Nearly threw my reserve today....

Close call today while flying XC from Elsinore. We had fairly strong east wind and I was heading out into off the plateau towards Murrieta.  I got a 50% asymmetric collapse on the left side, and very quickly rotated nearly 180 degrees. The collapse didn't come out because of a cravat in the wing tip, which sent the glider within seconds into a strong vertical spiral, with the leading edge facing straight down. GPS analysis showed maximum descent rate of -12.9m/s. That's like flying directly towards the ground at 30 mph while spinning around in a amusement ride.

I could immediately feel the g-force pushing me back into the harness. For a couple of seconds I thought of pulling my reserve as I was probably only about 1000 ft over the ground and a locked in spiral can be very hard to get out of very quickly.  Then instinct kicked in and I pulled hard on the right brake to counter the rotation.  My Delta 2 came out of the spiral as fast it as it went in... violently, and almost immediately. No smooth controlled SIV spiral exit here.  Then I had to get the cravat out in strong sink with a 3:1 glide into wind, over a golf course and expensive homes, and with my heart rate still doing about 150 beats per minute.



The huge sink got even worse to about a 2:1 glide, then I blundered into a beautiful fat strong thermal just on the last scrubby hillside between a subvision with only a single possible landing area.

It was the best thermal of the day, no turbulence at all, and the only thermal of the day that actually went straight up! It took me backup to 6500ft again, more than enough to fly back over the plateau and continue to work my way down the mountains.   But the whole adrenaline rush of collapse, recover, then intense thermal had me mentally too taxed to go on flying over complex terrain in these full on conditions.  I was feeling dehydrated and nauseous from the sheer intensity and unpredictability of the conditions and the collapse.  I had to admit to myself that I just don't fly enough for this amount of flying drama to not be really mentally exhausting.


I turned back into the wind to get out into the valley and went straight into huge sink as soon as I hit the east wind again. Burned though 5000 ft of altitude to get just 3 miles further down the course!

Looking at the tracklog of the thermal, it starts to show some west push from the sea breeze at 5000ft. Possibly what caused the sink and turbulence was the sea breeze starting to blow through and crashing into the east wind flowing up from the valley, Forcing it down or to compress.  My experience with Elsinore is that it is often like this,  - either huge thermals or huge sink, with little in between.