Weather didn't look great Friday (in fact, we heard from someone at the PUD that it was blowing 40 mph) but we headed over around 1600 in clouds and showers. Other folks reported later that they ran into snow on Stevens Pass. We had no trouble finding a pull-thru site at Beebe Bridge campground for our Aliner (although by Saturday night all sites were full).
After a leisurely breakfast we showed up at Lakeside Park around 0930 to find the wind already pretty strong. No paragliders landed on the beach after we got there for the rest of the weekend (Well, maybe one landed really early Sunday morning). Even hang gliders were finding it slow going to reach the beach, and one misjudged the wind speed enough to land short in knee-deep water. By noon it was pretty obvious that we weren't going to fly and gave Kerie a ride up to the Butte to retrieve her vehicle. Even the hang gliders were breaking down in the face of the increasing wind speed.
C.J. volunteered to take Aaron and Kerie's son Jagur for a hike with us and we took off for Alta Lake State Park. The 1.2 mi trail to a good view on a rocky ridge had about 20 switchbacks and nine-year-old Jagur told us that he had never hiked up a mountain before. He was pretty proud of himself for having made it all the way to the viewpoint. Alta Lake has a nice tree-shaded campground on the small lake situated between two rocky ridges. There was lots of room on this off-season weekend, but I expect that it would be full during the summer. We returned to Lakeside in time to find out that the pizza feed had been moved to the Chelan Falls soccer field where it hopefully would be less windy and cold. We made a brief detour to Beebe to be sure our Sport had not blown away (and to pick up some warmer clothes). About thirty-some-odd pilots had signed up for the Beach'N and there were lots of friends and family as well so we made pretty short work of 16 pizzas. After dinner Danny Uchytil and some of the late Bill Avirett's friends held a brief memorial service for him. Later the wind seemed to almost die off and a number of us headed to Lakeside to see how it looked over there. Unfortunately it was still blowing like stink and we ended up setting up an early meeting time for the next morning with Paul Dees. C.J. and I were pretty tired and headed back to camp to get some rest (after a trip to WalMart to grab some porta-potti chemical).
When we got up at 0700 the wind was already blowing our streamer around. We met Paul at 0815 instead of 0830 and went right to launch. Just as we got there two paragliders launched (Ralph Boirum and Gene Beaver) and flew to the beach and the soccer field respectively. No one felt like launching next and the sky got progressively more overcast. The wind stayed at a reasonable velocity but it was blowing from the SW up The Green Monster and the hangs that were launching were soaring in somewhat turbulent conditions. No other paras launched and C.J. and I drove back to Lakeside around 1000. After some visiting we drove over to the gravel pit where Larry and Tina were doing some training with Jasmine, Justin (?) and Ceannie. Rob Dixon showed up a little later and dusted off his launch skills on a Falcon 225. I bought a Dog Frostbite shirt from Tina, then we went back to Beebe to pack up and head home around noon. We were in no rush so we thought we might check out a couple of places we had missed on the way home. The Washington State Apple visitors center wasn't open and we continued on up the road toward Blewett Pass and stopped at the old mine and townsite. After walking around for a while we found the remains of the arrastra (Later: looks like we may have missed the arrastra and found the remains of the old stamp mill instead) and had lunch sitting on the large timbers. By the time we reached I-90 the weather looked threatening ahead and we soon ran into rain which lasted all the way to North Bend.
