Mt. Washington Wave Flight

Dan (EA) and I (BU) had surprisingly good wave flights last Saturday.  The forecast was for strong northwest winds but the boundary layer (top of thermals) was forecasted to go up to about 7,500 ft.  The top of the boundary layer is the dividing line between unstable and stable air.   For wave you normally want stable air at the top of the mountains so we were not sure if we would find any.

Thermaling and ridge soaring to get to Mt. Washington was fairly straight forward.  Then Dan dropped back to the Carters and found wave over the Wildcat parking lot so I followed.  We enjoyed nice strong lift sometimes over 6 kts up to Class A airspace (18,000').

Dan at 17,742' still climbing at 2.7 kts

You would think from 18,000' the trip home would be a piece-of-cake but with the strong headwind and abundant sink Dan just squeaked it into PM.  I stopped to pick up extra altitude at the Mt. Lafayette wave.