A chosen few made the drive up to the Crawford's this past Sunday to experience a rare day of soaring. The forecast didn't look that great, just decent looking winds for the afternoon. We arrived at launch around 2:30pm to observe light southwest winds with some thermal induced spikes. I slowly set up expecting it would be a late glass-off. Cody, Greg and crazee Mike followed suite. Mike suddenly appeared harnessed up and on launch. Soon Mike was a grand over launch, leaving the rest of us scrambling to get in the air. Initially, we were experiencing nice reasonable climbs to 10k. The lift wasn't abundant, but consistent enough given the south component. There was an interesting cloud street dissecting the hill at a 45 degree angle. We suspected a convergence line, due to an approaching weak cold front. After a short while the wind clocked around, perfectly t-boning the hill.

As with prior flights on the Crawford's, I ventured out front at the end of each climb expecting to find broken light lift. Today was different! The cloud street was with us during most of the flight, dissipating a bit toward the end of our 2+ hour flights. Along a corridor a quarter mile wide and directly below the street, I was getting significantly strong climbs 13 to 14k all the way out to the foothills west of Randolph. Greg was finding the same amazing lift out front.

Everyone enjoyed this phenomenal soaring day landing with an additional 2+ hours to fatten their flight log with. Cody took the airhog award for the day, landing last with a perfect no-steper.

Just Great Flying! 9/3/11