The forecast looked very much like the day before. We decided we give the 500Km task a try. The task was set for Parowan-Mt Pleasnt-Richfield-Salina-Parowan for a total of 516Km.

 

Unfortunately we didn’t get airborne early enough (didn’t I mention this is the story of my life?!). This time I knew what to expect and managed my crossing over to the next valley much better.  Not much to say about this flight, we contacted the cloud street in the next valley and very quickly were on our way up north. Pretty much the whole flight I managed to stay above 14K. As Boris says, “it was the milk run”!  With the previous day’s experience under my belt, I managed to avoid the mistakes I had made the day before and progressed pretty quickly to the first turn point, headed south for Richfield.  Once I had made Richfield it was pretty hard to convince myself to head back north again for the next turn point. Thanks to Rolf’s encouragement I turned North again.  My biggest worry was heading home late in the afternoon as conditions were dying out.  The winds had picked up quite a bit so I had to fight a good headwind all the way home.

 

Shortly after I touched my last turn-point and headed home. I still had 160Km to fly with a 29 knot headwind and it was already 4:30pm. During this leg I realized how slow progress can be with that much head wind. In particular crossing over the pass where I-70 crosses the ridges was very painful. It seemed I was over I-70 for a good 20 minutes! I would climb in a nice thermal only a couple of miles from I-70, but by the time I had peaked the thermal, I was 5-6 miles from I-70; head SW and by the time I was over I-70 I needed to top off and the cycle repeated!  It took forever to get passed that area... Very slowly I progressed through the area.  Fortunately the valley was working pretty well and finally just south of Beaver I managed to get within final glide of Parowan.

 

Matt was on the ground waiting for me to land with a beer in his hand.  This is what I call service!