Another Top Ten Day of Flying

June 6th, 2010 turned out to be another epic day for paragliding in Juneau. Big cummies floated stationary in space with flat bottoms at a 10, 000 foot cloudbase. Hot pilots Gerry Donohoe and Brett Neyhart launched from Mt Roberts around 1pm and took smooth consistent thermals to over 5000 ft above sea level-that's three grand over launch altitude! Both sky-gods took the high road north as far as Blackerby Ridge where they encountered severe enough turbulence to cause them to turn around. Both these guys have high 'bump tolerance' and experience at maneuvers (safety) clinics that give them confidence in rough air. So, if Gerry and Brett said it was scary-I believe it!
Brett stayed high and actually flew all the way back to Roberts. I'm not aware that has been done before. Gerry decided to get down and landed near DIPAC.
I didn't know these guys had flown earlier and headed up around 3pm. I saw Tom, from Haines, flying a teal colored Sol glider and Brett on his green machine, soaring beautifully above the Roberts spine. I cooled off from the hike and began setting up for launch. My wing was spread when I heard loud, violent fabric flapping. My thought was Brett was top-landing near me and looked up to see Tom in an extreme spiraling spin-VERY LOW! Just above the ridge his wing straightened out and he hit the snow feet first but stumbled with the down wind forced landing.
To make a long story short, he was fine but the conditions were not. We were getting gusts to 15 knots. Two hours of 'parawaiting' yeilded much sweeter air and five of us took off to reach about 4800 feet! I haven't been there, where you can see Canada- in several years. Yee- haw!! At one point, Donohoe and I were coring the same thermal at 4500. Neither of us had a camera! What a shame! My flight was over an hour, perhaps pushing two hours. I enjoy being the last one to the LZ (landing zone), as long as there's one more Alaskan beer left.