Crestline Soaring Society

Myself and 3 HG pilots arrived at launch at 11:45. BIG day! Clouds were popping all along the range from Corona down to Murrieta. When we got there, the clouds were just popping behind the E launch. I watched a few and then got ready. I launched at 12:20 and worked the house thermal and first bump for a few minutes and slowly made my way up to 4K msl. (Launch is at 2900 msl.) I saw the cloud over to the west of the South Towers and headed for it. Nothing but lift. As I got closer the lift got faster and faster. My Garmin 76CSx recorded 1557 fpm max accent. I ended up under the middle of this growing cloud going up real fast. TOO fast. It was amzingly smooth though. When I got to 12,211' msl I pulled my ears and went on half bar. I wanted to get over under the edges of the cloud, not under the middle. When I got to the edge I found big sink, 1100 fpm going down. I tried to jump to the next cloud to the East, but hit the huge sink again and lost 4K in 2 miles. I'm still at 8K though. I turned NW and headed back up Grand Ave. Still had altitude and the one HG that had a sledder asked me nicely, (read: bribed with beer), to top land and bring his truck down. It was blowing down about 5 mph on launch. Made for an easy landing on the PG side of the launch. 2 HG's got up high. One went to 12.6K and the other 11.7K. When all pilots got back together, strangely, one of them didn't want to hear about how high, how far, or how long the rest of us flew. Oh thats right, He sledded. LMAO. The 2nd highest altitude I have ever been to. Yee Haw. Cold up there. Glad I was prepared. Hey DbyD congrats on your new personal best. Tomorrow looks like its still going to be good. We will be meeting at 11:00 on Hayes av.