From: Brendan
Activity_Date: 05/03/02
Remote Name: 165.247.246.243
Jim Macklow was the only taker for Pine today so with Broken Mike as crew we arrived at the South Launch around 11:20. Wind was very light over the back at the ridge and mixed signals at launch with enough strong up cycles to make us think it was a go.
Jim opted to lay out on launch, giving him wind dummy honors. By the time he was ready to pull up the cycles were blowing down much more often than they were blowing up, but the qu’s were building nicely right over launch and the day still looked very good, so we waited about half an hour, periodically re-spreading his wing after down gusts would roll it.
Finally we conceded it wasn’t happening at the South Launch and we decided to scope out the North Launch. Cycles were coming straight in at about 12 mph and since Jim already had his line check done he was the prime candidate to wind dummy again. He seemed fairly undaunted by my briefing which included the fact that only two paraglider pilots had ever launched from the North Launch (Tom T. and Tom P.) Since Ojai John and I had both launched it as tandem passengers with Tom T. maybe we could stretch it to four, but not really. I told Jim that he had to climb out after launching, there were NO OTHER OPTIONS. There is no bail out LZ, no trail or road to aim for, no grassy side hill, “….don’t even think about it man, just climb out, it’s the only flight plan.”
Things looked pretty good at first. Jim’s launch was a thing of beauty, calmly kiting his wing at the edge of the precipice before stepping off into space. He found rising air in a couple spots, made his way over to the main ridge and soon was climbing above launch. As soon as I saw him get above launch I spread out and hooked in. But before making the transition to the south side, he fell out of the thermal and didn’t ever get it back. Down through the canyon, down, down, down. “Oh, man, this isn’t looking good.” I said to Mike as I was stuffing my wing into the back of my Blazer.
Jim made the best of a really bad situation by finding a small dirt spot on the top of the ridge West of launch. We could just see the top of his wing as he intentionally spun it to drop the last eight feet to the ground. It took him a little less than an hour to get back to the road which was quite impressive after having done the unthinkable sink out from the North Launch.
It was about 2:45 as we got to Rose Valley so we opted to run for Chiefs. We launched seconds apart at 3:20 and played in smooth lift for about half an hour before I decided to take a run to the East. I left with just over 6K and got a good glide to West Repeater, but didn’t find much after that. Ended up at Summit School just after 4:00 pm. Jim decided to try going West instead. He ended up in the avocado orchard just below the Stooges.
We got lucky on the retrieve because the gate at the top of Gridley was open so we were able to drive all the way back in to where he landed. Back home around 6:00 p.m.[bb_archive/_borders/disc1_aftr.htm]