Blackhawk 5/3

Well, I told myself I wasn’t ever going back to the place again. As I write in my other blog, either I have a lousy flight or I’m ending a good one early because of my motion sickness (due to the lack of physical references the wide open desert terrain seems to exacerbate the problem); either way I’m sitting in triple digit temperatures miles from home feeling absolutely lousy. But I figured on a big day the Litespeed would get me 30 miles farther than what I would normally get with the Fusion before having to end my flight because of nausea; that would put me at about triple digits, making it worth the drive. And the forecast was calling for a big day: strong SW winds at altitude; lift to 13k+; and cumulus cloud development. However (there’s always a however), there was the question of whether or not we could even get off the hill because of the strong SW, and it looked like we would have to contend with sun blocking high clouds. Plus Bari was supposed to run in a track meet on the same day. Well, on Friday night Bari decided that she had more important things to do than run in the meet, and I decided that the positives in forecast far out weighed the negatives so on Saturday morning I threw the glider on the Pilot and hit the road.

I met Bruce, Wally and Rebardan for breakfast in Apple Valley. We would meet up with Tony, Carolyn and to my pleasant surprise, Bob and Marge at launch. At 10:00 there was already some cloud development above the mountains. And in another good sign, the winds were calm on the desert floor. It wasn’t until sometime after noon, though, that the first cumis started to form out over the flats. Because of that, we didn’t start getting airborne until sometime around 1:00.

Dan and Tony

I was second to last off with Bruce bringing up the rear. The other three pilots were somewhere overhead climbing out. Both Bruce and I found some nice solid lift just short of the front points of the mountain. I was on top and actually out climbed him on the way to 10.5. Tony had reported leaving to go on course at 11.5, but rather than search around for something to get higher, I left with what I had feeling giddy that I just out climbed the top rigid wing pilot in the country. However (there’s that word again), the giddiness didn’t last long when I found myself out on the flats below 7k listening to Bruce come on the radio to say that he was leaving the mountains with 13k. And it wasn’t until I dipped below 5k at about 13 miles out that I was able latch on to something again. Listening to the reports on the radio everyone but Bruce had close calls in the same area. Unfortunately, Dan couldn’t pull off the low save and landed nearby.

Looking back at launch

Now back at 10.5, I pointed the glider to a nice cloud street angling NE from Rodman Mountain out to the Cady Mountains between I 40 and I 15. I had a great line as there seemed to be lift everywhere, but I spent a lot of time circling without finding something to really set a wing tip into. It wasn’t until somewhere near the 40 that I was able to put the glider on its ear. At 13,383 ft., I had the highest climb of the flight; let me tell you, it was cold. The forecast was calling for -5 C at 14k, and I had no reason to doubt it. It might have been cold (and turbulent) at 13k, but because of the tail wind my GPS was showing 60+ MPH ground speeds.

Over the Cady Mountains I had a choice of staying with the cloud street or taking a more easterly track to cut some distance to the 15. I decided to stay with the clouds and was rewarded with another climb to just short of 13k above the rail road tracks at Afton. Both Tony and Bruce were 10 miles or so ahead of me and Bob about the same distance behind.

Baker

From Afton I dropped into the Cronise Valley in order to follow the 15 toward the NE. Conveniently the Interstate takes the same angle as the prevailing winds out there. I was about to match my longest flight from Blackhawk so I would have been happy with a flight to Baker which was just a little further down the road. About two or three miles short of town I had dropped down below 6k and announced on the radio that I would probably be landing shortly. However, just as I made my announcement I blundered into smoothest thermal of the day. Topping out above 10k, and not feeling all that badly, I decided to press ahead.

Over the next 25 miles, however, the terrain slowly climbs from just 937 ft MSL at Baker to about 4700 ft. at the summit near Clark Mountain before dropping down to the state line. Despite the thickening high cloud cover at that point of the day I found enough lift to press ahead up the shallow incline. At about 90 miles out I topped out in a thermal to the mid 9s; would it be enough to get me over the 100 mark? Perhaps. But the last reasonable landing area was at the 98 mile mark and I was too low to make it to the next one down the line – even that wasn’t all the great because I would have had to land down hill in an area covered with yucca plants and Joshua trees. Fortunately, I found something off of the deck that put me over triple digits and enough altitude to make the mountain pass to land on a flat surface and 107 miles from launch, my furthest flight to date. At about the same time Bruce was putting it down at the Nevada state line after a glide from Clark Mountain. Both Tony and Bob landed in Baker (77 miles).

Photos by Bob Anderson and Marge Variano

Poppies

We had a nice Passover Seder at Lauren's uncle's house on Saturday night. On Sunday, her cousin and his family joined us for a nice trip out to the Antelope Valley to see the poppies and other wildflowers in full bloom.


We took the I -5 route and came into the valley from the west. There weren't many flowers above the foothills of Gorman but we did come across one patch that was worth stopping for to take some pictures. The poppies, of course, are beautiful by themselves, but they particularly stand out when they are surrounded by Lupines and other colorful flowers.

After Gorman we hopped on Rte 138 and headed toward the reserve. There were some large poppy fields at the base of the Tehachepis, but I wasn't sure if we could back to them so we didn't stop to explore. About 10 miles in we came across some spectacular fields right along the highway so we stopped for more pictures.

We had intentions of going to the reserve, but on the west side of Fairmont Butte the fields were just blanketed in flowers. Knowing the area from various hang gliding adventures I knew that there was a maze of dirt roads running through the fields; we spent the rest of our outing just driving along them.

Marshall April 13th

The forecast was calling for 8-9k tops and light SE winds everywhere in Southern California from the L.A. Basin to the Central Valley so it seemed only logical to call a Crestline to Bakersfield goal. Sure we would have liked the tops in the desert higher, but what the hay, there is nothing wrong with aiming high -- get up above 10k above the Tahachepis and you practically have Bakersfield on a glide; the valley floor is only about 500ft. MSL.


Of course there was the little problem of the predicted morning NE winds. When the upslope switch occurred was key to how successful we would be. I met Bruce Barmakian at his house in San Bernardino at 8:00 just in case we decided that the winds wouldn't cooperate and we would head to Blackhawk instead.

The decision was made early to wait out the local winds. And wait out we did. Because of a persistent north we were unable to launch until just before 3:00. Fortunately, famed juggler Owen Morse was part of our crew; he promised that he could teach us how it was done in less than 20 minutes. So there we were, two truck loads of pilots atop of Marshall throwing rocks up in the air waiting for the winds to turn around. Surprisingly, no one got beaned; as a matter of fact, we all did pretty well -- although I don't think Owen has to worry about anyone taking food off of his table any time soon.

In our crew it was Bruce, RebarDan, Owen and me with Wally driving; we punched off together in that order as soon as our gliders were set up and ready to go. Owen and Bruce found something to left, and Dan and I to the right. After a slow start everything coalesced somewhere in the middle for a quick smooth climb to 9,000 ft (I'm the white track). Unfortunately, Owen missed the boat and was on the ground soon after. Apparently his fate was shared by about half the pilots on launch.

Ugh, more radio problems. I would have to chase the rigids around with the hope that they would see me following them OTB into the desert.

Another, not so smooth climb to the high 10s near Sugar Pine Mtn and it was "Game On," with Bruce leading the way -- at least I think it was Bruce; I lost track of the other rigid. Regardless, all three of us (four, if you count a very aggressive hawk) met up again just east of the Cajon Pass on the backside of the range.

Bruce bailed first in the mid 9s, followed by Dan soon after. I stayed back and was rewarded with another climb out to the mid 10s. I lost track of Bruce but I could see Dan taking a line along a ridge to the north of the valley that leads up toward Wrightwood from the 15. Because I left higher I was able to come in even with him as he was climbing out over the ridge. We didn't get terribly high but it was enough to keep moving on. But here I made a big strategical mistake: as Dan and I ran up the ridge together -- the Litespeed did a pretty good job of keeping up -- I found a slightly better line on the desert side of it. Because of that, and not having radio contact with Bruce to see how he was doing up ahead and where, I decided to go with it and angle out to the flats. Dan, and finding out later, Bruce, opted to stay in the mountains. Both were rewarded with eventual climb outs to 12k near the Mountain High ski area. I on the other hand was never able to get above 8300 ft for the rest of my flight.

Despite not getting terribly high I managed to make it to the Crystal Air sailport in pretty good shape. As I was coming in I could see a sailplane getting dropped off in a thermal to the north of my course line. I headed in his direction, but the lift proved to be fleeting. Both of us bailed at about the same time with the sailplane heading north and me west.

At just over 42 miles above the town of Pear Blossom, the old home of the USHGA, I ran into a headwind. Without contact with the other pilots because of my radio problems, and thinking that the seabreeze had pushed through (it hadn't; just some localized west wind I guess), I turned around thinking that I'd try an out and return. I didn't get far. And as you can see when I took a low leaner off the deck near the end of the flight it actually had a NE drift (didn't like where it was drifting me to so I threw in the towel and landed). At dark when I was eventually picked up, the seabreeze still hadn't come through so my decision to turn around was an obvious blunder. Live and don't learn - read how my previous flight ended.

Both of the rigids made it to west of Palmdale with Bruce taking the day with a 72 miler landing near the poppy reserve.

Easter Egg Hunt and Flight

We're a mixed religion family. We never go to church or temple, but we do recognize the holidays. Of course this past Sunday was Easter and what would the day be without an Easter egg hunt. The only problem was that the forecast was calling for a potentially good hang gliding day. So I did what any selfish father would do and scheduled the hunt for the crack of dawn so that I could be at launch at a reasonable time.


Despite having the hunt so early one of Bari's friends accepted our invitation to join her in the fun. Our dog Phoebe must like the scent of hard-boiled eggs, because she seemed to be in most of the pictures that were taken of the day.

Poor Nicholas, though, had some kind of bug and didn't get to sleep until about one a.m. and was still feeling it in the morning so he didn't participate until later in the day when he starting feeling better. And no, the remaining eggs weren't left outside all day waiting for him to find them.

Three hours after Bari had gathered her last egg I was set up and ready to go at the EJ Bowl launch in Santa Barbara. That's my usual flying partner's (Tony Deleo) VR in front of my Litespeed.

Originally we were thinking that Kagel might be the place to be. They were calling for light NE winds with thermal tops around 8k. Even though I live in L.A. I rarely fly Kagel so I'm no expert in reading the weather conditions for the place, but it looked to me like it could be one of those classic convergence days that I keep hearing about. A day to fly Crestline and beyond. But Saturday the forecast was calling for similar conditions and it ended up blowing down all day so we opted to head up to Santa Barbara instead.We were supposed to have record temps and the lapse rate looked great to about 6k, but because the mountains are so close to the ocean in SB you're never quite sure what you're going to get; the marine air has a habit of shutting things down in a hurry. Because of that we decided to start a little higher up on the range and launch from EJ Bowl rather than the Eliminator. Tony launched first and I was few minutes behind just after noon.

Both the RR and the Thermal Factory were working fine -- although, as you can see I had to search a bit before dialing into something above the latter.

Up ahead Tony seemed to be doing fine, but I didn't find anything at Montecito Peak itself and had to drop off to the east spine where I proceeded to drop below 3k hanging on to any scraps that would keep me in the ball game. Looking over to East Romero I could see that Tony was struggling too. After awhile both of us climbed out at about the same time despite the mile distance between us. It's funny how that works.

Romero wasn't that much different than Montecito, but I didn't have to hang around as long. Out front Tony was getting up at Castle Ridge so I left a little lower than I normally would (note the strong west drift at Romero). Didn't find anything on the spine that Tony was climbing out on so I continued on to the next one down the line where I found my strongest thermal since leaving launch which enabled me to get ahead of the Atos.


A few thermals later I had reached Noon Peak, the start of the Casitas Pass, comfortably. I climbed out right away to the mid 4s, but rather than take that altitude and continue on I decided to step back to the back of the range where I was hoping to find a convergence. Unfortunately, it didn't pan out and so I was forced to go back out front only to watch Tony climbed out above me to regain the lead. Feeling frustrated after not finding cohesive lift, I eventually ended up leaving for West Divide lower than my original climb out.

At Divide I never did reach the top of the peak (too impatient to hang tight -- although Divide is no place to be messing around waiting for something better to come through) so I ended up tempting fate again by coming in way low at Whiteledge. However, the 3 hour hike, sans glider, will have to wait for another day.

My normal go to spot after leaving Whiteledge wasn't working on this day, but I found something just west of Rte 33 that got me over to the Pyramid where I had on of the highest and smoothest climb out of the day. It was supposed to be in the 90s in Ojai so I had little doubt that that flying would be stellar once we reached the valley. I wasn't disappointed.

I usually stay out on the front points in Ojai, but because I had the altitude I decided to step back to the high ground at Chief's Peak; it wasn't worth it. I ended up having to angle back out front on my way to Boyd's. Normally Boyd's can be counted on to get you high enough for the glide to Santa Paula Peak but not on this day; nearby Puckers, however, was going off.

With light NE winds, the hope going into the day was to eke into Ojai from Santa Barbara and then work the NE/SW convergence to points east once we got to the Santa Clara river basin. Unfortunately, the sea breeze didn't over power the offshore stuff as far inland as we had hoped. Both Tony and I left the east side of Santa Paula Peak in the mid 7s with a west drift, but at 3:00 it was still blowing east at 15 mph in nearby Fillmore. In front of me, after getting tired of bucking a headwind, Tony opted to turn around at the 50 mile mark and land in Fillmore. Of course, I had to at least match that, but instead of turning around I tried to stretch out my flight as far as possible. I landed at the 50.64 mile mark. At 4 o'clock it was still blowing east in the LZ.

Mammoth

Took the family to Mammoth this past weekend. Despite the fact that it was snowy, cold and windy -- so much so that they had closed the top of the mountain for most of the two days that we were there -- and Nicholas spending most of Saturday layed up in the lodge with altitude sickness, everyone had a good time.

Technically, I'm not a bad skier -- in fact, I was an instructor at one time -- but when you ski as infrequently as I do (half dozen times in the last 25 years) proper technique only takes you so far. I simply don't have the leg strength to do well and enjoy myself on the bumps and steeps -- not that I did a lot of mogul skiing; it seems the snow boarders have eliminated most of the bumps fields from the slopes. But, this was family outing; I had more than enough fun spending time skiing with the kids.

Here we are in the middle of the Sierras during a beautiful snowy weekend and this is the view from our hotel room. I booked the reservation on line where they had a box designated for preferences. I put down that we didn't want a room next to the jacuzzi and that if possible wanted something with a view. When I called the hotel to confirm the reservation the guy at the desk said, "You requested something with a view?" "None of our rooms have views." No kidding. Other than that, though, everything else was fine.

After spending most of the day sleeping off the effects of altitude sickness on Saturday, Nicholas recovered enough to have a good time playing in the snow back at the hotel. It is amazing what a difference 2,000 ft can make. Right before leaving the hotel he was perfectly fine; twenty minutes later he was as white as a ghost. The same thing happened to him on a hang gliding trip to Walt's Point a few years ago. At launch he was fine. But after I had taken off, Lauren took the kids up to Horseshoe Meadows but had to immediately turn around because of Nicholas' sickness.

Speaking of the Owens Valley, here is a nice shot of Mount Tom. One of my goals is to fly from Walt's and meet Lauren and the kids in Mammoth. The flight is tough to accomplish because of the prevailing SW winds; and a preferable SE usually means overdevelopment. Anyway, if you want to have any chance of making it to Mammoth you must get over Coyote Flats (under clouds in the distance on the left) and get established over Mount Tom. One of these days.

Double Digits

There are two reasons why I only fly about once a month (if that); here's one of them:

My son turned 10 this past week. Seems like yesterday that I was rushing Lauren to the hospital -- out the door at 10 of; born 10 after. And now he has reached double digits. Wow!

He decided that he wanted to invite some of his buddies to go bowling with him and then have them come back to the house for some pizza and cake.

I read somewhere that bowling has become the new "in" thing to do. Yeah, that's my son, the budding hipster. I have a feeling that he is going to want make those tattoos permanent before too long. What's a parent to do?

I have to say, not a bad Dick Weber impersonation. Is there a penalty for releasing the ball too early?

Who us? A minute earlier they were knocking each other silly over that ball.

And here is the second reason why I don't fly all that often: my daughter, Bari. If you look you can see the chaos breaking out in the background. I don't care what anyone says, boys and girls are just different. Put a bunch a girls together and they'll find something productive to do. Boys? Put away the china.

First Flight of the Year

1/21/08

Santa Barbara is a hard place to call. It is at its best when post-frontal, but more often than not the winds are too north or cloudbase too low to get a great flight in. Since it is an hour and a half drive from my house in L.A., I can’t just jump on the good days like the locals who can just look out their kitchen windows. I always have to take my chances and hope for the best.

Monday was not post-frontal, but the forecast called for the same type of conditions: a steep lapse rate to about 6k with a lot of moisture; the winds were predicted to be WNW in the mid-teens above 4k and about 10 knots below that. If anything it looked like I would at least have Bates to fall back on if Santa Barbara didn’t work. And since I hadn’t flown since the end of October I decided that I was going to go up and give it a shot no matter what.

Woke up at 6:00 to a completely clouded sky. But when I checked the weather discussion page they were talking about a window of just partly cloudy conditions for Ventura County; a phone call indicated that it was mostly sunny in Santa Barbara; the winds, too, were turning more favorable; and so I threw the glider on the truck and hit the road.

When I got to Carpenteria the winds were actually eddying SE. Casitas Pass was socked in, but it was still pretty early so I held out hope that cloudbase would rise as the day progressed. Out to the west there was a beautiful cloudstreet out toward Santa Ynez Peak, so if we couldn’t head east through the pass it looked like a flight out in that direction looked more than doable.

I met Bob Anderson and his friend Marge, a PG pilot, at the beach. Marge was going to take a tandem ride instead of flying herself and drive for us after landing. To my astonishment Bob and I, along with just 2-3 PGs, were the only pilots heading up to launch. Seeing that it was holiday and such good conditions I thought the place would be packed.

The clouds were really starting to fill in as we headed up to launch, but looking down range we could see that the top of the peaks through the pass were visible. Cloudbase above launch looked to be in the high 4s -- maybe a little lower toward the east.

I launched after the tandem PG somewhere near 11:30. After getting a little bit above launch I headed over to the Thermal Factory, which is the first spine on the range heading east. I had a quick climb there to 5k and cloudbase and then I was on my way. A few 360s at Montecito Peak with a PG pilot and a couple more by myself atop East Romero and then it was over to Castle Ridge.

Here is where the flight got interesting. East of Castle I had to contend with a series of low cloud banks. Coming up to the clouds I had to decide whether to go under them or around them. To get under them I would have to cut off my climbs early, which was almost impossible in such buoyant air. For the most part I was just flying straight at this point without stopping so I didn’t have much choice but to go around. This didn't give me much hope of making it through the Casitas Pass. Maybe I would tag Snowball and then turn around and head in the other direction. I had one last bank of clouds to get around before Noon Peak, the start of the pass. I wasn't ready to give up on my progess until I could see what was going on behind that last white wall. If it looked like it would be just more of the same I was going to turn around. But once I got around the last bank I could see that, although base was still below the peaks at about 4k, things opened up a bit and there was some sun on the lower spines. I decided to continue on.

I got back up to cloud base at West Divide, but that didn’t stop me from coming into Whiteledge Peak way low. It would be close, but I needed to find a thermal right then and there or I would be looking at a long hike out (unfortunately, that is what happened to Bob). I lucked out and found something that got me up and over to peak. This is where things got interesting again.

The mountains in Ojai were completely shaded in. There was not one ray of sunlight anywhere on the range. The south side of the valley, however, was bathed in patches of sun so rather than stay in the mountains I angled out to the SE toward the Sulphur Mountains. Three thermals got me to the east side of the Sulphurs in perfect shape to cut the corner to Santa Paula Peak.

Like everywhere else along the range, Santa Paula was completely shaded in so I had to fudge out into the valley on my way to Fillmore. But with such a steep lapse rate I just knew if I could make it out to the Santa Clara river basin I had a great shot of making it to Interstate 5, one of my flying goals. Sure enough, at Fillmore I had a nice climb out to the high 3s above town, and then another climb in the foothills just east of Piru and then it was just an easy glide to the interstate. Further east the sky was completely black so there was no reason to continue on; it was just a matter of finding a nice LZ to land. I ended up putting it down on a plateau on the east side of Castaic Lake at an RC park, complete with a runway and windsock. Distance: 61.7 miles; time: just under 3 hours.

Photos by Bob Anderson