On Jun 3, 10:11*am, soartech wrote:
This is a more appropriate subject heading. Frank's very frank post on
Soaring Cafe says he hiked up 1000 feet to the mountain top after the
"arrival" so he must have been in great shape! His coordinates
34.25980, -105.79420, show on Google Earth as looking like a nice
smooth ridge top but as you zoom in it looks like there are dead tree
trunks all over the place. Is that from an old forest fire? Glad you
are OK Frank!

Sure glad he came out reasonably OK. I suspect this will put Frank
out of commission, gliding wise, for some time, til he can get a
replacement. I'll miss his narratives of the many contests he
attends. I always enjoy his comments.

With not one, but two, glider repair shops based at Moriarity, not far
from the "landing" site, and the site being obviously accessible by
walking from a road, it would seem reasonable that the wrecked glider
could be taken apart by a few folks on the ground, airlifted by a high
altitude helicopter in pieces to a road, and be taken back to
Moriarity for inspection, and possibly repair.

Once again, we have an eastern pilot that got bit by getting too close
to a western mountain. Ridge lift is often very different out west,
and not very forgiving. We've seen our share of that in the Durango,
CO area. Handily, in this case, the pilot was able to actually walk
away, and even hike uphill for a good way. I just wasn't his time to
go. Three cheers for that.

I will look forward to his writing a longer, more in depth, piece on
the flight, evaluation of his critical mistake(s) and post flight
events than his short announcement on Soaring Cafe.

Take care Frank!