Day One

Day Eight, August 28, 2004

We had a fantastic last day for the competition. 22 pilots made goal with Jamie Messenger winning the day.
Len Szafaryn came in second for the day and ended up winning the meet and was declared this year's national champion.

Day Seven, August 27, 2004

We finally got a great day of flying in, so the task committee called a classic route that took us way down range (69.3 km).
We fought a slight headwind most of the task with a long glide into the wind mid way through the task that weeded out
quite a few pilots. Fifteen pilots made goal with Len Len Szafaryn winning the day.

Day Six, August 26, 2004

The task was cancelled due to windy conditions.We hung out on launch all day before calling task.
As soon as task was called about 15 pilots free flew. The wind dummies actually got some very
nice flights throughout the day.

Day Five, August 25, 2004

The task was cancelled due to windy conditions.We went to the North Side and had some mellow flying between the rain.
The night ended with a beautiful sunset.

Day Four, August 24, 2004

The task was cancelled due to windy conditions.We hung out on launch for a couple of hours before calling the task off.
Some flew Zaggys dreaming of warmer, less windy and drier days.

Day Three, August 23, 2004

The task was cancelled due to wet conditions. It was a great day to go hiking in Mill Creek Canyon.

Day Two, August 22, 2004

The task was cancelled due to high winds. It was a great day to go hiking up at Snowbird Ski Resort
in Little Cottonwood Canyon.

60 pilots took to the skies over Provo, Utah on August 21, 2004 to start this years Paragliding Nationals.

Ken and Janet Hudonjorgensen of Two Can Fly Paragliding are hosting the event and have
put together an awesome team of staff and volunteers to make this years event unmistakably great.

Today's task was a 29 km flight from Inspo to the South Side Landing Zone at the Point of the Mountain.

The initial climb was very nice for the main gaggle, comprised of about 25 pilots. As we topped out at around 10,000 feet MSL,
we headed north across Provo Canyon. Those that went straight across felt the canyon suck and fought a head wind to get out.
Other pilots picked a course that bowed out into the valley before coming back to the mountains. This route seemed to work better.

Across Provo Canyon, thermals were easy to find and had good climb rates averaging 1000 feet per minute. Some pilots encountered
broken lift and other felt the lift was very organized

The sky started to overdevelop an hour into the competition. Some of the competitors bombed out in the L.Z.
and were looking to relaunch as the weather started overdeveloping. A gust front eventually hit and wind
exceeding 30 miles an hour were reported. One pilot near launch landed in a tree and was competely fine.

Pilots further down on course were not affected as severly. We had one turnpoint called Mohagany, near American Fork Canyon,
9 miles north of the Inspo launch. Pilots who arrived above the turnpoint didn't encounter much problems, those arriving below
had some exciting flying. The winds were strong, cross and turbulent below the turnpoint. Some pilots were able to ridge soar up
the face to tag the turnpoint, while others tossed in the towel in favor of landing.

The final push west to the Point of the Mountain proved difficult and many competitors landed short of goal.