Pine Mountain

[Chip Bartley]

I just want to thank everyone for the mentoring at Pine today. Everyone wa encouraging and had very valuable information that helped my flight to be an awesome first time experience. I'm an officially AIR JUNKY.

15k
19.6 miles

sweeeeeet

Many Thanks

Also, i just noticed Johns post below and am glad to see he is home and well.

[Randall]

For those who had the bad luck or bad timing to miss it, let's just say that Saturday at Pine was one of those days where the blipmaps didn't lie; everything was as good as it looked on paper. Most everyone got to altitudes of around 15k or more (including newbie Chip, whose previous high was about 7k). All but Milley (who chose to land early due to several bouts in a row with very nasty air) got to Lockwood Valley or beyond. Faoro, Brendan and Ron Meyer got tired of fighting the stong south wind at altitude and bailed north of the San Emigdios to land past the Grapevine. Mini Mike and Bob Peloquin both (I believe) landed by Lake of the Woods. OJ put down in the foothills below Pinos and hiked out to Lockwood Valley Rd. (where he spent several hours graciously waiting for us). Chip blew all our minds by successfully top-landing on a clearing atop Mt. Pinos (the first and probably last time that will ever be done). And Pipkin... well, I forget where Pipkin landed.

I had my personal best altitude (15k) and distance, landing at the truckstop in Gorman for the first time. I was at 11.5k and still climbing over the truckstop, but was cold, tired and feeling a bit nauseous from turning 10,000 circles in a row and probably hypoxic so I pulled big ears and went on full speedbar and turned tight 360s to get down and it still took me 15 minutes.

The air alternated between butter-smooth cloud-suck at 1400 up and really nasty, rodeo stuff. Not a "fun" day, but challenging, thrilling and rewarding. A special thanks to Fast Eddie and the crew for coming back to retrieve me after abandoning me at the Grapevine rest stop, despite the fact that (as Ron Faoro, I think, put it), "We didn't have to, you know." Your generosity will not soon be forgotten.

[Southside]

Came up with the Kagel crew on Sat. First HG off on a demo Lightspeed. Climbed out nicely after launch drifting OTB. Phil Bloom was quick to join me. We switched places a number of times in the punchy cores waiting for the other pilots to catch up and trying to decide which way to go. There was line of clouds out to Abel and nothing immediately in the Chute so my first thought was to head in that direction. But it seemed that the clouds running east from Abel were a bit too north to bridge back to Frazier in the SW wind. We ended up just B-lining it to Lockwood Valley on a line between the Chute and Dry Canyon. I stopped to work some light lift at the start of the Badlands that let Phil and Sebastian Lutges (Atos) get ahead me. The lift didn't pan out and so now I was in catch up mode. About 3/4 of the way to Lockwood those two guys found a strong core; I came in underneath but was immediately spit out of the lift. I didn't get upside down, but if someone happened to be above me I'm sure they would have seen my undersail. Anyway, once I got the glider level I tried the core one more time but couldn't find it and so I took my altitude and headed right for Lockwood.

Down to just below 8k at the start of the valley, but it didn't take long to find a thermal. Climbed out to 11 plus and headed to Frazier. Got down pretty low on the east end of the valley before climbing out again to 12k. The SW wind was blowing fairly strong and so I was having a bit of a problem penetrating to the main spine from my starting position. Despite the beautiful clouds I didn't find any lift until just east of the towers. There I found the strongest lift all day and climbed out to 14,500. Went on the glide to the Tehachapis and continued to climb another 1,000ft.

Phil, Seabass and now Tony were ahead of me reporting the lack of lift after their long glides from Frazier. All had fudged out into the Antelope. It wasn't until just west of the military (?) instillation that the first reports of light lift came over the radio. I finally had a visual on Phil and came in underneath of him at about 6k as he climbed out over the instillation. Seabass had already made the connection and was reporting that he was topping out at 14k. It was a slow climb but I eventually made it up to about 13k myself.

There was a nice cloud street back toward Kagel so it was decided that we would head in that direction despite the headwind. At that point I was a bit south of the other guys so I was now in the lead -- just as my radio went dead. However, the cloud street was shifting to the east and it became quickly apparent that I wasn't going to catch up to it on my course line. I turned NE to a cloud just southeast of Soledad mine. There, it was another slow climb back to 11k. Looking down I noticed my PTT and head set terminals dangling from my shoulders; plugged them in and viola, I was back on radio frequency -- just in time to find out that the other two guys had changed their minds and were now heading to Mojave.

Unfortunately for me my motion sickness kicked in at about the same time and so I announced on the radio that I was just going to take my altitude and glide as far as I could go and land. That I would be somewhere north of Mojave on the 14. On the glide north Phil came over the radio to say that he was low near the new 14/58 junction and that he would probably be landing soon. I flew in right above him as he landed. I was at 7k but decided to circle down to land next to him (73Miles). Sebastian was also nearby but decided to take advantage of the day and continue on. He would end up flying to the rest stop north of Little Lake for a 124 mile flight. Tony would end up landing at the same spot on Sunday.

John

[Robb]

Saturday was the most frightening flying I’ve ever had. Finding myself doing a helicopter 400 feet above the church in Ojai was nothing compared to Saturday.

It started at launch. According to Eddie and Randall, a dust devil kicked off just as I turned and began to run, causing a 60% asymmetric on the left side. I noticed the collapse, but what I remember most was being plucked up in the air, holding for a moment with no forward motion, and looking down between my feet at the ground as I dropped. I said to myself I’m going to break both my legs.

Well, the wing started flying and I got out away from the hill and made my way to the ridge. I’ve had the rush for well over a year, and have 58 flights on it; it has never given me cause to wonder, doubt, or be scared. I keep the wing pressurized, and I’ve never had more than a tip fold. At the spine, all that changed. I kept having tip folds and asymmetrics on the left side. Then I looked up to see the leading edge roll under all the way to the trailing edge. I was startled by how bright the top of my wing is, and went for my reserve. This was the first time in five years I felt pulling the reserve was the right thing to do; my next thought was that I was too low for it to do any good so I should aim for a tree and trust the back protection. The wing recovered and I moved east away from the ridge and hooked a thermal. My barograph shows 12 seconds of 600 down, then 400 up until I reached 11,000'.

I didn’t know what happened, but I had ten minutes of nice right spirals and I was listening to the reports from the others going downrange. Then my vario made sounds I’d never heard before; it sounded like five or six chirps, whistles, and beeps all happening at the same time. The wing was everywhere you don’t want it to be, including showing me the bright colors of the top again, only this time all under my feet. I tried to correct, to control, to check the surges but no chance; I was sure I was going to land in the wing and be a yellow and orange streamer all the way to the ground. I couldn’t control it, so I went hands up, trying to push my fists through the pulleys when the wing was directly out in front of me. Once more I was flung towards the wing only to pass under. Then the sky is up, the ground is down, and my vario, when I can find my flight deck, is showing 400 up again.

Looking at the barograph from the vario, it shows 1,600 ft/min down on the averager, and –3,366 ft/min on the vario. I’d been in the sky twelve and a half minutes, and had three major incidents; I was not having fun. I was trying to balance the excitement I was hearing on the radio as people kept breaking personal records for altitude, and the look of the cloud street leading to Able, with my fright and confusion over what kept happening. I just circled around for another two minutes trying to get sorted out and make a decision. Then the decision was made for me.

This time I was more mad than confused, but just as terrified. Wing on my left, check. Wing on my right, check. Bright colors below my feet with slack lines, check. Dropping like a rock, check. The barograph shows another 1,600 down on the averager, and when the wing loaded up I was in a left spiral dive, much more impressive than any I had managed on my own. Once I got that under control I radioed my intent to land on the north side by the road, and pulled big ears for 6,200 feet to land at the monastery field. It was an epic day, but with my wing doing crazy things for no reason I only wanted to be on the ground.

On Sunday I went to Oat in Fillmore to lay out, check my gear and see if there was anything wrong I could find. I laid it out, check connection points, made sure my speed bar was not connected to my stabilo, etc. I looked at line lengths and every thing seemed fine. I put on my helmet and stepped into my harness making sure all buckles were correct and not tangled with the flight deck or radio harness or whatever.

I grabbed my brake toggles and there it was, jammed into the knot of the brake line where it ties to the brake toggle. This little bastard was right there.




For all you kittens who have never lost your mittens, this is the clip that you use to clip your gloves together so you don’t loose one. I don’t know if it was still connected to my glove when flying, or if it caught another line, or what, but I’m sure that little bastard ruined my day Saturday. After five years and who knows how many flights with those gloves, I think it finally hooked into the brake and who knows what else and took me for a ride. So I put it in my pocket, launched, and had a glorious sunset flight.

[Forger]

Wow. That's a great story. You ought to write it up for the magazine.

In keeping with my 3 flights a year, one XC attempt method of enjoying the sport, here's my story for Sunday.

Despite all the work I had to do, I explained to my wife that Sunday was my one and only XC attempt for the year. She agreed to drive. I wasn't about to have her drive up Garlock so it began with me climbing 700 vert feet at noon in the middle of the freaking desert with all my gear and water, knowing it was THE DAY to fly from this unflown west facing hill.

An hour later it was blowing from the east and getting stronger.

So I hiked down, close to heat exhaustion by now.

An hour later I'm on top of Bear Mt. (only ten miles away and I drove to the top) but the winds are north and launch faces southwest. I'm listening to Diablo cruising past on his way to wherever. A continuous thermal is about 100 ft in front of launch carrying straw to the moon.

After an hour I decide that although it's steep, it's not that rocky and I could probably survive a failed launch attempt by just tucking and rolling. So I explain that to my son.

I quickly pull up when 2-3 molecules of wind blow upslope. The glider isn't impressed so I start charging backwards down the steep slope. Hey, the canopy comes up square and I even get turned around without falling. The canopy is outrunning me in the tailwind and I give it a lot of brake but can't really run anymore. I swing off the hill, pull my feet up to bounce off some bushes and promptly screech to a stop as the brake line catches a branch.

So now I spend a half hour untangling everything and discovering a broken brake line and ripped wingtip. I finally get back to the car to listen to my wife tell me how much simpler a hobby like golf would be.

Oh well, there's always next year.

[Ron M]

Another interesting day at Pine. On board we had 10 grizzled veterans and one Pine virgin. The virgin kept us all entertained with his curiosity and playful enthusiasm on the way to launch.

The veterans, of course, laid it on thick with wild tales of near death experiences, 10 mile away landouts, sleeping in manzanita, and surviving 5 day hikeouts without food or water. Yeah, whatever.

Everyone was full of it except for me.

Cycles at launch were lulling from 0 to 7 when we arrived and Ron Faoro demonstrated the day was working. I launched 5th and took my launch thermal to 10K in short order. After a brief pause at 10K, I hooked into another fattie and found myself on glide to Lockwood Valley with 15,300.

Halfway to Lockwood, I began hitting some massive sink and realized I was flying in a blue hole between cumi's over Lockwood and cumi's forming deep over Mt. Abel/Mt. Pinos range. I made a quick northward correction and joined Brendan in a climb from 8 something to 13K.

All the while the radio is lit up with happy Topa chatter. Everyone was over the back by this time...and most were halfway to Frazier.

Of course, the day isn't going to be any fun unless there's some annoyance and that came in the form of a vindictive ham operator who started taunting us. Is it just me or is every ham operator a 48 year old guy with a pet chicken who's never kissed a girl? I'd love to invite one to our Xmas party this year just to find out. That might be entertaining.

After the guy with the chicken finally let up I found myself over Lake of the Woods with about 9K. I joined Tom Pipkin and we both found ourselves parked, going from 0 to 5 mph, fighting a strong SW flow.

We both fought to get over to the SW side of Frazier but it was just too hard. Tom climbed to 12K and announced he was heading OTB over the grapevine.

Now, flying toward Bakersfield has always been on my wish list as I've never made that flight before, so I decided to do the same. I found some lift to take me to 14.5 K and flew north OTB.

For the next 10 minutes my groundspeed was 50+ mph while flying almost directly over the grapevine. I was passing trucks and making them look bad. Eventually, my groundspeed began to wane to 30..to 20...to 10 mph...and then to 0 mph. I was parked heading North.

Just as I began entertaining thoughts of a high wind landing, I dropped through that layer of air and found myself descending through an inversion and the last few thousand feet in virtually still air. I landed off the 99 fwy in a sandy field in a 4 mph headwind.

1400 fpm up, 1400 fpm down
highest altitude 15,800
36.5 miles

Hearing Chip's excitement, accidentally leaving Randall behind, making fun of the chicken man on the way home...priceless