From the Editor

Trying to climb out of the smoke

Jill McCaw

We spent a week at Panorama Mountain Resort where Robert, our younger son, was working. Panorama is about fifteen kilometres from the town of Invermere which is the home of ‘Soar the Rockies’, the Invermere Soaring Centre. Invermere is to British Columbia what Omarama is to New Zealand so of course we went to visit and, on a rare post rain day which cleared the sky a little, we got to fly.

Many visitors to Omarama will remember Trevor Florence who was a Glide Omarama instructor for a number of years. Trevor says hello. Trevor is the owner and he’d love to see more New Zealand pilots come visit him for a very different sort of mountain flying to what they’re used to. I recommend you go before the end of July if you want to avoid fire season and smoke. Apparently, it was clear until the week before we arrived. Invermere is in a valley surrounded by really big mountains, lots

and lots and lots of them. But they don’t get wave; well, not well set up streets of it like we do. That’s what makes their mountain soaring so different to ours. All their flying is in thermals. Most summer days the thermals are to 12 to 14,000 feet. Mind you, the mountains are well over 10,000. It was such a shame that the smoke didn’t let us get to experience that. I’ve seen the pictures. It’s an incredibly scenic place when you can see it.

Trevor has a lovely Duo and he and John flew the day after it had rained when the sky was relatively clear. John got a reasonable flight and some good photos. I didn’t fly until the following day and the smoke was coming back. It was quite bizarre. There must have been an inversion at around 10,000 feet and the smoke was held below it. After the longest tow of my life, to about 8,500 feet, we scunged around in weak lift on the spurs and gradually managed to climb a little, all the time feeling like we must break out of the smoke soon. We never did.

The whole world was vaguely orange

Jill McCaw

The spectacular views were masked and muted and the whole world was vaguely orange.

On the return from our flight Trevor spotted a new and unreported fire starting in the forest high above the highway just across from the airfield and radioed it in. As the airfield is also the local base for a firefighting helicopter team, a helicopter came up to see while we circled to mark the place. That evening as the club put on a barbeque in our honour, we watched as fire fighters and their gear were ferried up onto the hill, settling in for a busy night. It barely raised eyebrows among the locals.

We’d spent nearly four weeks with skies ranging from slight orange haze to the low visibility of around 50 metres. We were never in the worst of it. It smelled like clean wood smoke and you actually stopped smelling it, except when trying to thermal through the top of it. Then it just made me sick. Coming home to clear blue skies was wonderful.