Into the Caldera
Hiking slowly up the steep ridge at Beechmont through the dense, steamy rainforest, lugging my 20kg pack I had plenty of time to ponder why I was here. I had watched pilots struggling to maintain lift under overcast skies and waited to launch until the sun came out. Took off into a nice cycle directly into lift but then decided to follow the four other pilots that had taken off just before me instead of staying in the lift I was in. Why? I have no idea.
Beechmont is not very forgiving of mistakes on a tough day and I was soon in the bombout with three of the four pilots. The fourth one, Daron, had wisely turned back to climb in the lift I had left.
Just over an hour later I was back at launch, eyes stinging from the sunscreen mixed with sweat seeping into my eyes. It was almost 1pm and the sky didn’t look very promising. After retrieving Daron from the next ridge, we were back at launch again.
After wolfing down a left over potato from the previous night’s campfire, Daron and I set up on launch again for another go. Daron in his gray and white Ozone Delta 3 and I in a gorgeously colourful BGD Cure 2. Emma, flying a red Gin Explorer set up next to us.
It was sunny now and the thermic cycles felt good. The wing launched nicely and we turned in the thermal in front of launch. This time I didn’t leave it. I was hoping to stay up long enough in the brand new BGD Cure 2 demo wing to get a sense of its character.
After the really light climbs earlier in the day we were surprised by a strong climb all the way up to cloudbase. One of the strongest I’ve been in above Beechmont, levelling out at 1700m. Daron’s theory is that we happened to launch exactly as the sea breeze made its way inland, the cool air wedging beneath the warm airmass in the valley and pushing it up. Whatever the reason, we had climbed effortlessly and now had to decide where to go next.
I’ve watched Mt. Warning peeking photogenically through a pass in the volcanic caldera, since I started flying at Beechmont. Always wondering when I’d get a chance to fly towards it. I tried a couple of times but never had enough height to make it past the pass. Recently Nick Neynens and a few other adventurous pilots had been flying into the Caldera and raved about the experience.
We’d be crossing the border into NSW and we were prepared for coming back into QLD with our Covid border declarations. The luxurious altitude of 1700m above launch promised a real possibility of success this time. The ducks were lined up well. Flying close to me, Daron yelled out “Today’s the day for it!” as we started our glide south past wispy clouds.
In another surprise of the day, we didn’t find any strong lift after our initial meteoric climb.
Paragliding is a social sport up to the point of launch and from the landing onwards. In between it is a usually a solo sport with everyone for themselves. But this flight turned out to be an epic struggle where the three of us flew close together, spreading out to sniff for lift and then homing in on whoever found it. We watched each other in the climbs and adjusted the turns in the direction where the lift was the strongest.
At one point Emma tried to fly towards the east, sunny faces of the valley. Something that should have worked but the gamble didn’t pay off and she landed next to the border crossing.
Daron and I scratched low above cliffs just before the border eking out any bits of lift we could find but we never succeeded in climbing above 800m. Giving up, I glided south west into the caldera towards a sunny valley hoping for a thermal that’d take us back up to the clouds.
Watch the video to see what happened next. I’m too lazy to write about it :)
