On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 1:12:43 PM UTC-8, Branko Stojkovic wrote:
On Thursday, November 28, 2019 at 11:57:58 AM UTC-8, Jonathan St. Cloud wrote:
The air in which we fly is not uniform, sometimes not even honest. Peter Masak, was a great pilot. He met fate flying in an area and conditions he was familiar with. While I did not view his GPS trace I did speak with a pilot whom did. Nothing unusual noted in the GPS.

Yes, ridge/mountain flying presents increased risk compared to flying in the flat lands. I personally take the following precautions in order to minimize the additional risk associated with mountain flying:

I fly a short winged glider in the mountains (12.6m span).

I fly with an instrument that calculates wind speed and direction in near real time (LX 9000).

I apply good airmanship when ridge flying, by maintaining generous margins in airspeed and distance from the ridge.

I only fly competitions in flat lands.

Branko XYU

Flat lands would be more dangerous for me as 99.9 % of my flying has been in the mountains , much of that in a 26.5 meter glider. Therein lays one of the issues when trying to quantify how safe this sport is. To me it is safe enough to want to do it as often as the daily struggles of life permit.