Tahoma and the land of Lahars

Bearing, 180 degrees South. Every time I looked at my compass thats what it indicated even though I felt as if I was following a zig zag pattern of trying to follow the clouds. The theory of "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line" does'nt apply in cross country flying unless you wanna be on the ground sooner than later.

Escaping the massive flush cycle at Tiger Mountain by noticing the pulses of East wind and the low and slow climbs I topped up whatever I could find and glided to Squak Mtn with a small tailwind. Working Squak and flying West over the towers and beyond I was hitting whatever was coming off of the mountain now in any direction. A good place to hang out and try to understand what the sky was doing. Clouds forming in the lee at Squak led me South for a bit before I decide to leave with enough comfortable altitude and a line of clouds South over the landfill. Plentiful lift and clouds over the landfill topped me up to base. The day was appearing to be kinda slow so I would top up and then wait until I saw the next cloud forming along my course. One to the East then one to the West, back East and West until I reached a blue hole near Black Diamond, but managing to hang out long enough for it to form again and flying the terrain a little bit before getting back towards base. Looking like I might not make Enumclaw flying the terrain I found more good stuff and boosted back to cloudbase near Enumclaw. Ok, I guess I wont land at Enumclaw so I pushed Southeast looking at Tahoma and the massive flanks that produced huge mudslides back in the Proterozoic, "Lahars." Massive avalanches of rock, ice, and mud flowed down the mountain after eruptions but today the valley below in the sparkling sun was bright green, crisp and producing the nice puffy cumulus I was under. Gliding in lift past Buckley I wasnt sure where I was really going since ive never been there before. The terrain rises up a bit and gets darker on the North slopes. Near Wilkesen, I was gliding along and trying to decide what to do if I wanted to make the crossing over the terrain to Carbonara. It was 5pm I was cold, hungry and kinda lost at this point. Still the sky was working, a lot mellower now so I decided to head back to Buckley where I knew I could land. At Buckley I flew over an area where the sequel of "Deliverance" might be made and kept gliding as far as possible away from this area. I pictured shotguns out when I landed. Luckily, I kept gliding in gentle lift and put down in a nice quiet pasture without livestock and nary a soul. I quietly packed up and walked to town. I called my buddy RC and he came all the way from downtown Issaquah to pick me up, thanks dude! Thats two now. Today, I was fortunate enough to have Tahoma let me get close enough to admire her. SM
some Sky pics

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