had in 35 years flying. 1000' up, a good Km in diameter, smooth as a baby's bum. Took that to 11,000 again.

History has taught us that for XC into Vernon from Faulkland, you want to fly over Tuktaktemum and hug the south ridge.

Aside: This is where I switched modes from "taking what God gives you" to "Know it All" mode... so of course, all went down hill from here on in.

Heading west to Monte Lake and Kamloops from Boleen the north bowl stretching up towards Chase is a good route. Boleen Site Guide.

Heading east from Boleen the west face of Mt Connaught (overlooking Faulkland )
has two sweet house thermals (one off the NW point, one smack in the middle of the west face.)

View of Boleen Launch, looking at Kelly Ridge where those sweetie and ever so reliable House Thermals live.
One lives in the center, well in front of the ridge, the other lives NW of the ridge, way out.



But it's a sucker punch cause heading east you are in Sink City till Round Lake
(where there is a house thermal in the middle of the forest on the east side of the lake.
Failing that, aim for good old reliable Grandview. From there, heading for Mara or Lumby, get up to 8000 and glide straight east across the valley
towards the "hook" in the Enderby Ridge
- where it juts out into the valley south of Armstrong. There is a good house thermal half way cross that will teach you how to look hard for 737's and another one well out WNW from the point on the ridge.

Yes, you can slide south to Vernon Mt. if you have heaps of altitude.
There is usually very little sink out in the middle of the Valley, but it's one heck of a long glide to gamble on.
(End aside.)

But I screwed up....
Again, being famous for repeating myself... why stop now...
History has taught us that for XC from Faulkland into Vernon, you want to fly over Tuktaktemum and hug the south ridge." Yep.



Nada. Bloody F#$%^&ing Sink Alarm. I chickened out. Whipped straight across the valley to Kelly Ridge east of Faulkland and yep, that sweetie house was there again as always.
Took it to 8000' and then as it petered out, like a complete idiot I left it instead of milking it for the additional 2000' I stone cold knew I would need, and headed back SE to the NW facing bowl of Moffat ridge to try to reconnect with the "sure way" into the OK valley.

Ya C's:
It was 6:30 PM and the glass off should have begun... or so I was a thinking.
But half way into landing I was just screaming, swearing at my Sink Alarm: ("Shut the "F" Up! Shut up! Shut Up!" over and over again.)
If I never hear that sound again.... Hour after hour of sink alarm...

Not a hope in hell of enough height to work the ridge east (at the North end of Okanagan Lake) of the Spallamachine Golf course. It's trees are so high now, not a hope of landing there. So I winged over into the O'Keef Ranch hay field directly across from the golf course entrance and their beer spiggots.

77 Mile 122 Km. 6.5 hours... not bad considering my VG was Misassembled and did NOT work at all... Gotta wonder how many inches I could have squeezed out with it!
4 others beat me, one by 5 K's. Three including John McClintoch made it to Lumby with altitude to spare. Silly buggers.
- A quick slide to Cherryville and they would have broken the magic 100 miles. Oy vay. Cold beer and a warm welcome are sure inviting.

[Fred Wilson]

Flew at Savana again the next day, got a royal shit kicking and said piss on it at 7000' (in 1300' fpm lift!) and cored the strongest sink I could find.
Total airtime like 4 minutes. Not worth the abuse. Everyone bailed... even the Atos crowd. Ugly stuff.
Mind you, the cores were smaller. I wondered how PGers might have done that day. The only one flying with us that day was just apoplectic that we had not gone XC together. He was loving it, all us prang danglers chose to escape that trash as fast as we could. Live and learn. PGers went up a notch in my book that day, for sure.

Adden dum

Here in Oz, https://www.facebook.com/groups/mtborah/
Godfrey came in tandem yesterday. Came in 200' over the cabins which, uh, got my attention... then landed rather abruptly. Lounging out in the yard, he remarked that he was in 300 fpm sink all the way into the ground. Whump.

Reminded me of my last landing at the Remembrance day Fly-In. Sink all the way into the ground. What a weird feeling. Always thought that sinking air like that would bottom out - you might land cross or down wind, no big deal.

Same sort of thing happened on my flight from Savona. From Faulkland all the way into the Okeefe ranch, there was nothing but sink and lots of it.
Yet when I landed it was absolutely calm. I remember sitting in the LZ puzzled by where in the world all that sinking air had got to. There should have been divots dug into the fields - something to account for where all that air had drilled into the ground. Still learning after all these years!