Ron Faoro (The Spin Doctor)

Saturday, 8/13/05
Pine NS to Ojai

[Photos]

Decent sized crew with Fast Eddie, Kristi and Konner for support.  Visited the south launch and found it to be over the back, so we opted for the exciting north launch.  There we had all the usual theatrics as we tried to pull up in the prevailing rotor 30 feet behind the edge only to meet the strong cycles at the lip.  Lots of dusty rodeo action, but five of us got off, including Dean who was the first to fly west from launch and live to talk about it.  Dean, Brendan and OJ had the good launches; some failed and it got so light that everyone moved to the south launch where everyone got off around 2:30-3:00 PM.

I scratched around on the first ridge to the east.  It took 15 minutes before I had enough altitude (7,200) to go over the back into the convergence.  Most of the cumis and action was just to the south of the ridge line and extended from the 33 over to the campground.  Tom Pipkin, Brendan, OJ and I played around in the sometimes turbulent and dramatic lift for about an hour.  Cloudbase was about 12K; mostly it was haze domes and wispy stuff that would come and go quickly.  We got to 12.5K and made stabs in several directions. The south launch area seemed to have precipitous sink early and we couldn't make much progress eastbound over the spine.  Tom P. made a heroic kamikaze flight out front, riding the convergence eastbound to Haddock and beyond to an early grave and a one hour hike out.  (He still beat the crew to cold beer at Bode's, however! What a guy! What a charmed life!)

Brendan left with an altitude of 12,700 from another convergent seam on the north side and took an easterly glide toward Chief Peak.  I left south launch spine with 11,500 feet and took the more remote westerly trip toward Matilija, coming over the Nuthouse with 5.5K.  We both had enough altitude to cruise around Ojai for a scenic tour before settling on the football field at 3:15 PM.  OJ came in a a half hour later.  Things shut down back at Pine and the remainder of the crew was spread out from the Sandpile to Rose Valley, except for Dean who scratched up and over the top of Nordhoff to make it to the high school at 4 PM.

Susan joined us for cool drinks in the shade at Bode's.  A pretty good day for one that didn't look so good on paper.