Clay Cliffs and 4WD Tracks

Well, Wednesday saw us off on another adventure. This day was a trip around to some of the local attractions. Our First stop was the clay cliffs just a few km's to the West of the airfield. Flying above them is quite impressive all on it's own, however actually climbing up into the heart of them is another adventure all on it's own. They were absoluetly beautiful and the picture here does them absolutely no justice.

From the Clay Cliffs we decided on taking a drive around Lake Ohau ( Oh - How ). Lake Ohau is roughly 20 km's from Omarama. The color of the lake is just stunning as it's fed from two rivers that are both glacial type rivers. Along the way we found a few places that looked like you could get food and or gas from them however, they were all closed as the season is still getting up to speed around here. Our little drive also found us off of the beaten track a little bit and we found ourselves crossing a Ford or Fjord. So our little lancer car has done us quite proud by crossing such items as if it were made for such things. It seems some of the most stunning scenery in this country is found off of the beaten path.

The last picture I will leave you with is a picture of what we call a cap cloud. These clouds mark the tops of mountain waves, which we as glider pilots love to see. If you look closely at this one along the bottom you can almost see the shape of the cloud matches the shape of the mountain peaks.

So that's all for now from Omarama. Today the wind has already reached 20G30 knots ( 37 gusting 56 km/h) and a passenger aircraft that always calls our base for gliding activity has told us the winds at 22,000ft are blowing at 82 kts (143km/h) So I'm sure it is going to get even windier along the ground today. Good thing for us we have already completed a few flights for the day.

Cheers, love you all and miss you lots

Oh yes and another kiwi-ism for you. They call them cattle stops, not gaurds, or texas gates.

Ryan and Britt