Lake Lillooet Acquaintance and Acro of a Different Sort

We headed up to Pemberton for a couple days to do some flying, hoping for one more good XC flight of the year. We used the upper Mackenzie launch which is just awesome! You could easily lay out 9 gliders at a time, 3 deep. Conditions unfortunately proved quite light, but most pilots got a flight of about an hour or so, slowly descending until the clouds blocked out the sun and the lift was gone. It was a nice flight, but the air felt quite fall-like.

The next day we went to Lake Lillooet to do some boat towing. I was looking forward to doing some acro, as this year I've done none. Instead, as I towed up, the weaklink broke when I was about 20 feet up, and after my glider surged infront of me, I tried to turn it back to shore, but didn't have enough height. So, into the lake I went.

I've never landed in water with my glider before, and it, well, it sucked! My harness was trying to drown me, which I suppose stupidly, I should have taken the foam out ahead of time. Meanwhile my feet were getting tangled into the lines and my flight suit seemed to be sucking up the lake around me. My boyfriend jumped into the water, and the boat turned around to help me out. Thankfully I was only about 10 feet away from the shore, so it was a fairly easy “rescue” that way. I think that unexpected dunk in the lake was more exciting than any acro manoeuvre I could have done that morning!

I had a lot of stuff in my harness and even had my glider bag with me, so everything got soaked. The rest of the morning was spent drying everything out, and right now as I type this my harness, glider and reserve are spread out across the living room. The silver lining is that everything got washed – my glider is now back to white and red, instead of beige and red. :)

As we started to drive home, it was absolutely howling, so my boyfriend suggested we go to the airport to check out the sailplanes. When we arrived, we looked at the different types of flights they offered and the aerobatics flight piqued my interest, so we both signed up for that.

I've been towed behind a vehicle and a boat before, but never a plane, which was was pretty interesting. Suddenly you have an object towing you that's travelling in three dimensional space, versus 2D like a boat or car. It was pretty cool. I liked watching the movement of the plane as it swayed side to side and up and down. We were released from the tow somewhat near lower Mackenzie (the paraglider launch), and started thermalling. It was very cool to do that in a sailplane – as a paraglider you often think that a thermal is pretty small and yet being in a sailplane with a turning radius maybe 10 times ours, we easily managed to stay in a 5 m/s climb.

We then headed over the valley and my pilot stalled the glider. The nose pointed upwards and we fell backwards towards the earth. With that energy, we did a loop, which was nice. I liked being upside down, looking up at the earth beneath me! With not enough energy from the loop to do another one we did some wingovers. The stalls, wingovers and loops were pretty tame to me – I didn't find them overly exciting, and I think paragliders are scarier when dong these types of manoeuvres.

We did some more of this stuff and the pilot then said he'd do a spin. Whoa! That made my heart skip a beat! It was a really weird sensation with only half the glider flying. We did maybe 4 or 5 rotations and then he pulled out. YEAH! I knew what I'd be telling my boyfriend to ask the pilot to do on his flight!

We came in for landing, which was interesting only because our downwind leg seemed waaaaayyy too downwind for me! I had a moment where I was concerned we wouldn't make it back to the airport, but that's only because I forgot for that second that we didn't have a lame glide ratio of 9 to 1 like a paraglider! We touched down beautifully and the flight was over. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for letting me use these amazing pics, Mr. Hemingway!

I think someday I'll get into sailplanes...but doubtfully in less than 20 years from now. I think it attracts an older crowd, one that's older than even most hang gliders! In any case, it was fun, and something I think I might just pursue someday.