There are two DZ's in or near Vancouver that I wanted to jump at. The closest to Vancouver is Pacific Skydivers . Its based at Pitt Meadows Airport and is close to the Fraser River. The Other DZ is Skydive Vancouver and it is based at Abbotsford which is a little further East and on the opposite side of the Fraser River. The first few days I was in Canada the weather was quite wet and no good for jumping. However the weather cleared up for last weekend 30th August. Because Pacific Skydivers were having a boogie this past weekend I decided to jump there first.
As I said in my previous entry to the blog, I am actually staying in Abbotsford, but is only about a 45 minute drive from Abbotsford to Pitts Meadow.
I had best say something about the countryside and general climate before I go on about the skydiving. From temperature point of view, when I arrived it was about the mid to high teens, over the past few days it has gradually got warmer and it is expected to reach about 24/25 degrees C and be sunny for the next week or so. The countryside is quite spectacular, from where I am staying I can see snow capped Mount Baker in the USA very clearly. There are heavily wooded areas between the towns and the Fraser River which is very wide carves its way through the countryside.
As ever when I have introduced myself at the DZ, they were really helpful. The lady I was dealing with and who sorted out all the paperwork was Debbie. The DZ as I said earlier is at the local airport. Most of the air traffic seems to be light planes with the biggest being actually from the DZ. They have two King Air aircraft, unfortunately they were off line so they brought in a rather smart Twin Otter for the boogie, there are a couple of pictures attached. They operate normally from 13.5k and open seven days a week. The facilities such as packing seem mainly to be in the hanger complex, though they had covered packing areas arranged outside while I was there and outside catering for burgers and drinks etc.
There is a big landing area for regular and Tandem jumpers and a separate area for swoop and high performance canopies. It took a while for the weather to clear up on the Saturday but by mid afternoon things got going. I just did the one solo jump to get my eye in on the Saturday, but went back on Sunday and got a couple of jumps in with other people, a 4 and 3 way. I had no difficulty in finding someone to jump with, the girls on manifest just sorted me out.
Debbie had given me my first jump ticket for free and waived the entrance fee for the boogie which was very kind and much appreciated.
I plan to go back and do some more jumping before I leave next week. John 3/9
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