The El Peňon Yo-Yo

It was another beautiful day here in Valle de Bravo, and another day of flying from El Peñon was on the schedule. The pilots called a task that took them off to the West as practice for the comp that starts Thursday. My goal for today was to make it back to Valle. It was a bit windy today and the thermals were small and broken. Russ sank out to the Piano LZ and I worked the launch area for the next 40 minutes trying to get up. The thermals were hard to hang onto and I repeatedly got up to about 8600' only to lose it and sink back below launch. Not having much luck there, I flew west to El Peñon and repeated my yo-yoing another 30 minutes until finally I was able to hang onto a large enough thermal to take me to over 11,000'. I headed north to El Gordo Mountain and then on to Valle to finish the flight with some nice ridge soaring above the town to relax the muscles before landing. The lake LZ is quite large now that the lake is down, and Alex and Jeff have made some great improvements to the place with a new pilots' lounge/cafe to have a cold beer at after a great day of flying.
A couple more pilots showed up last night (Dustin and Mark) for the comp and will be staying here with Russ and me at Jeff's villa. They brought their gliders with them, so they'll be putting them back together this morning then heading out to El Peñon. Russ and I are going to take the day off and explore some of the many other activities that Valle has to offer.