Bingen Flights

Portland is a tough place to fly. Predictably enough, the winters are gray and wet and good flights are rare. However the summer is also disappointing; a NW weather pattern sets up with strong winds in the gorge and the local sites don't work in such conditions. The net result is that, if you want to fly, you have to do a lot of driving. Woodrat, Pine and Baldy are all 4 or more hours drive away. Last Saturday I went to Baldy and the wind was too strong to fly - an 8 hour round trip to get skunked!

The forecast for Saturday was more encouraging and it looked as though we might get a decent flight in the gorge. The forecasts were all for light winds, and it wasn't clear if we would end up launching Cliffside (which faces east) or Bingen (which faces west). In these circumstances, you have to just head through and choose your site based on what the wind does.

Dan, Hannes and I drove through and we were joined by Mike and latter on Todd. The wind was weak, but clearly from the west, so Bingen - a very difficult site to get away from - was our target. Although the sun was out and it was hot, there were no birds soaring and no convincing cycles on launch - it was much more stable than the forecast. I found no usable light in my first flight - and no-one else did any better. Back in the LZ, the wind was slowly strengthening; we took a second flight and it was easy to stay up. But it was just ridge lift, there was no chance of getting high and the wind was getting stronger. I didn't see the point of boating around for an hour and then having to land in really strong conditions and went out to land and everyone else came to the same conclusion. As often happens in the gorge, the wind picked up in the bottom hundred feet and landing was 'interesting'.

I'll be heading to a little fly-in at Lakeview (in the desert, near the Californian and Nevada borders) in a few days and hopefully we will get some decent flying there. In the meantime the local forecasts don't look encouraging!