Canadian Nationals Day 1

The whole competition is being run out of the Golden ECO Ranch so it's only a short stroll from tent to the headquarters where a dedicated group of ladies cook breakfast for us each day. We are not worthy. The whole shebang is being run by extreme sports legend and all around great guy Will Gadd. Will welcomed us and ran through the normal comp stuff including that there will be no point penalties this year for any indiscretion (cloud flying, not signing out etc) - any offenders will simply be thrown in the Columbia river. Except if you land over the back of the range in which case the Grizzly bears and the mosquitoes are enough punishment. Everyone agreed to behave.

We headed straight to launch but a re-brief was called for 4pm and eventually a task set with a start at 7.15pm and a goal close at 10.30! One of the amazing things about this place is that it's actually possible that a determined pilot could still be flying that late. We got to 2800m (a couple hundred higher than Mount Seven) in light, extremely smooth air prior to the start and then basically raced around the 35k course on the speed bar, slowing up only once to thermal. Sure it's mickey mouse but it's super fun as they say in the local lingo. The results for the day were:

1 - Matt Beechinor, USA - 42.07
2 - Jamie Messenger, UK
3 - Keith Maccullough, CAN

And Aussies:

5 - Gavin Zahner
6 - Me
9 - James Thompson
15 - Heike Hamann

It was easily the fastest task I've ever flown, Gav caught me at the second last turn point while I was screwing with my GPS thinking I still needed more height to make goal but we ended up arriving with many hundreds of metre's to spare. The air was so relaxing I managed to take photos before during and after the task. You've gotta love doing tasks in air that allows hands-off-the-brakes, speed-bar-on photography :-)