Well what a day! The second practice day of the comp, but only 5 or 6 people launched because the forecast was to deteriorate to rain by the mid afternoon. Wave was all over the sky so I decided to have a go.

I took an aerotow to 4500ft (2000AGL) and worked my way up to cloudbase at 9000 in about 2kts. I then pushed forward and found some thermal shear wave...

 Then I dived across the valley to the east and climbed under some rotor cloud to 10,000 ft with my target in sight...





























And pushed forward towards the mountain until I hit the lift - started out as a rough 14kt but soon smoothed out to 10kt. I just pointed straight into wind and held it there at 50kt airspeed and hardly moved forward over the ground...this photo looking east from about 18,000 ft.








The wave slowly reduced to about 3 or 4 kt at 23000ft and Mt Shasta was spectacular...

Mt Shasta from 23,232 feet

So I dived down to make it home before all the slots closed in, and just made it onto the strip as the rain started.

What a day! The competition proper starts tomorrow.