Two Hike and Fly Laps with Skywalk

Today, a work appointment in the morning and a cloudy, calm day did not give that much opportunity for either training or flying.  But since the next week is pretty much a write-off flying-wise, we decided to go to Kuratake for a lap of carry and fly.  With the super-light Skywalk Range X-Alps harness, and additional body weight loss due to continued training, I am now basically too light for any of my gliders.  I borrowed an XS size Skywalk Poison 3 (weight range to 90 kg) from a friend, which nicely matched the harness anyway!  With this setup, my pack weighed an X-Alps rated 9kg (harness with rescue parachute, glider, helmet, sweater, trekking poles, vario, radio, phone), and I was 87kg all-up, pretty much perfect!

Landing (dodging parked cars!) at the trailhead parking lot.

Starting out the first run up, I realized that if I hurry, I could actually complete two laps with about 5 minutes to spare to get home just in time for work.  The first lap took just over an hour: run up 27:36, about 10 minutes to set up, 10 minute flight, 15 minutes packing, leaving only 55 minutes for the second lap, giving me motivation to go extra hard on the uphill, finishing with a new record (with pack) at 27:18, 5 minutes setup, 10 minute flight, 10 minute packing.  Made it!

On the heart rate graph you can see I had to work a bit harder for the second lap, which was only 18 seconds faster, overcoming fatigue with a bit of extra motivation!