It was another spectacular weekend of flying in the Valley of the Dinosaurs!

This year we almost achieved a 4 for 4 weekend but the winds Friday evening were simply too calm to attempt a flight given the amount of crop still in the fields and the level of moisture in the surrounding badlands. After meeting at the hotel around 5PM the gang of Craig, Walt & Linda, Richard and I headed up to the plateau to check wind conditions. One, two then three pibals were sent aloft and each showed the same result. Straight up! It was off to Boston Pizza to meet up with the rest of the gang to get caught up and have a few brews.

The Saturday morning briefing was anything but BRIEF!

FOG!

The initial briefing was obvious as we couldn't even see the tops of the hills around the hotel. It was 7:30 AM and we decided to wait another hour and see what the fog was going to do. Craig, Dennis and I went up top to the airport to see if the fog was absent on the flats. The fog was still thick up top but it was slowly getting brighter.

By the time the next briefing came around the fog was still thick and preventing us from heading to the launch field. It was now 9AM and we decided to wait another hour for conditions to get better.

10 AM and the sun was finally starting to poke its head out. We decided to head to the beach to see if the conditions where better at the launch field. It was still another hour before we got the GO for launch. It was close to 11:30 AM before I had the club balloon airborne and into the sky. Kind of late but the air was still fairly cool. Bankole and I drifted along the valley for close to 45 min before the winds pushed us up and out of the valley into the farmlands. After dealing with a leaky Whisper Burner valve and having only one side to fly on I decided it was time to take the next available landing location. This field would ultimately be a cut canola field. I don’t usually land in a cut canola but I was flying a balloon without a redundant fuel system and figured I would rather be on the ground carefully packing the balloon than flying the balloon in an unsafe manner. Accidents are rarely caused by a single failure but I wasn’t about to wait for something else to go wrong. Upon landing and only disturbing one row of cut canola I learned that the landowner had stopped and talked to the crew indicating that he would like us to carry the balloon out of the field. DRAT! Does he have any idea what we’re talking about?

Good thing that other balloons were around as it would have taken us the better part of the day to get the all the equipment carried out without their help. Thanks again guys! Champagne toasts, three initiations and off to breakfast, or should I say lunch! Later that afternoon Walt, Dennis and I checked the whisper valve and determined that the problem was a loose nut on the business end of the handle. A quick spray of silicone and a tweak of the nut with a wrench had the problem fixed. We would be back at it again in a short three hours,

The afternoon was calm and this time the briefing was short. We were at the launch field by 5:45PM and in the air by 6:15PM. I was once again the first to get airborne and once again had a nice slow drift through town to the east almost exactly the same as the morning flight. This time I took Jody for a ride as it had been quite a while since she was up in the club balloon. Once again the winds took us down the valley and up the north side into the farmland. Once up top the flight turned into a slow crawl through one coulee after another. Not a landing site for kilometres around. Looking far off into the distance in the direction of my flight I spotted a small field with bails of hay. The winds are light and variable, what are my chances of making that field? After what seemed like an eternity the corner of the field looked like a definite possibility. It was getting late and I was going to get the balloon into that field if it was the last thing I did. Luckily, as we came down, the wind continued to bring us into the field as if to say you’ve had enough hard times this weekend and the good times are here. This would not be the case! The landing went well and Bert was right there when we landed. The pack-up went as usual but as I was about to get into the truck to make our way out of the field I noticed we had a flat rear passenger tire. The gremlins where back and hard at work. Out with the jack but with the soft dirt in the field and a small 2x4 as a base we had a devil of a time getting the tire changed. A fence nail was to blame for this "adventure". On the way back to town we meet up with Ralph and learned that he had somehow broken his back window in his truck so I didn’t feel so bad now.

Sunday morning was the regular trip out to Morin where we would hopefully, like most years, experience some exceptional box winds. The sky was clear in Drumheller as we pulled out of the hotel parking lot to make our way 30km’s N.W. to the Morin campground. The first sign that there was trouble was Jack and his crew heading back down the hill into Drumheller as we were making our way up the hill. We stopped and Jack explained that there was thick heavy fog up top and he was convinced that we wouldn’t be flying that morning. Sure enough as we up onto the flat land the fog was thick and solid. We decided to head out to Morin anyway and see what was happening out there. All the crews eventually arrived but the fog just refused to lift. Eventually with most people experiencing the belly growls all the crews headed back to Drumheller. Dennis suggested that we wait a few minutes and talk to Ralph on the radio as he headed up out of the valley. No sooner had Ralph arrived at the entrance to the campground than he radioed back that the fog was starting to lift. That’s all the news we needed and Bank, Bert, Dennis and I started the process of getting the club balloon into the sky. Dennis was going to be the pilot today and he was going to take Bert up with him. Bert has been to Morin many times but he had never been up in a balloon to see the campground and river valley from the air. This would turn out to be one of the most spectacular flights I had ever observed. The valley was slowly clearing with a few clouds still hanging low in the valley. The winds near the surface where setting up for a box as the balloon slowly drifted off to the north. Dennis played around in the valley for about 30 minutes eventually ascending up the west side of the valley wall. It was about this time that we spotted Big Toy popping up from the entrance to the campground. It was Linda who had also noticed that the fog was lifting and decided to take a ride down the valley. Once above the valley Dennis began a slow 45-minute long glide back over the campground and eventually made it over the highway. A quick descent and he was on a slow approach for a landing at Morin International Balloonport. Sure enough, through a little prodding, we got him to abort his landing near the entrance to the campground and convinced him to bring the balloon right back to the field where he had taken off from. A truly spectacular end to a fantastic weekend!

See Yah in May…

Steve

Satuday evening setup	Saturday evening ready for launch	Rosanne and Raymond on the mouth	Sunday morning setup	Sunday morning inflation
Dennis just before launch	Sunday morning as the fog lifts	Sunday morning on the west side of the Red Deer River	Linda on Sunday morning