32.881678,-111.854982,Francisco Grande, Casa Grande, Arizona,
USA

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The task was stopped due to a fifty kilometer gust front to our south coming our
way.

Dustin pranced into the task committee meeting at 10 AM and said that we were
going to El Tiro, a sailplane port to the southeast, because they were having a
barbeque. He didn't ask what the weather was first. He ignored the clouds to our
south. He didn't look at the satellite photo showing a finger of clouds coming
from Mexico. He didn't hear about the better lift and higher cloud base to the
north.

When we got out on the flight line the clouds to the south looked much worse
with virga. Kraig and Bunner wanted to do a task to the northwest. Dustin wanted
to go to the barbeque. He offered to remove a single waypoint from the task to
make it easier but it still sent us in the wrong direction. This was as the
launch window was opening.

Because we only had three tugs yesterday and it was hard to get going, pilots
were in the launch line twenty minutes before the start of launch. We set an
launch interval of an hour and a half before the first start time and on this
day everyone was launched fifteen minutes before the first start time.

The lift was weak and the top of lift was only 6,000'. I had launched early so
it was a long wait until the start window. We could see the longer and thicker
virga and nasty looking clouds to the south. We could already see the gust front
way to the south.

Went out past the edge of the five kilometer start cylinder to finally find some
good lift and get up. Took the first start time at 1:45 reasonably low, but
immediately ran into 400 fpm. Almost everyone stopped for this so it was easy to
catch up to the guys who started higher.

We headed south to the Casa Grande hills and then south along the ridge line
until we found 500 to 600 fpm. It was shaded on the ground and you could see
miles of virga south of and parallel to our course line and dust all along the
virga maybe ten miles to the south. There were nasty clouds above the virga. It
was all blue to the north and back at the hotel.

I was climbing fast and getting up to 9,000' with plenty of altitude to go.
Everyone had stopped for the good lift so there was no one out in front to chase
down.

Dustin got on the radio and mentioned that we were climbing in the gust front.
That was enough for me. I turned around and raced back fifteen kilometers to the
Francisco Grande. It seemed stupid to go on and I also figured that the task
would be stopped (and therefore not scored as we hadn't flown for an hour after
the first start time). Also I wanted to land before the gust front hit.

As I came back to the hotel I noticed that all the ATOS gliders had also landed
back at the hotel. The ATOS pilots were on the radio with each other, saw the
situation and turned around before I did. I was the only flex wing pilot to turn
around before the task was stopped.

Jamie stopped the task soon after I landed back at the hotel. I called Belinda
and told her that a gust front was coming to the hotel, so pilots probably did
not want to fly back to it. It came five minutes later and amazingly enough a
couple of free flying pilots weren't paying attention as their gliders got
picked up. My glider and all the ATOSes were hidden behind the hotel tower.

Everyone seemed to have landed safely, many at the Eloy airfield (which wouldn't
have been hosting skydiving at the time).