US'16 0623 - Roan

During the night it had been raining again, so when getting up at 0530, the day didn't look to promising. We left Glenwood Springs as planned at 0700 with our van and its replaced transmission heading west towards Rifle. There was still some rain, but the further west we drove, the brighter the sky got. Also there didn't seem to have been rain out there (which would have made driving up to Roan quite difficult).

on the way to Rifle

setting up a windsock at the intended LZ

looking towards Rifle and the intended LZ

Bildunterschrift hinzufügen

The conditions on launch have been very good with light winds coming in pretty straight and steady. Andy launched first for the long glide out. Only at the very end he found some lift and was actually able to thermal up about 500m. My gliders performance is a bit lower than his and so I arrived lower and have been unable to catch some lift and thus be able to reach our intended LZ (where we had set up our windsock), so I had to land on a lower field (on private land whose access was barred by a closed gate - which we didn't know at that time). Andy decided to land also at 'my' LZ.
Only a short while after we had packed up, some gas worker stopped by and offered to drive us out towards Rifle, thus solving the 'problem' of the closed gate as he knew its code. Thanks for the ride!

landing: at 1 o'clock from the right side of my accelerator

driving on I-70 West along the Colorado River

near Grand Junction

After we left Rifle, it started raining (again), so I think we had hit the possible flying window right on the spot. We stopped for the night in Grand Junction after just 1 hour of driving. Why didn't we go further? Well, we are hoping to fly a site nearby called "Otto's Ridge".This is an early morning site (a little similar to PotM-South), which is flown in the catabatic air flow before the thermals set in.