September, 2003

The 2003 Willi XC Challenge
by Vincene Muller

Golden, July 26 to August 4, 2003
If you missed the flying in Golden this year – too bad for you! It was the best year since the early ‘90’s.

Some of the highlights:
No rain for weeks – hot hot hot
No accident or deployments

The week before the Willi started it seemed that all the Saskatchewan hang glider pilots were in Golden. They had some great flying.

Manitoba hang glider pilots showed up for the Willi. These hang glider pilots regularly flew past Invermere and as they had no driver, one would hitch-hike back, retrieve a vehicle and then go back and pick the others up. Eventually they read the rules and discovered that not only were out and return flights allowed, they counted for more points. Problem solved.

Ontario Paraglider pilots once again came out for their annual excursion. Once again Charles Warren led the way with regular flights down range. Charles ended up with one of the few injuries of the week – blisters due to a long hike at the end of the week.

Many pilots had their best flights whether distance or time in the air. Congratulations to Janet, Dale, Nicole [longest flight in Canada by a woman 128km], Norm, Andrew, Jill & Craig from NZ/Australia, Winston, Ralph and all the others – too many to name. Lots of flights over 100km.

Mike Spencer found the missing plane – all that search and rescue training he and Barb have taken helped him identify it. His TV interviews were just before his annual visit to have his hair colored (red this year, pink moustache for the party]

The last Saturday night many pilots experienced the infamous Golden glass off “I am going
up and I can’t come down!”

This year there were three parties. The first weekend, smokies and beer (thanks Randy) at Muller’s in the Blaeberry. Following Friday was the only day not flyable (high winds), most pilots were happy to have a rest before Deb & Mark Fraser’s annual salmon feast. Once again it was a great party and the food…….. gourmet! Once again Randy provided the keg
[the empty keg was stolen the following day from the campground by the cooler thieves!]
Sunday night Randy hosted a party at meet headquarters in the campground and presented the awards.

The meet came to an abrupt end on Sunday morning (fortunately after I landed) when fire officials requested no more flying due to the expanding fire behind Harrowgate. Pilots who had flown all week were quite satisfied, the closure mainly affected Hugo and Jerry and their tandem flights and the weekend warriors who had come out for the long weekend.

Pilots traveling back to Calgary got caught in the traffic when Highway 95 was closed between Castle Mountain and Radium which meant traffic from Invermere and south was rerouted through Golden. We hear that it took over an hour to get from the south end of Golden to the TransCanada highway!

A special thanks to Golden pilots, Peter, Aaron, Scot, Jerry, Chris, Serge etc. the new outhouse is great (donations of toilet paper are welcome) and launch improvement outstanding. Note that these guys are taking water up to launch to encourage the grass to grow! Buy a T-shirt at the Nicholson Store – profits go to the site fund.

Don’t forget to put the Willi on your calendar next year!

Click here for Final Standings

Note on standings: Points were allocated 10 for each km of open distance, 13 for each km of an O&R that had a return leg at least 50% of the out, and 15 for each km of an O&R that was closed with a successful landing at Nicholson LZ. Any successful landing (as determined by a jury of your peers present) at Nicholson got a 100 point bonus.

So for a few of the longer ones: Hugo, Jill and Craig got 1600 for closing an O&R of 100km; Richard got his 1750 for closing a 110km O&R; the longest open distance flight was Hugo's to 145km, but Charles got more that day for flying back 10 km from 140. The O&R bonus added a nice strategic twist to the meet. - Randy Parkin