2016 XC Flights by Evergreen Pilots in Washington

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Now that this soaring season in Washington is over, it is time again to take a look at what happened in the friendly skies over Washington. Evergreen Soaring (ES) pilots fly almost exclusively from three airfields - Arlington in western Washington, the ES home base, Twisp in the North Cascades, and Ephrata in Eastern Washington, the base for the Seattle Glider Council.

While Ephrata is the undisputed leading XC soaring facility in the Pacific Northwest, the other two airfields have lately also developed as noteworthy XC soaring centers for Washington glider pilots. Thomas V d Velde made a very useful chart of the OLC tracks of flights with over 200 points over quite a few years that illustrates the areas of XC activity from these airfields.

Speaking of Arlington, this season was quite a disappointment - first it was too wet and stable, then it was too hot and stable. In between there was a short period (May 2 to 13) with the customary spring weather that everybody is waiting for. Ron Clark took full advantage of this short XC window and posted a remarkable 661 OLC point (375 mile) flight, the best ever on the west side, improving the previous best (also by him) by almost 100 OLC points. Altogether there were 71 posted flights, with 3 scoring over 500 points - not bad for a poor season considering it was only in 2011 that there was the first 500+ point flight out of Arlington.

Ephrata had a busy year with the informal Dust-Up contest, the Region 8 contest and a number of encampments by various clubs contributing to 435 posted flights by 71 pilots. Kelvyn Flavall made several outstanding flights (up to 777.8 points) but altogether there were "only" five (5) 500+ point flights.

And then there was some intensive XC soaring from Twisp, primarily due to the OLC camp, a joint effort by the Sawtooth Soaring Association and Evergreen Soaring in June. This was a true XC soaring bonanza, with 16 pilots making 57 flights and posting eleven (11) f1ights with over 500 points. Once again Ron Clark topped everyone else with a 691+ point flight, which combined mountain flying over the North Cascades with flying out over the Columbia Basin all the way to Davenport. Arguably Twisp was the most successful Washington state airfield for XC soaring and the OLC camp should become an annual event. Mountain flying may offer outstanding lift conditions but it is not for everyone - especially with the limited landing options in the North Cascades -and should be approached with caution.

The following table summarizes the XC achievements of the Evergreen pilots in Washington in 2016 and hopefully provides some motivation to do even better in the coming year!

Best flights (highest OLC points) over 350 points