Crestline Soaring Society

flight report:
the weather forecast looked favorable for the task I'd been mulling over for a while after Bruce mentioned it a while back. crestline to laguna. my first thought was "ya right" so and I started thinking "what weather conditions would be needed in order to pull it off?" how bout an east meets west convergence with light south later in the day and with the east staving off the seabreeze holding the convergence to the laguna ridge till 5pm. Saturdays forecast looked good for a go so Bruce, Wally and I met at 10 in the AJLZ. We roll out of the truck and its still steaming north. Wisconsin Paul is already there. After about 20 minutes the north starts to subside so we start setting up. The MacBus rolled in and dropped off a gang and right about 12:30 it starts to cycle in lightly. Paul is off and climbs out. Bruce next on Wally's 125 sq ft mini-Atos and climbs to 9k heading out as I'm rigging up radio and warm clothes. I launch at 1 sharp and climb out a bit over the 750 left at 5k to the radio towers and and connected with a beauty to 9k and a ticket to the dam. Gliding east with a big crab angle its strong north aloft. I passed over McKinley and Bruce had doubled back from finding nothing at Harrison. eek, not a good sign. I took a tack toward the valley figuring the north has pushed down and the shear is out a bit to the south. I find weak lift and climb to 66 in front of mentone launch and Bruce zips by heading past the dam for the next spine. Soon he's on a tip blasting up at 800, radios hes got a good one so I head over to glom on. Stairstepping up the knife ridge toward gorgonio and theres a nice cloud based way high a few miles east over the higher spine as well as a couple sailplanes climbing up from the palm springs side of the hill.. Finally get under it and look over at the instrument click through 14k. Heading south from Mt San Gorgonio shows the path lit with small wispy cu's with the first one right over soboba. Couldn't ask for a better road map. (see Dusty's pic)The gps is showing ground speed in the 60s. wow, a nice tail push. Arrive at soboba way high, do a couple turns under another sailplane and head out towards the next cloud. We make fast progress and pass lake skinner on the right while dropping through 10k. Bruce stops for a climb and I keep on towards the next ridge with a cloud over it. I get a bit closer and realize where I am, Mt Palomar's white telescope dome and climbing from 85 to 13k again with another sailplane overhead and turn to a SE heading towards Laguna. time 3:50, I have a strong crosswind heading over Lake Henshaw. Bruce is on a line about 3 miles to my north and there are 2 clouds right in line dead ahead about 10 miles. He's down below 8k and radios that he's turning back to Warner Sprgs rather than chance landing on Indian lands. Meanwhile I'm crossing the 79 at 8k and radio back that if I dont hookup soon I'll be landing where the 79 heads toward Julian. I head to a peak with a microwave tower and a building at the end of the Laguna ridge and hit some 300 up. 12 minutes later I'm at 10,5 back in the game and heading towards laguna. Flying along at a pretty good clip, I notice I'm not losing any altitude. I'm back in solid convergence and soon coming up on Laguna launch. I radio to Wally that I'll be off the 8 and Buckman Springs Rd. "copy that" he says. I fly down the ridge a few more miles then hang a right to Horse. I cross over launch at 5 minutes after 5 at 9k hoping to see some gliders but no one's out. Must be blowing down. I have extra altitude so I keep heading south and hit lift and take it up to 9k. I keep heading south and sure enough I'm back in the shear on top of the "braid". I turned around at Campo and flew by Morena Lake to get an idea what the surface winds are doing. the streaks show strong NW. THere is a line of wind turbines about 10 miles east that are pointing NE. cool. I take advantage of some sink and descend down below the convergence and into the lower NW flow so I elect to head back to the 8 and easier retrieve. The glider's drift easily shows about a 5-10 mph Right in line with the road and I land about 100 ft from the frontage road. Wally's only 20 minutes out. right on! What a day!