Day 8 - At last!

A morning without the rain falling. In fact there was blue sky appearing, so rather than head straight off to the west coast as intended, we decided to see what was happening at Coronet Peak, and head into Queenstown to book some accommodation somewhere north for the night. It took us a little time to check out from the New Orleans as the duty manager hadn't turned up, but it gave us some time to do a little souvenir shopping.

The Coronet Peak flight park cafe was open so we stopped off to make inquiries about the etiquette there, and to get a forecast. Weather was to steadily get better through the day. So change in plans - accommodation to be in Wanaka, drive down to Kingston to watch Hugh, Ellis, Ron, Nick and Becky do their maneovers over the lake before flying Coronet Peak pm.

Kingston was sunnier than yesterday, but still a bit of a breeze and tops were in cloud. We watched a couple of local pilots appear from the cloud out over the lake. The first practised a SAT, some wingovers and landed out on the beach. The second just got into a bit of a mess trying to do something, settled out, then landed in the water for no apparent reason (from our view)! The SIV course packed in - it had taken 3 hours to get to launch up a muddy track, launching required an observer on a pinnacle above launch (which faced the wrong direction) to see pilot and ridge clear of cloud to signal pilot to launch, and then direct them in right direction to get to the lake! Discretion... Carolyn got sunburt feet on the beach - we headed to Coronet Peak.

We got to launch to find gentle cycles wafting up and tandem pilots wafting down. Looked like we have a nice floaty top to bottom flight. Appently easy to hitch up to launch so we decided to fly rather than take turns with a van retrieve. We let the tandems (hang glider and paraglider) clear first, then I took off, Carolyn a little later. The flight along the ridge is a little over 2km and the view is simply stunning (I'll post pictures later). About half way along I found some thermals to play in breaking at an open gully. It started to take me over the back into somewhere where I didn't think I wanted to be so left it. (A local carried on and climbed 500' more - should have stuck with it!) There was plenty more bits of lift to play in, then over the landing field a wooded ridge caught the now rather bouyant valley wind. Easy soaring and lots of fat light evening thermals made flying easy and the still clearing skies just kept making it better.

I got a bit low to climb back out so landed in a bautifully kept landing field to join lots of other pilots. Carolyn kept high and flew on for another 1/2hr or so (choosing to land after getting a bit cold). I grabbed the opportunity to catch a lift back up the road with Jim Rooney, then back up to launch with a Japanese (I think) hang glider pilot. I quickly took off again to find air now quite bouyant in front of launch - so an easy glide to the ridge above the landing field. Carolyn had landed by the time I got back there, but Ellis, Hugh and the others had now arrived and were flying. Together we all had a blast soaring up to 300' above the ridge at times. One of the SIV course pilots landed on the ridge and instructed Ellis et al in collapses etc out in front - great fun to watch as they did some manoevers, then climbed on thermals and ridge lift right back up to do it all over again. Amazingly there were few local pilots enjoying this evening convection - at one stage I flew out and started coming into land when I chance on a nice thermal which was too good not to wind right back up to the ridge top. But eventually the lift started to decay and one by one we headed out to the valley and came into land - and rave about the flying we'd all just enjoyed.

After catching back up with Carolyn who had gone off to retrieve the van we'd left at launch (took a bit of time to get hitches due to lateness of day but a couple of hippies who were obviously very much in love with one another obliged apparently...) we headed into Arrowtown for a nice meal to finish off the day. Carolyn and I then bade our farewells to the others. They had their course to complete and we needed to head north.

A great day - we really have to come back to fly this area again.