Frosty's Race Recap After Task Five

The Rat Race is on. I cannot adequately express how awesome everyone is: the launch assists and retrievals, the feeding and mentoring and all the behind the scenes stuff that brings this animal to life every year. The locals are great. "Skyler" and Eli, our 14 and 10 year old launch assistants deserve special mention. "Frosty!" never sounded so good.

Day One (practice): I was a good boy and wrote down waypoints on a piece of tape to put on my vario. I had a nice launch but my vario volume was f'd up. I tried everything, was very distracted, and began swearing as Lower Rabid Ridge gave me a hell of a time. I landed in the Hunter bail-out LZ swearing like a bond trader. Then I noticed that another pilot had his wing in a tree. He was having a worse day than me. Then at the top of the ridge another pilot threw his reserve. Drew from Canada was having a much worse day than me. Later at HQ I sought technical assistance. Another pilot in the GPS line noticed the tape. OMG. Like, grow a brain.

Day Two and Day Three (the first two days of the comp) I left early, got high, and made it to Goal both days. Wow what a hero. Number three or something.

Day Four I had an abortion (in-flight).  Not a happy day.  I think that is also the day that I re-launched.  Winds were quite strong.  You can see the comedy on YouTube.


My two mistakes are pretty obvious:  insufficient braking as the wing loaded and over-flew me a bit into a frontal collapse and jumping (for joy?  bit premature...) which unloaded the wing.  We do not "jump".  After that it was just really strong.  Thank god for all the help from Tom and the rest of the volunteers up there at launch.

Yesterday I was eaten by a giant rabbit. It was a small valley that is shaped like a rabbit. I naively followed another pilot across the valley figuring he was a local and we got stuck in Bunny Meadow as China Gulch was catabatic. I followed the other pilot in, figuring that I could watch him land. He was out of his harness on approach when he got lift. The bunny was quite thermic. The only problem is that air was going out several ways up through washes between trees and that apparently created both horizontal and vertical shears. Can you imagine looking at your shadow on some trees and almost half your wing disappearing? Really boring for sure. I wasn't worried about peeing anymore after being in the air for over four hours. The other guy was an expert. His recovery from a 60% frontal proved it. I did what I could in spite of a wing that kept doing funny things. We worked it with many partial collapses for like 20 minutes. We got up 500 feet but could not get out. Finally I was able to land safely. The other pilot followed. It was Abhay from Maui! We ran to each other and hugged because we were alive. Another pilot joined us with a bit less drama, although we were not sure if he was OK for about five minutes after he landed. We hiked out the bunny's butt, seriously, and then were driven down the hill by a lumberjack who looked like Clint Eastwood or that guy from House. Moral: Never follow a Hawaiian in Oregon.

Also of note on that flight were the filaments trailing my wings.  My first thought was "Oh shit-- my lines are delaminating!" (whatever that means).  Next I figured that it was "tracers", especially after seeing it on another wing.  Maybe after three hours of flight my fatigue was combining with mind expanding substances sold to me by Indians in the desert or maybe one of those rave parties...  I decided that I was hungry.  So in spicy ridge-top conditions I put my brakes together in my right hand and got out a little bag of chocolate cookies.  I tilted by full face helmet and poured cookies-- right down my collar.  Ah life's little joys.  The LSD flashbacks turned out to be little baby spiders gathering mileage points. 

Today I had a GPS malfunction and so had to do Rabies twice and scratched low at Burnt three times. I pulled it off and got to the turn point towards goal, which was a ways off over some hills. Gliders began dropping like flies and hilltop thermals were not happening. I chose a yard of freshly mowed grass or hay outside Medford near another downed pilot, completed pre-landing checks, turned off base onto my final approach-- maybe 100 or 150 feet off the deck-- and heard beeps. Remember the Rabbit! I was one of the best low saves of my life, and a damn lucky one too. I babied it all the way up to 3000' or so AGL and with some help from hill bumps made it to a victory spiral over goal!!

A monster cold front is en route. I just saw a gigantic thunderstorm on the horizon.

Happy Landings,

Frosty