The Hot Zone

A wild air day was had by all it seems. Lots of West wind pushing through ahead of a small disturbance off the coast provided Tiger pilots with a strong convergence and slightly windy conditions. My flight consisted of making the small salvageable mistake of flying to Squak to get under some clouds and hang out awhile. Arriving there, there were small cu's but they werent working when I got there. Not to mention I was in the lee in a strong West wind. Duh. So, I flew slowly and searched for lift on the south end of Squak and got pounded in the lee. It was going up but you had to fight your way in before getting established into a higher altitude out of the lee. This had been the precursor of this days conditions to come. Getting back over launch plenty high and drifting to the Lookout I flew around until I could actually manage to work some cores with a few people and get up high enough to look for the good cores. They were snakey but I just kept drifting back up towards the Towers where a nice cumulus was forming right above our heads while we were climbing, gotta love that. Eventually, I went on glide (4500ft or so) to the East and followed the lift line and windward side of the convergence line. I arrived at Taylor Mountain, this time not worrying too much for a place to land and just kept going towards the south side of Rattlesnake and Rattlesnake Lake. I arrived over the the ridge from the South and found a nice warm bowl to shoot for where I thought a fat thermal might erupt from. Sure enough when I got there I hit something so huge, I didnt even turn in it. I went straight up for a thousand feet like an elevator and then eventually turned downwind with it. A wild vent of lift! This took me to Mt Washington (one of my favorite mtns on the Pass area) where I found abundant lift. Although, cloudbase was only 6000ft, this kind of worried me a little since the crest of the mtns are about 5-5500ft. But there was a convergence line going straight over the Pass. So I kept going, working broken windy thermals and being close to base. Once in and commited I was getting blown apart almost literally by some the strongest most turbulent conditions Ive ever experienced. I was in the "hot zone." A newly discovered phenomena of mine that when you are over the mtns with a low base and 1000ft in between the clouds and the ridgetops with wind, you just get pummeled. Because the crest is kicking off its afternoon heat from the terrain and the clouds are converging on this area at the same time, add some wind to the mix and you have the "hot zone." Its all I could do to keep my little glider open and above my head up there. I even hit something so hard my glider picthed back what felt like 90 degrees and I was above my glider. It was crazy strong up there. After a few rounds of this I decided to tap out, the alternative was most likely pretzelling my glider and having to throw my reserve and land on top somewhere bad up there. But, I had the Pass within grasp, again, but it was not to be for fear of something other than another heathly flight and another return later. Eventually, I easily scraped out the evening lift in the I-90 valley and landed at Banderra airstrip going backwards at 10mph or so. At least it was grass and not such a bad drag, happy to have landed in one way and not in another. Needless to say I dont have any pictures after getting to Mt Washington. SM