This page contains an article which is the first in a three part series entitled A Flying Summer Vacation. This page contains Part III: Mount 7 Golden B.C. This article was first published in the USHGA periodical, Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine in the June 2005 issue.
A Flying Summer Vacation
Part III: Mount 7 Golden B.C.
Imagine a continuous line of mountains extending off into the distance. Above the jagged peaks a continuous row of fluffy cumulous clouds grow. Below a highway runs up the beautiful valley with green fields scattered amongst the dense green forest. To either side more ranges rise; cradling large glaciers with granite spires rising towards the sky and sharp snowy summits stretching out into the distance.
This is a place where on a low cloud-base, bad cross country day pilots regularly land after five hours and seventy kilometers. On a good day several pilots fly one hundred to one hundred fifty kilometers. Because it's midsummer and so far north, it stays light until eleven pm and thermals keep popping until seven or eight. 
The locals are very nice and speak English. There is a good exchange rate. The grassy multi-directional launch has a new graded road to it. Pilots bought the landing zone and are building a clubhouse, shelters and bathrooms as well as camping facilities. This is truly a place of dreams, where pilots gather from all over the world to share thermals and experience the best the Rockies have to offer.
Just as I learned to fly paragliders in 1996, we held our twenty-third airmen's rendezvous in Telluride Colorado. A visiting hang-glider pilot commented that he'd driven two days from the East Coast every year for twenty years to partake in the fly in. I was amazed he appreciated our local site enough to not miss a single year. Being new to the game, I asked the obviously seasoned and well-traveled pilot where in the United States there was better flying. He answered, "Mount Seven". I asked where that was and he said "Canada". 
It took eight years and countless other flying trips before my wife Ursula and I finally made the pilgrimage to Mount Seven. Beginning in June 2004, we traveled up the west coast pausing at flying sites and ended up visiting friends during an informal competition in Pemberton north of the Whistler ski area. We had descriptions of at least twenty flying sites in British Columbia but when I asked other pilots which I should search out and visit they all agreed I not waste too much time in getting to Golden. They admitted there were many goods sites near Cache Creek, Kamloops, the Okenogan and Fraser Valleys. Most said the Vernon area near Lumby was worth a stop on the way, but everyone made it clear that Mount Seven should be our destination.
With a preamble like this, one naturally has high expectations, which can lead to disappointment. We arrived in Golden in the rain, camping gear wet from several days of drizzle. This was British Columbia after-all, and it takes a lot of moisture to grow forests as thick and dense as these. You've got to expect some weather days flying in the mountains, so we'd given ourselves a couple weeks here to improve the chances of catching some really good cross country days.
After a short warm up, I got a nice five-hour seventy-kilometer flight. I flew with two other pilots, and though I felt tired, with a slight headache on landing, I was excited about the great potential.
The next day was a rain day with time to do laundry and visit a nearby lake for swimming and a huge rope swing. Flinging ourselves thirty feet into the lake was scarier than any of the flying I experienced on the trip. Once was enough for me. My hands and forearms stung for an hour afterwards. On the walk back to camp, we discovered the worst thing about too many rain days here: Besides missing flying, mosquitoes hatch, and the newborn insects bite and suck blood with a vengeance. We ran down the trail to escape the swarms.
Still the really big flights I'd dreamed of weren't happening. Frustrated with several south days, we needed a north wind for long runs down the range toward the US border.
The option of flying long distance in other directions isn't usually considered by local pilots. In Pemberton, earlier in the trip, I asked Will Gad how far Canmore Alberta where he lives, is from Golden by air. He said it wasn't far, just over the mountains. He offered that when I land in Canmore, I call him and have a place to stay. I naively mentioned this conversation to some local Golden pilots, and they had a good laugh. Only three pilots, (including Chris Muller, one of Canada's best), had crossed the Rockies, flying over Yoho and Banff National Parks. Will completed the committing crossing just a couple weeks later. (Read about it on gravsports.com or Paragliding and Hanggliding Magazine Issue # ) Though no one flies east, when the wind blew that way, my choice was made.
Leaving the friendly Columbia River Valley felt very committing. Huge, steep glaciated mountains make up Yoho National Park. The first few jumps crossed remote valleys without landings or trails, while I contemplated the ridge top rotors the strong winds create. I eventually saw Field where I spent time ice climbing years past. I flew over the Trans Canada Highway, wondering where the Park boundary was. Since it is illegal to land in the Park, I planned to not land.
With seventy kilometers per hour ground speed, the valley crossings went quickly. A large hanging glacier capped the mountain on the other side of the valley. I'd need only a few climbs to cross the Continental Divide from here, but on the far side of the valley I found massive sink. Of course turning back left me with almost no penetration. As I dropped towards the ground, on speed bar, I crawled out over the valleys swamps. Without another bit of lift I landed. It was a quick hitchhike back to Golden, but the scary valley winds left me unmotivated to try that direction again.
The established routine was a leisurely breakfast then meeting for a ride up the hill a little too early at ten. Our friend Jim Orava showed up from Pemberton to join us for a flight. Together we followed the range south, Jim usually above me closer to the clouds. He forgot extra cloths and after a couple hours, shivering flew out to land. That left me and San Diego pilot Steve Prairie flying together.
My five-hour cross country ended with landing on a knob full of blackened stumps in a clear cut, going backwards as a gust front hit. For the second flight in a row I rode 1400 fpm sink from peak level down three thousand feet to the ground in strong wind. Ursula found the logging road to the clear cut and arrived to help pack my glider in the wind. I radioed Steve as soon as the gust hit. He had thirty seconds warning and also landed going backwards, out in the valley with better LZ options. No clouds fell out within sight, and it was suggested that the arrival of a front caused the high winds that blew through the entire length of the valley and continued into the night.
Again we failed to fly even one hundred kilometers, but I felt I flew well and made few mistakes. It was time to treat Ursula and myself to a good meal and hot springs, at Radium just a bit further down the range. 
The next day the wind blew south again. In an attempt to keep motivated for cross-country I talked with locals about flying north. It seemed no one ever tried to go further than the end of the valley past a big lake. I asked about flying along the Trans Canada Highway and was told LZs where scarce. Nevertheless, Steve and I decided to go for it.
After several easy climbs to cloud base and valley crossings, we found ourselves circling lower and lower over a huge abandoned logging mill. This was where the highway leaves the Columbia River Valley. We vainly flew from end to end of the clearing below us. Steve said he'd try to the south one more time while I took off for a gravel pit to the north that both of us had already flown over. Then Steve radioed he had something. I turned back, now a few hundred above Steve who was just five hundred feet off the deck. Soon, we both found the core of the light-drifting thermal. At 2000 feet over we hit a difficult layer where the lift became scattered.
With much effort I broke through, and climbed higher, back to peak level. From above I watched as Steve circled over the endless forests, looking for that pop that would take him through the inversion. I eventually flew away, past the next clearing and up to the nearby peaks of the Purcell Range. Steve found and lost several thermals, but none carried him high. I was stuck circling a nearby summit in zero sink. I knew eventually something would come through, but while I was low my backup radio battery died and I entered my own little world of efficient circles close to the treetops.
After what seemed forever, a thermal finally came along taking me high over the peak. Steve disappeared, landing back at the clearing. I changed my radio battery while on glide away from the highway. The retrieve crew now included Jaris, a Swiss pilot who landed with Steve, and Ursula. They lost sight of me and decided I had kept going north. In fact I was south of the highway which heads west. After changing to my third radio battery of the flight, I explained where I was, and they followed. Again and again I crossed remote glacier carved valleys, only to arrive at the far side just at peak height. After a particularly good climb out, I could see the highway making a huge turn through the mountains to the South. I fought hard to get this far north, and as the late afternoon thermals weakened I flew away from the peaks to land next to the car.
This little excursion was a first for the site because the locals know that Highway 1 loops back around to the south on its way to Rogers Pass. I had flown to the northern most point of the highway. Though it was only a forty-one kilometer flight and took over four hours I still hadn't broken the difficult one hundred kilometer barrier. My strategy for success on this trip hinged on the fact that in Canada, distances are measured in kilometers, not miles. Therefore I set one hundred kilometers instead of miles as a goal, a much easier proposition, but still not yet accomplished. 
With only a couple more days, my chances were running out. Finally, at the end of July high clouds showed a north wind. Launching at one thirty and getting to cloud-base at 10,200' was effortless. Tomo, from Japan, and Jaris caught up to Steve and me after thirty kilometers. The rest of the day the four of us flew together, jumping to the front range at Edgewater, and crossing Radium and Invermere. One by one we dropped out as the lift died at the end of the day. My last climb out was from the launch at Swansey, as Steve hooked the lift higher and got another real climb from it, I ran a few last ridges down south, landing after 116 km. I had finally made my goal. It was Steve's best flight ever, and we shared a tired buzz of success.
The next day, another high base and south wind provided motivation. Though sore and tired from the seven and a half hour flight the day before, my last day here I couldn't resist the chance to do it again. It was also the first day of the Willi Muller Memorial Cross Country competition. I was invited to join Will Gadd and Keith MacCallough's team (the local Canmore crew) as they attempted to set a new out and back record. I chased the Boomerangs down the range, but when they turned around at Radium, I kept going, landing after one hundred eight kilometers. Will made it all the way back to Golden for a record one hundred sixty nine kilometer out and return flight, and Keith landed just short.
Strangely, after this almost 6 hour flight, I was much less tired then the day before. I had pushed through another barrier, and found a new place in my flying which is easier and more relaxing. There is nothing like being current to make flying easy and after the last month road trip I was current.
Go To Mount 7 Golden B.C. Gallery
Go To A Summer Vacation. Part I: Northwest Roadtrip.
Go To A Summer Vacation. Part II: PWC Pemberton-Whistler Championships.
Go To Flying the Sacred Valley of the Incas.
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