The Anti-Report

From: Chris
Activity_Date: 11/20/01
Remote Name: 209.144.103.187

Comments

Sometimes you win....Sometimes you lose. Winds aloft was reporting light and variable to 9k and the lapse rate looked MUCH better than yesterday. A cloud layer was pushing in but radar and call up to eddie on the peak confirmed that it was just an arm of a storm up north and would pass through quickly. It also appeared to be clearing at 11 when we left the Nord lot. So off we went. Randall, Christian, me, Tom P., and Chris P. We passed Ed coming down from the Chief to retreive a pilot he was instructing. They had to launch off the back from East(?) repeater. We were most of the way up so we continued. Launch was.....depressing. Blowing down HARD. We decided to wind up the road a bit just because none of us had ever been up that way and found the antenna towers. None of us were sure which repeater it was. Still blowing OTB. Putz'd around a bit and headed back to launch. Still OTB but the clouds appeared to be receeding and we could see blue sky all around us.....Everywhere but over Ojai, SB, and Ventura. It was a crystal clear day so at least we had a great view of all the islands, the grade, pine mountain etc. Wasn't looking good so we headed out. Stopped to do a wind check at the Chief Peak trail and with nothing else to do, hiked up. Still nasty wind at the top. Hiked down and upon return to the truck the wind was blowing west...hmmm....Ok so back to launch. Nope...Still OTB. It was so hard OTB that it had blown over one of our agave windsock poles. Ok so that was that. We were finally going to call it a day after 3+ hours of waiting. As we hit rose valley we looked up to see all of the pine mountain range bathed in sunlight. BLAST! Foiled again! Beautiful sinshine all the way down and when we got to Ojai most of the sky was clear. The weather cleared out 2 hours too late and we gave up 20 minutes too early.

It almost looks like they goofed and put what should have been todays weather report on tomorrow. Not pretty. But after these last 2 days I can't say I have much faith in the winds aloft reports. We'll see what it's like in the morning. As always, call me if you want to go.