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