Always fly before flying

There's unspoken tradition among BHGC students to be in the air without an engine within 12 hours of being in the air with an engine. That usually happens when we're leaving or coming into the country or the state - which induces the behavior of flying local sites either 12 hours prior to take-off or right after arriving.

In the true spirit of tradition birdbones checked in for her Funston flight at 9 am today (after partying till the wee hours of the morning), picked up gear and promptly launched about 11:30 am. She touched down the planet back at 12:15 and was immediately on her way to the airport. We all like her sooooo much, and we're sooooo sad to see her go, and can't wait to have her back!

P.S. Alternative title for this post is "Eat, Party, Sleep, Hang Glide, Repeat."

Log: birdbones (1 flight ~ 45 minutes); cleanpants (1 flight), Jason (1 flight)

Different experiences at Slide

Apparently the weather is playing crazy all over the place, sometimes being just crappy and making flying impossible, sometimes super phat and great. Apparently there are even huge differences depending on exactly when you launch, what glider you fly etc. Asking those who went to Slide last weekend "How was it?", you are likely to get very different answers...

Justine, helmet girl, Thomas, boy wonder, Scott and Kurtis left thursday night, camping in an inconvenient spot, leaving Scott almost being run over by a car at 4 am. Barry, Jesse, birdbones and cookie girl left early friday morning instead. By the time we arrived at Slide, the sky looked seriously developed and I was starting to have serious doubts whether we would be able to fly that day. Sure enough, Scott reports from launch that they'll only do "sledders" for Thomas and boy wonder. Both had nice flights with plenty of lift and nice landings in the LZ where we picked them up to drive off to check out Hotsprings mountain, a site which is supposed to be good in southwest winds. The approaching thunder storm didn't stop us from driving up the horrible road to lauch and check it out. Instead of flying, we watched an impressive lightning-show and drove then off to Tahoe where the weather was perfect for swimming.

Saturday looked much better though we were expecting hard westerly winds again. Still, we gave it a shot, drove up to Slide launch and found perfectly fine conditions. Everybody hurried best they could to set up their gliders and get off the mountain before the wind would overpower the thermals. Most pilots had a hard time this day, some taking a sledder, others fighting for lift over the knob without ever getting high. Three pilots who had a very different experience... I was very lucky with a great launch cycle which took me up to above 9000' right at launch without any greater effort. From there I went on to the fingers, found plenty of lift over the last finger and made my way further up the mountain. I got over the top just to find that the lift there was even better and easier than anywhere else and circled easily up to cloudbase at 14600' feet, the highest I've ever been. The view from up there is GRAND! Lake Tahoe, Mount Rose, the valley, ... I was feeling pretty nervous about being so close to the clouds though, feeling a little too much lift to feel comfortable (12000' up without even turning..?). I fled the scene out to the LZ, trying to find my radio in my harness pocket and asking for advice on where to go from here. I expected to find a lot of pilots up in the air and heading for XC - but no. The only ones high up where Thomas and myself, Barry joined us later. Without any experience pilot to follow and a southerly wind which would force us to head north where LZs are scarce and the restricted airspace can be in the way, I decided to stay on the mountain instead. I headed back to the peak and circled my way up to the clouds once again. From there I decided to check out Mount Rose, made it almost to the peak before I turned around and played the same game once more. The second time, I got back to Slide with too little altitude to find lift over the peak, ended up in the rotor in front of the mountain. My ambition was to make it back up over the peak once more and then go to land in the LZ, but by that time I was both freezing, nauseous, tired and in need of a bathroom. I headed out to the LZ, arrived there at 9k just to feel a multitude of thermals ripping of the field. Reminded of Scotts rule I figured I should keep circling above the field and thermal out of it, but I was way too tired. Instead I did a bunch of boxes, watched the windsock a long time without seeing any crazy windchanges and had an ok landing in high, gusty wind. There I was, an exhausted but immensly happy pilot. What did I care that flying had been crappy all week when I got rewarded with a flight like that?

Some of us decided to stay an extra day, hoping to be able to fly on sunday. Arriving at launch at 10am, the sock was already blowing down vigorously. We drove off to McClellan, only to find a 30mph howling wind from the southwest. Nothing changed in three hours, except for Barry's left rear tire which had gone flat on the drive up to launch. Heading back to Berkeley in the afternoon, I guess I was the only pilot in the car really satisfied with the weekend...

Safari

10 hours of airtime, 5 new sites, 2 XC flights and a whole lot of new experiences. Though apparently it was a weird week for Lakeview. With East winds blowing 5 out of 6 days, we had to get a little creative when it came to launch sites.

Monday

Hat Creek and its elusive glass-off turned out to be a major disappointment, but to make up for it, we got to start off our safari with an evening glass-off at Black Cap instead. My first flight with a vario, (that formerly annoying beeping thing which I have since come to love), it was a pretty straight-forward hour of boating around on the ridge, never getting too high (or too low) until the mountain flushed every single pilot into the LZ within 5 minutes of each other.

Tuesday

Winter Ridge

When I signed up for a hang-gliding safari, I just sort of assumed we would be searching out well-established launches across Oregon that would take whatever wind condition we were facing, so when faced with the idea of pioneering a new launch, I found I was a little (momentarily) turned off by the idea. After 2,5 hours of driving around desolate woods giving me unfortunate associations to The Road, clearing massive tree-trunks out of our path, almost getting the plague after suffering bites from a (seemingly) docile rodent and scratching up every

exposed part of skin trying to make my way to "launch", flying wasn't really the first thing on my mind. After removing one rock on a steep, rocky slope on the rim however, everyone was suddenly convinced that we had found a great place to launch.

Turned out, it was a pretty good launch. I spent quite a while convincing myself of this though, and by the time I had launched, I met little or no lift to give me much of a good flight, so after a 20 minute struggle I threw in the towel and went to land in the mosquito haven down below.

Wednesday & Thursday were spent flying the ridges around Buck Mountain (yet another launch where we almost spent more time finding the road up to launch than we did flying). Not much to mention about wednesday, I launched too late and did not have much to work with. Brushed up on my card-game skills with Doughy in the LZ.

Thursday was a much more eventful day however, I got high pretty much right after launching, and stayed high until Justine decided to take the Scandinavians out on their first cross country flight. With an abundance of landable fields along all of the ridge, it is definitely the perfect place for a first XC flight. I left the area above launch at around 12000 ft, but spent most of my flight between 9500-10500 ft, trying to squeeze everything I could from every bump I met along the way. Unfortunately, this was not enough to take me across the pass, and I had a good 5000 ft to get rid of before landing in my first self-chosen LZ (the biggest, grassiest field I could find). Spent the altitude inspecting wind-conditions and practicing spiraling 360s.

Friday:

SKUNKED.

Day spent pursuing other valuable activities such as drinking, hitting beer cans with sticks and setting things on fire.

Saturday:

Sugar

This was definitely the most frustrating of all my flights. Launching as the wind-dummy at around 2, perfectly resigned to the fact that I might be not be able to stay up, conditions turned out to be a lot more than your everyday sledride. I quickly got above launch and was able to soar the bowl for a while, getting about 500 ft above launch. Then, after a couple of poor turns in sink I was quickly below launch, realizing that I had no choice but to head for the LZ if I had any desire to avoid a tree-landing. On my way down, however, I fly into a pretty impressive thermal which (eeever so slowly) takes me up 3000 ft where I am faced with a pretty strong headwind and the struggle of staying in front of launch. After catching one thermal above the bowl that carried me way too far back in the valley, and losing 2000 ft (!) just inching my way in front of launch again, I realize that my glider might not be too happy to go exploring anything too far from the LZ (and honestly, neither was I). After two hours of getting flushed down and slowly working my way up in bumpy and sometimes insanely turbulent thermals, repeatedly hitting the inversion layer at 9500 unable to find anything strong enough to take me through, I decide that I have had it with Sugar. I land in the LZ, only to find that 15 minutes later, the mountain has turned on, and is taking both Thomas, Ryan and Lionel on XC adventures across the gap.

Sunday:

Indian Valley

On my second turn as wind dummy (and after a pretty bad launch on a seriously flat slope) I found myself again in uncomfortably close proximity to trees, barely making forward progress down the hillside in a strong headwind. It took me nearly half an hour of hitting thermals, getting up to 9000 ft and losing ALL OF IT on my way back in front of launch. Conceding defeat against choppy thermals, annoying inversion layers and depleting levels of energy, I make my way to the bailout. Though I am able to track my forward progress on the ridge below me, the teeny little speck of green in the distance (also known as the bailout) is looking further and further away for every second that passes, and the thermal I hit on the next nob on the ridge will henceforth be known as the second most appreciated thermal I have ever flown into. Taking me up to 9700ft, I decide to make my way down the ridge to a much less scary LZ than the bailout. Fun flight. Amazing trip.

A Hull lot of fun

Three of us headed out to Hull early Saturday encouraged by the forecast. After coordinating retrieve vehicles with some Sonoma pilots we headed up to launch and were joined by four more bay area pilots. Conditions looked sweet. Michael launched first and I launched shortly after. We both set new records - hour and a half for me, hour 45 for Michael. Awesome. Lift was mellow and we spent a lot of time near the house making slow, wide circles. These longer flights really help you figure out how heavy your helmet is and how comfortable your harness is...

Today we were hoping for more of the same (or better) but did not do quite as well. Still good fun; 40 minutes for me and 45 for Michael.

Other pilots broke 3 hours. It's Hull season - can't wait for more.

Tree-dodger

Tree-dodger is the true name for my sledder at Hull mountain. I re-read helmet girl's post before writing this, and I'll add more of the same. The flight was scarier than I had imagined. I was actually dodging trees. I got too low, perhaps slowed down at first and flew too right of the ridge, so didn't benefit from the hopefully existent lift on top of the ridge. So I think I was below tree height, of the trees on the ridge. For the first part of the flight, I was always within 20 ft of the tree tops, and for about 5 of them (I got to know them real well), 10 ft above. I tried to sway the glider in the between-tree-tops path, as the sink would occasionally throw me directly towards a tree. Boy, I paid real dear for not getting high at launch. Every time I sunk towards a tree, I screamed at the top of my voice, and braced for impact. But somehow I was sure I'm going to make it, even if I hit. Hope dies last. 

The good part of all this was - I knew that my survival depended on the control bar, so I kept very conscious of it, ALL the time. Light touch when level, faster during sink. Add some prayer to that. After about 5 minutes of screaming I made it to the turn off for the landing strip, and I suddenly got high. Flew the second spur in disbelief that I made it out of those trees. Slowly noticed that every muscle in my body was tight to the extreme. Relaxed and best-glided it to make my most beautiful approach to date. Stepped out of the air with 5-7 mph of wind in my face. 

Second scariest experience in my life so far (the top one involved free falling for 440 ft). I'm alive. A round of beers or more is on me.

Hull July 6, 2010

Log: cookie girl (sledder); cleanpants (2 flights)

Flying at Hat Creek (or not)