The conditions on Saturday looked pretty good with Cus forming by 11:00 and a base that looked like it was at about 15K so I declared a 500Km out-and-return from Turf to the Grand Canyon and back. The trip up to the Canyon is a beautiful one, with varied terrain ranging from desert (Saguaro, Rocks, Palo Verde and brush) to pine forests around the Canyon itself. The terrain begins at 1580' around Phoenix and rises to over 7000' at the edge of the south rim.
I took off at 12:30 and quickly found a good thermal to 10000' and took off towards the north with Nigel Cripps in his DG303. By the time we had made it to the clouds in the north over the Bradshaws (7500') we had marked the good thermals and were joined by a motley crowd of Ventii, and LS-3, several LS-6s and LS-8s. We split up, with several gliders (including myself) heading off to the east into the Prescott valley towards a line of clouds and others heading out almost on the course line. The valley looked pretty but didn't work all that well and I limped back towards the hills while the others continued on and almost landed out. I found a great thermal that averaged 9 knots from 6000' to 14000' and thought that I had it made! I used a nice looking street and made it to Williams (AZ) [200Km] airport very quickly. By barreling ahead I used up a lot of altitude and found myself below the lift band and couldn't find a thermal. I turned back towards Williams and still couldn't find any lift or sink while the others caught up to me and passed several thousand feet overhead! At Williams I circled around looking for lift at under 1000' agl (the airport is at 6600') until a bit of virga/rain hit and cancelled any chances of my getting away, so I dropped the gear and landed on the paved runway at 14:30.
I contacted the other gliders and was told that they would relay my landout information to Kirk so that he could pick me up; as we doubted that the Pawnees would be powerful enough for a good tow at that altitude (and the price tag would have been beyond my means). After a while a gentleman showed up and was kind enough to give me water and company. He had a 2/3 scale Spitfire homebuilt in his hanger with a 100Hp engine that looked quite interesting; but that only kept me busy for a little while - I knew it was going to be a long wait with 2 1/2 hours of driving time at a minimum.
To make a long wait into a short story - the buddy relay system didn't work that well and Kirk didn't get the news until 17:30 and showed up at 20:00... I got lucky, since Kirk was in a hurry the only dinner I had to spring for was a Big Mac Meal [and I got him a good bottle of Pinot Grigio yesterday].
-Arnd.