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I hope you all are having a great time in Slovenia. Since I could not make the trip out there I thought I’d share a little stoke from the Rocky Mountain USA.

I recently had a memorable flight with friends through a wild remote part of Utah yesterday. The Uinta mountains are a 100km long range. All of it has a Wilderness designation which means no roads or motor vehicles are allowed. Many of the peaks you see in the photos are over 4,000 meters high and we were leaving the thermals at about 5,500 m (the legal ceiling in the USA) to go on glide.

The Uinta mountains are close to home for the USA’s largest population of pilots, but the remote and committing nature of the terrain, combined with the highly volatile and unpredictable weather patterns, means that this line is only flown once every 2 years on average. Until this flight, you could count the number of pilots that have flown deep into the range on one hand. Dropping below 4000 m feels desperately low, and landing deep in the range would mean walking well into the night just to reach a 4×4 dirt track. It will take another hour in a vehicle to reach a paved highway.

We had 6 pilots in there yesterday including 2 visiting pilots that knew almost nothing about the area. My TRITON 2 light is the perfect glider for me in this type of terrain. I have the glide and speed to escape when needed, and the performance is well matched with the higher aspect 2 liners that were in our group.

 

 

 

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