Hard Deck

Here is a little rambling rant I wanted to get off my mind:
This has been a very interesting thread with a lot of good information and statistics put forth.
What this has driven home for me is, really, how dangerous this sport of cross country sailplane flying really is. It is hard to attract new pilots to this cross country aspect of Soaring because it is a reality that landing off airport is so dangerous in alot of areas we fly. I'm only familiar with the area west of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, never been gliding in the east or the midwest or the south. I mainly fly out of Salida, Parowan, Nephi and Ely and at my home site of Telluride. In 20 + years of going cross country in a sailplane I have only put it into a field once, flying out of Logan, and it was a unworked semi clearing that was really rough. I was surprised that my glider was OK after I got out, super rough.
That makes me think that's why alot of Pilots don't really like assigned tasks, unless there carefully designed to fly airport to airport. As several posts have made clear for various reasons off airport landings are SO dangerous. Look at Blairstown's statistics, scary.
TAT days at least give you a choice on where to go as far as safety is concerned.
One particularly crazy area we send pilots on competition tasks IMHO is the area SE out of Parowan between Cedar City and Kanab, over Zion National park. I have been so scared out there several times. You go down in there and you are going to get killed, for sure. Yet they call tasks over it. Sure you can go around it, but it is a long way around, but you do have that choice of course.
This hard deck proposal that started this thread has turned out to be fairly complex. Another layer of rules when we are trying to get away from more rules.
It is clear that alot of nasty accidents are caused by pilots desperate not to land out in a field. Circling very low and trying not to land, and then either stalling and spinning or blowing the approach. I am guilty of this low level circling too. Last year out of Nephi I had a very low save over the Yuba Reservoir while setting up to land. It was a long series of events that led to me being a couple of hundred feet off the ground going into a unknown potential landing site, on the dirt road going into the reservoir.It looked doable from the air but who knows, all I thought was road landings often go bad. Baby Jesus got me out of that one.
I don't think any new rule is going to change this behavior. Us guys that are still alive have to be as careful as possible. Cross Country Soaring is super fun when its going well, bombing down cloudstreets at 17K with your friends is the best, but we have to remember that when close to the ground, you are one, quick, easy to make mistake from getting killed.
Keep the speed up and be careful, especially when close to the ground, either taking off, ridge soaring or landing.
And try to stay of of those fields that you don't know about first hand.

In some respects, please don't pick on Blairstown. I have know quite a few that have flown/still fly there. There have been, mostly the last few years, a few real "hard chargers" willing to do some things that I have an issue with.
When they talk to lower time XC pilots and basically say, "oh yeh, sure, suck it up at this transition and you will likely make it.....".
I have seen some local threads by some of these hard chargers and comments on what they consider a decent landing option.
Welllllll......yessssss........that spot is likely better than trees, but marginally so. Even me, with some places I have successfully landed, looked at some of these proposed options and said, "WTF!"?

So maybe a couple peeps with a high tolerance to major risk (usually in someone else's glider) says, fine, go for it, may be setting a poor example.
In general, I wouldn't say Blairstown is high risk.
FWIW......

Amen, Rick. Great sensible words.