Task 5 Into the Unknown

What an incredible task, the most interesting task Ive ever flown. 85km task. Of course it was another cloudless high pressure day with slow climbs to around 9-10,oooft at the beginning. Today, the task committee decided to go to an unknown turnpoint that was even off of the map for a test run called Llano, which was way to the south about 25km from launch. But before that we had to do the 1km exit start at Piano then back track to 3 Kings. After Llano it was all the way North to Los Saucos, then the usual run back to La Casa and San Ramon goal like yesterday.
I was in good position at the start and had a nice line to 3 Kings and back to Espina to tank up before heading South into the unknown over the flats and volcanic terrain towards Llano which was a 5km cylinder. Blasting across the first flat section I was all alone and drifted south to a low mesa where at 10m above the ground I was ready to land. Not giving in, I drifted in some crappy thermal coming off of the ground and just stayed in it long enough for it to go straight up and showing it to some others. We tanked up on this one and a couple more ratty thermals to get into the 5km cylinder at Llano, it was a wild place like a cinder cone and a high ridge on one side and a gorge below it, "no man's land." Five of us gaggled up and decided to head straight across to Mesa D instead of the long way around. Here, more, no mans land we caught up with lots of the leaders grovelling in some low canyon with no possible landing zones above the trees.
Scratching and clawing down there we remained fairly high. A few of our group tried to go ahead and cover more ground but ended up racing themselves into the ground at Mesa D. The rest of us slowly made our way to Los Saucos. I got low there and couldnt pull it off trying to get in to the convergence. Kicking the tree tops I pointed it downwind and made it in to the Los Saucos cylinder. Bummed about not getting the last "easy" part of the task but psyched on making it that far. A lot of the guys dirting all along course line today. Only around 25 in goal or so today. All in all an incredible task over a lot of unknown and variable terrain. This should give the task committee some more fodder for longer harder tasks for the Worlds next year. It was great to be a part of the "experiment."