I've been getting a string of bad weather lately, and it hasn't been sitting all that well with me, just ask my family. Besides for kicking the dirt and basically just acting like a child when the weather has turned crappy, I've turned to doing other things, but not things that have been too productive.
At work I saw this weekend was shaping up pretty nicely. It's been that way all week, but the marine layer seemed to be pushing in deep late at night and Sylmar would usually be covered until the late morning. This being a short week for me (get every other Friday off), I was hoping for some good flying Fridays with an even better flight for Saturday seeing how the heat was supposed to be in the 90's.
Friday seemed OK, but the haze in the valley was obviously somewhat discouraging to a lot of folks based on the turn out. We ended up having only 4 pilots for the day on Friday. Two of the pilots had short flight, Phill and I were able to stay up until the conditions improved and were able to drive all over the place finding lift in unusual spots and chase each other around for about an hour and a half.
Earlier that day Chris Smith called and said he wanted to go flying (emphasis on GO). Chris said Tony Deleo (aka El Diablo) and crew were headed to Blackhawk. I already knew the conditions would be good from looking at earlier reports. With an easterly wind direction it might be possible to fly to Santa Barbara depending on how fast you were. But before we could commit we needed a driver. I said I'd get that taken care of if I could. After flying on Friday, I asked Erwin but he was committed so I thought I'd give Darrel a chance. He said he would do it, so we were set. John Scott was originally on our vehicle, but opted to fly Sunday at Pine instead so now it was just Chris and I meeting in the LZ @ 7:45.
Desert flying is no joke, you need to be prepared for spending some time on the ground with no shade and no other sources of water other than what you have. I had prepared myself for that. I probably could have carried some extra water, but I was confident in my abilities to beem out of Blackhawk and get to the top of the lift, giving me the extra altitude to make it into civilization. Since all my gear was charged up all I needed to concern myself with was to get a good nights sleep. I didn't get to bed until midnight though (the first good sign). Most of my good flights have been on little sleep.
Chris was on my bumper as I pulled on to Shimshaw, right on time. We loaded gliders and were on the road by 8:10. On the way there we heard that the Deleo crew was a bit behind schedule and would arrive sometime after us. We gassed up again in Hesparia and then headed up the Blackhawk mine road. I'd forgotten how much I hate that road. Makes Kagel seem smooth. In retrospect maybe we should have taken Chris's Subaru, but we made it up fine after spinning the tires a bit. Arriving on launch we were greeted by no pilots but straight in conditions, and the setup location of our choice. I had just finished rigging my glider when the others showed up. Tony, Jonathon Dietch, John Hesch (from SLO), Bob Anderson (SB), Alex (Russian paraglider pilot, forget his last name, aka Dizzy on our forum), and one other paraglider pilot. And of course driver extraordinary Fast Eddie (Ed Skow from Ojai). After the normal meet and greets I approached Eddie and told him that our driver was inexperienced. Eddie gave him his best indoctrination he could. We decided to switch to the SB frequency so we would all be on the same (safety in numbers). This was likely one of the best decisions we made all day.
By 1:00pm, seemingly late for Blackhawk, Chris and I were ready to punch off and get into the air. Chris left first and right away you could see that the wind was stronger than it was earlier. The paraglider pilots had already resigned to not flying after measuring the wind (15 - 30). My turn, and I wait for a more mellow cycle. I launch and right away I think I'm getting turned back into the hill. I'm sure it didn't look at the pretty but I straightened the glider out and proceeded to fly down the front spine to find something less effected by the venturi of the canyon.
In the air you could tell that the wind was really coming from the ENE and I had a hard time finding something that wasn't ripped up and was solidly going up. Don't know why but I kept pushing up wind into some east facing ridges that I was banking on working. At one point I had a few LZ's picked out just in case this risky plan didn't work. By the time I got to the last east facing ridge I was down 5300, a thousand feet below and to the east of launch. But my plan worked, I hooked a thermal that was better. The place I'd put myself into was a nice bowl shaped ridge overlooking a pretty decent road and was producing plenty of lift. But the drift was significant. In short order I was back over launch but not all that high, going past launch at 7100, I heard Chris was across the road at 6100, so I decided to take my altitude and move down the range. I figured I'd just fly it like the Owens. Stick to the ridges that poke out and catch whatever comes off of them.
The first couple of ridges, I wasn't quite sure my plan was a wise one. The lift would be ratty, broken up scraps of thermals. Drifting more than climbing. Still I could hear Chris getting higher just about 5km beyond me. Gradually I was progressing higher, 6800on one ridge, then 7100 on the next one, 7800 after rounding the next one. Finally I came into another bowl type ridge and blasted skyward to over 11k, but the drift was substantial. At this point I'd heard that Chis and John Hessh were crossing the valley floor over to rabbit dry lake bed. Clearly the clouds on the backside of the San Bernardino's were showing good lift, so why they had listened to the advice of Tony bewilders me. But they did and both of them were groveling low over rabbit dry lake bed. Apparently Chris was setting up for landing at one point and hooked into something that was drifting him westward for a long time. He eventually pulled it off the deck into a good thermal that would take him over the town of Victorville and eventually to El Mirage dry lake bed.
Meanwhile I was hearing Jonathon struggling low on the ridges and eventually decided to pull out over the valley floor for some calmer air I believe. I think he ended up on a paved road somewhere near the 18 bear valley road intersection. About this time 13 miles from launch I start to report my distance from launch. However I was originally reporting the time as my distance. It was sort of uncanny that the time seemed to be about my distance, but later realized my mistake and then gave better reports. Another problem was that I was reporting km instead of miles. We were trying to raise Darrel on the radio but couldn't get any comms. I think Chris had him once as he was close to landing but then never heard from him again. Eddie was always available and kept us up to speed with where everyone was and tried to help Darrel along side of the road. Apparently the frequency had changed somehow. Eddie got that straightened out and then instructed Darrel to wait in Victorville until Chris got up and out of there. We wouldn't hear from Darrel again for the rest of the flight.
By now, I was well established at 11k clouds showing the way and in the lead with nobody to pimp off. I chose to stay with the lift markers. They had not let me down so far and I found no reason to doubt the signs of obvious lift. Most of my glides were between 3 - 4 miles at this point. Nice views of Lake Arrowhead, and the mountains behind Crestline. The lift would be bumpy at times so I kept the VG settings pretty low. I had a good tailwind of 15 so full VG would have only added to the roughness of the air. Somewhere around SIlverwood lakes (just north of that) I would tank up to make the crossing over the 15 into antelope valley. Cruising under a good looking cloud I would get into the 14k realm and experienced my first ever bout of hypoxia. I've been high before (much higher than this), but never felt the dizziness and light headedness that I was feeling now. What made it worse is that the hypoxia heightened the fear factor of the air being rowdy. What would have been acceptable before was now no longer acceptable. After experiencing the feeling for several minutes I vowed to stay below 14k for the rest of the flight, I would not be able to keep that vow. I checked on Chris's progress, he was back in the game approaching 11k, I was near 14k and climbing on glide across the 15. I took this altitude and flew 12 miles until I reach the next cloud. As I got there the cloud was dissipating and I had to turn left to get to another cloud that was building pretty quick. Down to 8k I eventually found the core on the upwind side of the cloud and spun back up to 12.7k and hooked up (briefly) with Tony Deleo. Tony had stayed high across the 15 and was about 1500 over me as I was climbing. Seeing the clouds start to pop in front of us he left, I followed. Our next glide would be 16 miles long. I lost sight of Tony, I may have passed him up with that long glide but the clouds were showing good development and there was no reason to doubt them. During that glide I was basically having a pretty good time staying high the whole way. At 9900 I found a screamer back to 14k. I was on the east side of Little Rock and the clouds were deviating now more to the south side of the valley. The clouds looked much better over towards Gleason and Parker. Our intended route was toward interstate 5. I slowed down taking needless climbs to let the others catch me. Chris was making up time. I heard him say he had been to 16k, so I was pretty sure he's be around soon. He was pulling on the speed and was soon under me (but I never did see him). We finally met up at lake Palmdale, me at 14k and Chris at 9k after spending his altitude for distance (and fast).
Chris recommends flying home, at first I'm not sure. We're doing well, ave only been in the air for 2.5 hours and the day is still working. Thinking about it the best I could since I'm back at 14.5k and likely not thinking all that clearly I finally opt to go home to Kagel. With no driver, it seemed to be the smart move. I punched in the waypoint for Kagel. Guess-o-meter says we'll make it with 5500 feet to spare, I pull the VG half on and point to home. On the way I drive under a nice cumi and stay at 10k all the way home. Arriving over launch at 10.5k, I tale the tour to the 5, 210, and 14 split where I finally descend below 8k. I finally feel the bumpiness from the top of the inversion. Around 6k I can smell the chlorine smell that often accompanies the smell of LA. Chris and I meet at the third bowl both pulled in for speed and taking our victory passes across our home site. Landing was uneventful, no entertainment for the masses.
Distance with a turnpoint: 180.4km
Duration: 3.5
Max Altitude: 14800
Seeing Darrel pull up with the vehicle @ 7pm: Priceless
Blackhawk to Kagel Redux
Great reporting Chip and great fly8ing to you and Chris. I'm glad that Daryl arrived back in short order. I met Tony Deleo at Pine launch Sunday morning and he debriefed me on my error that cost me the Blackhawk flight Saturday. It also applied to flying Pine Sunday and the results made up for Blackhawk. At least I had a nice clean no-step landing on Saturday after threading in between Joshua trees, etc. That alone was nearly worth the trip.
