With a twelve hour drive required to get from Kadoka, South Dakota to Arco, Idaho, only Robin was willing to go all the way to fly from King Mountain. No one flew on Monday as the gusts were too strong. Only Robin flew on Tuesday.
Robin flew from the regular King Mountain launch to south of Ellis, in the next valley east of the Lost River Range (King Mountain) and about even with Challis. He flew north to the east side of Challis then hopped over the range.
Larry is in Dillon, Glen is in Butte.
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Robin writes:
On flying progress, you may have seen we have been pushed around by some challenging weather in the northern states these past few days making it difficult to find areas where we can get a day or two of supporting winds and soaring conditions. Monday we tried going east to South Dakota but found overly strong surface winds and later extreme thunderstorms. Monday evening we made a move west to get out of the bad weather and had a memorable overnight journey through northern Wyoming and Montana under some apocalyptic storm cells - rain, hail, lightening, 60 mph wind gusts - it was special. It left our group spread across four states (SD, WY, MT, ID) Tuesday morning.
I got to King Mountain for a foot launch on Tuesday and after some battling with the recently repaired track up, got on to take off for an afternoon launch. A big shout out to my son and driver Sasha, who was stoic at the wheel all through the overnight weather and again going up the dirt track (backwards…) in the morning.
Standing on launch at King was eerie - it is a majestic, humbling site anyways and I'd also known it as windy and active at take off. On Tuesday it was almost zero wind and only occasional weak cycles up the front. I got off around 3pm and quickly climbed out above the (still snowy) peaks. The lift was strong, fat and relatively smooth.
Winds aloft were less favorable being out of the north west, offering no assistance to progress to the north. I ran down the main valley out in front of King at cruising levels of 12,000-14,000'. It was an almost religious experience - breathtakingly beautiful and the solitude of making the run by myself - just the mountain and me. I stopped around 6.30 to prep for the next day and landed at the head of the adjacent valley (~75 miles from take off), to be back in time for Wednesday activity.
Overall we are now some 260 miles from Canada and have a forecast of good soaring conditions and tail wind on Wednesday for a launch from southern Montana.
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