Cloud Surfing

It rained Friday night and I awoke to a cool overcast morning. The heavy clouds were forecasted to hang around all day with WSW winds 10-15mph in the passes. Russ, a cloud surfing aficionado, called around 11am excited about the possibilities of flying Rampart Ridge. I was skeptical that launch was even below the clouds but with a little online weather research we determined it was and that we had a decent chance of getting a flight.
We were set up and ready to launch shortly after 3pm. I launched first and immediately climbed 500 ft in smooth, cold ridge lift. I flew away from the hill to stay out of the clouds and waited for Paul and Russ to join me.
There were basically two layers of clouds, one solid layer at around 8000' and a very dynamic broken layer starting at 5500'. We flew up the valley to the Rampart wall and found that we could fly up the front side of the lower level clouds and get above them. It felt like a dream, flying above the clouds in the smoothest lift you could image. We flew until the cold finally forced us to come back down to earth and reality.

Another Flying Day in the Northwest

The day looked like it was going to be shut down inland due to cloud cover so we headed to Blanchard, a little hill over looking Puget Sound. As we arrived the clouds were breaking up and the sun was getting through enough to give us hope. I launched first and found some zero sink in front of launch. I circled hoping it would build but nothing much was happening and I went off looking for something better. Not finding any other lift near the hill I headed out towards the LZ where we had seen some birds getting up earlier. Unfortunely I was already low on the hill before heading out and by the time I arrived over the fields I was only about 400' agl. Unzipped and ready for landing I had just enough altitude to do one pass over a likely thermal source to the SE of the LZ. It was either going to be working or I was going to land. My wing rocked and the nose pitched up as I hit the disorganized lift. I turned, gain a few feet then fell out the side. I continued struggling and eventual gained 100' before the lift began to consolidate. Now I was in the thick of it and it was on up to cloudbase and over the back towards interstate 5. I followed the retreating CUs to Lookout Mt to the east before landing and hooking up with Jeff and Andy. The CUs were retreating farther inland and Jeff and Andy, who had sledders at Blanchard, wanted to give Big Johnson a try. I hadn't been there before and agreed to drive for them. It was windy with strong gusts on launch but they both got off with no problems and enjoyed a beautiful sunset flight.