It didn't look like a Saddle day but Chris and Patricia, Frank, and Meredyth were going so we went along. There was no sign of wind all along the snowy ride to Ellensburg and over Rye Grass Summit to Vantage. We ran out of snow on the ground and the sky was clear with scattered Cu's when we arrived at the LZ. Jeff K. answered my radio call with "Zero to three, straight in". When we reached the top (impelled by seeing that Jeff had launched and was soaring), the wind had not changed although there were more clouds.
The really good news was that a PG was coring up into sight from above the LZ (we later found out it was Curt from the Tri-Cities). We were pretty quickly rigged and laid out on launch but no one wanted to go first in the (very) light wind and possibly sink out. Chris finally sacrificed and found only light lift to extend his flight. Meredyth disappeared after launch while C.J. and Frank worked a small thermal.
I watched Patricia launch then unhooked and walked over to the edge to observe before possibly driving down. Patricia was circling in lift and climbing north of the LZ. C.J. was on the ground with Chris but she reported Mer and Frank had gone to cloudbase then north. That was good enough for me (and we had to run a retrieve for the other two vehicles on top anyway) so I geared up again and launched. As expected there was no lift close in even in the left bowl so I headed for the LZ and caught a good climb over Crab Creek back to and above launch. When that petered out, I flew to the lakes and climbed, flew north a bit and then climbed above a point that was lined up with the runway of a private airstrip. Since the drift was out of the west by this time (ca 1515) I flew east for another thermal to over 3K. The cloud I flew under north of the microwave tower did not produce any lift so I headed back to the lakes. By then I was pretty beat from all that turning so I called it a day by landing at the LZ.
C.J. and Chris had gone back up in Mer's Toyota FJ, and Patricia had driven up with her sister and family. They found the wind had switched and was now over-the-back. By 1615 C.J. was back to the LZ and we headed home while Chris and Patricia went to pick up Mer and Frank at the George 76 station. On the way back we stopped at Ellensburg for gas at the new prices ($3.559 at Conoco) bringing the cost of a one-day trip to Saddle to $65 just for gas. (Oh well, we hadn't been over there with the Trooper since last October..)
