Here comes the sun!

Finally! We had a week of glorious sunshine followed by, well...more rain. But hey, we got A TON of work done in that one sun-filled week and got caught up on most of the jobs that were pending fair weather. We were able to get technicians up to several high altitude sites to do long awaited repairs. Some of them took just a couple of hours, and some of them took the whole day. But the end result was that all equipment is now in good working order, and all the technicians were safely transported to and from their field sites. It's always interesting to see how different the sites are during different times of year. They all have their challenges -- in the winter you might have weather to schedule around, snowpack or blowing snow to deal with in the LZ, and limited places to land; in the summer you'll have warmer temperatures, higher humidity, and afternoon thunderstorms to have to navigate around. Spring and fall? Who knows what you'll get around here, it could be all of the above. I have flown as a crew member with a lot of helicopter pilots, and I have to say that it is always impressive to watch John Witte perform his job. He is absolutely one of the best, and if you are looking for a pilot in the Mountainous Western Region, he is the one you want to fly your job. (Don't tell him I've just publicly complimented him...pretty sure he doesn't keep up on my blog and I don't want it to go to his head. Ha!) 

We also had the pleasure of flying the GoPro Bomb Squad again, this time in Eagle-Vail for the GoPro Games. It wasn't quite the stellar weather we had in Steamboat when we flew with them so it was a little iffy on whether or not we'd be able to fly, and if so, whether or not they would be able to fly. In the end, we only flew one of the two days, but they were able to get in a few jumps with both parachutes and wing-suits and some photography for the town. The next day, they entertained the crowd by flying themselves around in their powered parachutes. I haven't gotten any photos from them on this job yet, but will post them when I do. In the meantime, here's a photo of Marshall in his wing-suit describing to John the next jump plan.

Other than that, we did a few tours last week and then flew to Fort Collins and back for routine maintenance on the only clear and beautiful day this week. It looks like a nice weekend ahead, and a bit of spotty weather through the next several days, but overall our weather is improving. Hoping for continued clear skies so we can make everybody happy. We've got a lot on our calendar! I'm going to get out and play this weekend but I'll be back soon.