Montana

Photo of the "Lady of the Rockies"- Don Lepinsky


Yesterday, I traveled with Karl over to the East Ridge site. It overlooks Butte, Montana and I was stoked because this would be the first time I was to fly "the Lady". The ridge line that the launch ramp is on is the home of a large statue of Mother Mary. Kind of reminds me of the Christ in Rio.

Don climbing in front of "The Lady"


Launch is at just barely under 8,000' and has a 12 mile jump over road less, tree covered mountains to get over the back. Once this is done however, the flight travels over beautiful valleys and several other rugged mountain ranges with lots of landing options and big skies.

Launch


Don getting up over Elk Park


about half way across the first jump


Don getting to the first of the landing options and a beautiful Delmo Lake


It was a strange day with east winds on the ground, north cycles on launch, south winds in the valleys and almost straight west above 11,000'. The thermals started out quite turbulent but after getting 20 or 30 miles over the back, they smoothed out and the only reason to not be relaxed was the extremely low temps above 12,000'. Base was around 13,500 and it felt like it was about 10F up there. My fingers have still not completely thawed;-) I ended up landing 97 ks out, just shy of Bozeman, right next to I-90. It was a fun flight capped by Karl being right below me in the truck when I had to land, making the retrieve pretty brainless. Nothing like having a H-5 pilot chasing. Thanks Karl.

across the Bulls & heading for the Bozeman Valley

between rain and ripstop

I took a break today from building all of the components that go into the Covert to take advantage of a slight improvement of the weather. It has been cold and raining every day since we returned from California and when the sky broke open today, the mountain was calling.


Karl Hallman

I called Karl and even though it was blowing pretty hard and in a tough direction for our local site, we were both pretty keen. It was great to meet up with Karl, throw on and head up the hill efficiently. Karl is a very experienced mountain pilot and I always appreciate flying with him. No issues, no worries, no drama.....just free flying with a good friend and a good pilot.


climbing out over Sentinel's launch

We arrived on top less than 45 mins after I left my house and decided to set up. It was blowing pretty hard at times but we both felt it would be acceptable. The direction had changed to be more favorable and it was looking like we might get high. I put on extra clothes (which would prove to be barely enough;-)


looking down the Bitterroot Valley

A one or two step launch and we found the wind had smoothed out the thermals. We went up immediately to 9k' over Missoula in nice thermals. The thermals had enough "meat" to them to block a lot of the wind which kept the drift reasonable. It was blowing 22-25 up high and we raced around for 1.5hrs until the sky started to look threatening. We had to land in a Southwest which is sporty here. The turbulence coming into the field caused me to focus but in the end we both ended up laughing and super happy that we had the fortune to have the flight work out as well as it had. It was improbable but sometimes, those end up being the best ones.


looking east toward our standard XC route, up the Patomic Valley