Joe, Sinead and I headed out of Seattle late in the evening on Friday with the goal of doing some new cliff launches on speed wings in central Washington. We parked on the side of a dirt road just outside of Quincy late Friday night, eagerly awaiting what the morning would have in store. Woke up early on Saturday to nice skies and cool temps. Joe and I walked to the cliff that overlooks Crescent Bar where Sinead was drive the car. Crescent Bar offers a unique experience flying speed wings due to the flat launch, large nearly vertical cliffs, flying over water, and landing on a beach. Deffinately one of the few places one can do this in the Northwest. We did a couple of flights with Sinead being kind enough to shuttle our lazy asses up to the top. One super scary incident: On the second launch run, BOTH of the leg strap buckles on my Gin speedflyer harness unhooked! It was only noticed after I had lept from the edge of cliff and attempted to rock back into the harness. IT quickly bacame evident that something was very wrong. Luckily, the harness was adjusted in such a way that the sitting position allowed me to sit fully without sliding out. The Chest strap was also fairly tight which gave an extra little security in flight. Needless to say, I wasn't about to throw in any big 360's. After landing on the beach my legs started shaking pretty bad. Not a cool experience. How this happened is completely unknown to me. I am absolutely certain I buckled the straps before launching. I clearly remember buckling, checking, rebuckling and checking again each strap because of the sand the seemed to be on and in the buckle. I didn't honostly think that the sand was hindering the effectiveness of the buckles but wanted to be absolutely sure that is wasn't. That was a failure. I'm not sure if was due to faulty buckles, foriegn objects (sand) in the buckles, or the motion of running for a long distance (25-30 yards) before launching that caused the buckles to open but it was not fun and potientially fatal. Something to think about. Safe flights and happy landings.
After getting sketched by the buckle thing, we opted to drive and scope out other possible launches. Only a few miles down the road Joe's car unfortunately decided that it didn't want to have a cluch anymore. We got the car towed into Wenatchee where I picked up my dad's extra truck and we headed to the Ranch. After launching late, Joe and I caught up with some of the other pilots who luanched earlier. Our timing couldn't have been much better as we got the best part of the day while others who lauched earlier weren't able to work the small lift and landed at the confluence. Joe and I and another pilot were working some rowdy air over Independence when I decided I'd rather be making an attempt to head for the park low than get flushed back into the canyons of the Ranch. I left around 5000 ft and surfed an unexpected tailwind toward the park in Cashmere. By the time I got to the main valley I had plenty of height but hit a pretty stiff wind blowing up valley. At that point it was just dealing with the bumpy air to make a clean landing. A little nerve wracking but rewarding. 3 of us in all made it to the park that day including Joe. Good days.
