Another Utah story

[Ken Andrews]

Too Much Lift

This story starts out slowly, as did the weather on Monday, July 3, at Kanarraville, Utah. After the previous two days of cross-country flying, fewer pilots flew this day due to neglected families, fatigue, and less attractive flying conditions. A couple went to Zion; others relaxed in the morning and flew in the afternoon at Hurricane.

The cross-country fiends among us waited for the overcast to burn off, and then repeated the now-familiar launch from Graff Point and northbound cross-country flying. On Saturday and Sunday, clouds had developed until they created a little rain, shut off the lift, and grounded us. Seeing a similar pattern this day with a rainstorm parked over Paragonah, I declared my intent to turn around one town short of the storm, for a 48 mile out-and-back to Parowan. With lift from both the clouds above and the spectacular red sandstone mountains below, the 24 mile outbound leg was straightforward. The rest of the flight was not.

The developing clouds shut down the lift over the mountains, so I flew out for a low save over a sunny parking lot in Parowan. It worked: my vario chirped a little, and I slowly climbed a few hundred feet up and away from an imminent landing. Then this little thermal turned spectacular! My vario pegged at 1600 fpm, and in three minutes I climbed nearly a vertical mile. At 13000 feet, I stuffed the bar to escape the clouds overhead that had not been there three minutes earlier. That slowed my climb rate to 550 fpm, and the clouds were expanding faster than I could fly. Not good. At 14000 feet, by spiral diving as I've never spiral dived before, my vario would grudgingly go negative, only by about 200 fpm for the first five minutes; then gradually more so.

Finally down to 9000 feet, I returned to straight flight. As the crushing centrifugal force abated, and with the ground no longer whirling, I looked around. An impressive dust cloud had formed across the north side of town, marking a gust front I wanted no part of. Running from the gust front and the mountains, I flew out to I-15, joined the southbound traffic a couple thousand feet below, and radioed to Hungary Joe that I was still flying my plan.

Just a few minutes later, I was again gaining altitude uncontrollably, and returned to the dreaded spiral dive. Thirty turns later I was down to 7500 feet (1500 feet AGL) and the air became more turbulent than anything I have ever met. Keeping the glider upright and structurally intact was about all I could aim to achieve. Once, the glider rolled past 90 degrees, so the ground was up and the sky was down, but I was flying plenty fast at the time. After one of the many moments of weightlessness, the glider snapped back with such force that it broke the "dorsal line" of my harness (which runs from the shoulders through the carabiner and back to the knees) that was brand new just a dozen flights earlier. A couple times my airspeed went to zero, but the glider happened to be level each time and did not tailslide.

With the air no longer suitable for flight, the remaining challenge was to land. Contemplating this, the good news was that just a thousand feet below was a large expanse of desert, with the nearby freeway as the only obstacle to avoid; the bad news was that dust devils were forming there as I watched....

[Ken Andrews]

...Due to the broken dorsal line, my harness zipper jammed. The escape velcro was stuck together too firmly to open conveniently with one hand, and in this intractable air, devoting more attention to the velcro was out of the question. Just above the ground, I turned into the wind of the moment, hopped a couple times with the tail of the harness, and flopped down for lack of feet. With some awkward gymnastics, I forced the glider's nose to the ground so I could unhook and extricate myself from the harness without blowing away like a Dacron tumbleweed.

I reported my safe landing and a rather poor estimate of my location to Hungary Joe. He augmented this with a better location from Dana Tew, who witnessed my landing from the far side of the highway. Soon after, he and Gary Wesler drove to my spot in the roadless patch of desert, helped me pack up the glider, and we drove away under the black clouds just as the rain began.

[Don]

And I thought I have had memorable moments !

[max]

Ken, and I thought I was the only one who can get himself in trouble, you make me feel better now.

[Malury]

Dang! All that work I've been doing to overcome my fears, and then Max and Ken show me that they are truly justified !

[gregangsten]

All this thunderstorm stuff makes me think it was a mistake to move that trip to July instead of Memorial Day. That article in the magazine a while ago agrees, saying that monsoon thunderstorms are the rule that time of year around that area and limit XC.