Mark and Pete -- 2014 Summer Trip Summary
The Toshiba Memorial Tour
Mark Gardner is responsible for
it all. A few months earlier, Gardinator
had suggested going to Golden, British Columbia to fly in the Canadian
Nationals. I procrastinated, but Golden
fit in with my intention of flying new sites.
So, eventually, I said, yes, I’m in.
A brief look at the map will
tell you that Golden, BC is a long way from Pittsburgh, and by extension there
are a lot of flying sites to be found along the way. Mark had an unaccustomed three weeks of
vacation, and the Canadian Nats were only one week long, so even with the long
drive out we still had considerable time for flying sites along the way. After briefly considering a huge southern
detour through Arkansas and Oklahoma, we decided to pass through
Wyoming/Idaho/Montana to get to British Columbia.
But before leaving we had one
other decision to make: which vehicle?
My little Toyota RAV4, the “clown car” in Gardinator-speak, or his
Toshiba-owned Chrysler mini-van with gobs of room and a company gas card? It was an easy decision, and after picking me
up in Pittsburgh we headed west on I-70 before jogging north towards I-80 at
Kansas City. Exploiting the mini-van’s
roominess we drove straight through, with one person sleeping in the back while
the other drove.
Our exact itinerary had been
left loose, and the first decision point was reached at Cheyenne in southeastern
Wyoming where we could have taken a right on I-25 towards northeastern Wyoming
and the Sandturn flying site which I had not yet flown. Or, we could continue westward on I-80
towards Rock Springs, WY where I had spent five summers of fabulous
flying. On the one hand, going there
would violate my intention of flying new sites, but on the other I had good
friends there and the promise of a tow rig from which to fly. I can’t remember how Mark felt about it, but
that’s where we went.
Aspen Mountain and into the Red Desert
Rock Springs is a town at the
southwest end of Wyoming’s Red Desert, and one of the world’s truly great cross
country areas. Unfortunately for Mark, most of that potential is
experienced from truck-tow launches, and Mark doesn’t like to tow. Fortunately, the first day after our arrival
had WNW winds that were suitable for launching from Aspen Mountain, the only
really good foot-launch site in the area (there is also Death Ridge, but that’s another story). My great friend Johnny Dawson (from Seattle)
and our local friend Richard Brickner (a wonderful Tennessee redneck
transplanted to Wyoming) chose to drive for us.
This is a part of the world where a driver is essential. It is an unpopulated semi-desert with scarce
roads, and scarcer people. You need retrieval.
Mark and I finally launched off
the 2,000 ft. vertical hill in fairly strong winds and I soon climbed out at
600 fpm. Mark had a bit tougher time,
but eventually, about 20 miles to the east we began to fly together. Soon I
had to watch him gliding above me after he had hooked a monster climb to near
18,000msl. Our original plan had been to
head southeast along a road into Colorado, east of Dinosaur. However, the early winds aloft proved far
more westerly than forecast, compelling us to take an easterly course through
the boonies towards I-80 and the Red Desert.
We had little choice of route as the roads are few, and that really was
the only option. As I had never flown
that route (and had forgotten to load western maps into my Garmin) we were
lucky that Johnny and Richard were driving (and navigating) for us. I was sufficiently disoriented that I mistook
a distant rail line for I-80, however the rail line was going in the right
direction and it all worked out. We
finally made it into the wonderfully colorful buttes at the south edge of the Red
Desert, and just south of the interstate.
Unfortunately, as we approached the sixty mile mark at Wamsutter Mark
got low and landed. I managed to climb
back to 17K, however the winds had by now switched considerably towards the
north which would have compelled me to head south into Colorado along the one
available road. Instead, I burned off
ten grand to fly back and land with Mark and the others south of Wamsutter for 62 miles.
It was our first day and I figured we would see plenty more good ones
like it. Mark had gotten about 2:45 and I had 3:20.
Daniel, WY Truck Towing: Gardinator the Tow Driver
We spent the night in Rock
Springs, and the following day Johnny, Mark and I drove about 120 miles north
to Daniel, WY where we met a very rare individual: an enthusiastic,
self-taught, young hang glider pilot
who possesses both infinite enthusiasm and an ATOL tow rig. Nathan is a wonderful tonic for someone as
cynical as I am about the sport’s future.
He’s a nice guy and good pilot, and was very happy to have someone to
play with.
This time I had a good tow and
slowly climbed out; unfortunately drifting in the wrong direction to chase
Nathan. I barely controlled my urge to
say “the hell with it” and land back at the truck. That proved fortunate for while the lift was
generally only 150-200fpm and never went very high I managed to stay in the air
for three more hours, ultimately landing
at 8:30 at Nathan’s lz sixty miles to the southeast.
The most interesting thing about
the flight was the last twenty minutes.
It was already eight o’clock and the weak lift was still there, but
surely couldn’t last much longer as sunset was near. I was desperately hoping for one last decent
climb to enable me to reach Nathan’s lz when to my surprise I did encounter
lift, but not just the weak garbage I had been working, but a core that had
long periods of almost 500fpm. But just
as I was relaxing, the thing abruptly slowed down and then became
distressingly, spookily turbulent at only 11,000 msl (less than 4,000 agl).
And with that I began the final
glide that did in fact get me to Nathan’s lz.
I got there with a thousand feet to spare and began to set up my
landing, anticipating landing into the northwest wind I’d seen the entire
flight. However Johnny (who had decided
to drive for Nathan rather than fly) reported that the wind was from the east,
and getting stronger. By the time I
landed the wind was perhaps 15 mph from the east, and may have provided the
answer to what had been going on with that remarkably strong last thermal which
had ended so turbulently. When it
occurred, I had been flying parallel to, and about fifteen miles west of the
high Wind River mountain range. It would
appear that the big mountains had gone katabatic approaching sunset, and that
the easterly outflow from the mountains had triggered that remarkably strong
late day thermal. All in all, it would
prove to be my most enjoyable flight of the trip: difficult, rewarding and with
an oddly interesting end game. Better
yet, Mark was there within minutes of my landing and we were only about 45
minutes from Rock Springs as I had been flying towards home.
JACKSON HOLE: FRIENDLY PARAGLIDER PILOTS; UNFRIENDLY CONDITIONS
The following day Mark and I
drove up to Jackson Hole, WY where we were hoping to fly the magnificent Grand
Tetons on the next day. The difficulty
with flying off the top of the mountain is that the site faces south, while the
prevailing winds are westerly. It is a
big lee-side rotor, and if one doesn’t encounter one of the rare southerly
days, it can be either un-launchable or so turbulent that you’ll wish that you
hadn’t launched.
After going to Teton Village to
learn the details of getting our gliders onto the tram the next morning, we
went in search of lodgings. For those
who’ve never been there, Jackson is one of the fanciest, busiest and most
expensive summer resorts in the western US.
Even the (booked out) Motel 6 was getting $160/night. So we wound up having to go about thirty
miles out of town to even find a campground, albeit one with a spectacular
morning view of the Tetons as we drove back to the tram.
We and our gliders rode up to
the 10,500 msl launch on the first tram of the day along with a horde of tandem
paraglider pilots and their touron passengers.
It was quite remarkable to see how many tandems there were, and how they
managed to safely launch into the sketchy, crossed and light early
conditions. Mark and I chose to wait
until later in the day in the hopes of finding safely launchable and soarable
conditions. It was to be a long wait.
Only much later in the day did
we finally decide to set up and launch on the mountain’s back side into the now
strong west wind. Mark got up pretty
quickly, while I wound up being flushed off the mountain, through the rotor and
into the valley. I was spooked, and
while I eventually got back up well over launch (12,500 msl) in the valley I
was having no fun and just went to land after an hour. Mark, on the other hand, wasn’t rattled and
flew around for nearly two hours before joining me in the lz.
MISSOULA and WHITEFISH, MT: Almost
We next drove to Missoula, MT in
the hopes of flying the site above town that is often seen in Jeff Shapiro
photographs. A number of phone calls
secured us a ride up the hill and through the locked gate to launch. Unfortunately, while our host chose to fly,
neither Mark nor I liked the conditions and we chose to break down on top and
continue our journey north towards Canada. Further
phone calls put us in touch Greg Braugh, the one pilot remaining in Whitefish,
MT, but after meeting him for breakfast next day he informed us that conditions
were unsuitable for the local sites.
ON TO GOLDEN
It was time to begin the last
leg toward our destination of Golden, British Columbia. The last 150 miles of the drive from the
Canadian border gave us an inkling of what lay ahead as we were driving on the
west side of a very large mountain range (10,000 vertical feet above the road
at some points), the one along which we would be flying during the
contest.
We arrived in Golden at the campground,
lz and meet headquarters around dusk, just in time to move into the round,
tent-like Tibetan yurt that would be our home for the week. The campground is clean, modern,
eco-friendly, and, best of all, owned by a pilot. He bought and developed the property as part
of a move to secure the huge lz for future generations of hang and paraglider
pilots. The enormous lz is flat, unobstructed and
liberally endowed with wind indicators.
It is also at only 2,500 msl which is quite an improvement from the high-temperature
7,000 msl landing fields in Wyoming.
Practice Day
The following morning we
arranged a ride up to the Mount Seven launch, 3,600 feet above the lz. The various launches are all fairly benign,
and in the light conditions we had it was a piece of cake to launch off the
appropriate ramp. Both Mark and I easily
got up in the somewhat trashy, high pressure conditions that would mark the
entire time of our stay. I only got to
9,000 msl, while Mark encountered a rogue thermal that got him to about 13,000
feet. I went out to land after about an
hour and a half as I was discovering that I really am becoming a flat-land
tow-woos. The trashy lift and the
proximity to rocks was un-nerving me a bit, and my hands were cramping from
holding on too tightly. On the other
hand, Mark was enjoying himself and stayed up for quite a bit longer than I
did.
Day One: Invermere Goal Flight (65 miles)
In leisure mode, Mark and I both
launched quite late, having set up near the end of the line. As a result we both missed the last start
clock and were late getting on course.
Conditions were better than the previous day, not quite as trashy and
lift was both stronger and generally went higher. We both got over 13,000 as we headed down the
enormous mountain range. I was far, far
too tentative and correspondingly slow due to my wariness of ever getting low
in the rocks. Still, I finally arrived
at goal, albeit last for the day and with a crappy landing to top it off. Mark made it about 45 miles towards goal before
landing and was quite happy with the day.
We had both been in the air for about three and a half hours.
Days Two to Five: To Hell in
a Handbasket
The first two flying days had
been marked by high pressure conditions, but the flying had still been
good. However, forest fires throughout
the state began to bring such remarkable amounts of smoke into the valley that
it was shading the valley floor and mountain slopes. Soaring conditions became simply awful as the
smoke (sometimes abetted by high cirrus clouds) shut down thermal
activity.
The third day was little
better. Mark and I both managed short,
losing scratching flights on the way to the lz.
I managed a moral victory of thirty-nine minutes, and Mark had a similar
time. Miraculously, one pilot actually
made the day’s 45 mile out and return task.
No one else got more than ten miles.
Day four was called off at
launch, just in time for us to break down in a gust front and pelting rain
storm. Our gliders were muddy messes by
the time we got them in the bag. The
main landing area later became a vast glider wash site after we had driven down
the hill.
Eventually, just for the helluva
it, I flew way out into the valley to see if I could get up there, and
didn’t. After landing fairly near the
turn point I started hearing others on the radio and still in the air. One of them was Mark who got past me by a
couple of miles and a couple of other guys who made the turn point. That would not have been too bad, but for the
fact that two guys actually made it all the way back to goal. I felt like a complete fool for having
squandered an excellent chance to have easily won the day. Ah well, it was still a lovely day and I
hadn’t been spooked or flushed into the lz.
But it sure was stupid.
Back to the States
That was the end to our
comp. Two more competition days were
scheduled, however rain was coming in and we decided to head south in hopes of
better weather and a chance to escape the increasingly heavy smoke. Apparently we missed nothing in Golden as the
last two days were in fact cancelled, but our escape strategy didn’t work quite
as planned. On the one hand we did not
get rained on as we drove south, but on the other hand the smoke was, if
anything, worse in Montana and Idaho than it had been in British Columbia. It was extraordinary; it was as though the
northwestern states were all on fire.
Our telephone calls to various sites were all met with the news that
they too were in the smoke. Continuing
south, we finally decided to try and fly in the Salt Lake area, seven hundred
and fifty miles south of Golden. That had
to be free of the smoke, right?
Inspo (Willard Peak, Utah)
Our phone calls had put us in
touch with Ryan Voight, the well known Ellenville pilot, but who happened to be
in the Salt Lake area on vacation. He
and local friends were going to be flying that day at Inspiration Point above
Willard, UT. As Mark and I arrived late
in the afternoon we had to drive up by ourselves, trusting that Bitchin’ Betty
our Garmin Nuvi had the right location.
It is a long drive up the backside of the mountain, going from near
desert at Willard (4,300 msl) until one arrives in beautiful alpine flower
meadows near launch (9,000 msl). It was
a remarkable contrast to the rocky desert land below launch. The view would have been spectacular…except
for the damn smoke. We quite literally
could barely see the Salt Lake which was only four miles in front of us.
Still, it was blowing in on
launch and we were there. However, as we
had no driver we had to flip a coin to see who would fly/drive. I won the toss and set up quickly as it was
getting to be quite late. As I launched
Ryan and local legend Dangerous Dave Gibson were still in the air taking videos
and doing aerobatics (there’s a picture from those flights in a recent Hang and Paragliding Magazine). It was utterly soarable, but rather ugly and
a bit disappointing in the murky late afternoon haze, so I landed after less
than an hour in the air. The lz was a
field next to the Mormon church outside of town. Their green lawn was a lovely place in which
to breakdown, however it did have the disadvantage of not allowing beer to be
consumed after a flight. But that was
small price to pay for the shady grass.
In Search of Smoke Free America
The following morning Mark and I
went to Point of the Mountain’s Southside where there were a number of pilots
playing/training on the ridge. Oh, yes,
and we also got to see the world’s only flyable B-29 bomber fly by at low
altitude while giving rides at an airshow.
The Southside was soarable, but neither Mark nor I had any desire to
set-up our gliders, and after saying our goodbyes to Ryan and others we began
the long drive to Colorado where we’d decided we would try to fly at
Telluride. Mark had once flown there in
a drizzle and I figured he needed to get a proper Telluride flight as that is
one of the special experiences available to a hang glider pilot. I had called my friends Nick and Betsy
Kennedy, and they told us we could stay at their wonderful house, itself quite
a treat. It is located in an aspen grove
at 10,000 msl on the side of a mountain above the main valley. The view is simply astonishing, and the house
which Nick (a contractor) built himself, is wonderful. They are two of the nicest people I know, and
I just love visiting them and their little son Tom in that piece of heaven.
But before going to bed that
night in Telluride, Mark and I first went into town for a quick bite to
eat. I remarked on the unusual number
of milling pedestrians as we came into town, and our waiter informed us that we
had arrived in time for the annual nude bicycle ride that exists to remind the
locals that their stoner hippie roots are not entirely lost in a town where the
millionaires are being turfed out by the billionaires. And sure enough, as we waited for our meals a
stir passed through the crowd, followed by a flood of naked male and female
bicyclists racing up and down the main street.
And they were not all ugly.
Telluride, Gold Hill 12,200 msl
Telluride is one of the truly
fabulous hang gliding venues in the world.
One launches off a west facing grassy slope above the treeline at 12,000
feet. Access is obtained by contacting
local Telluride Air Force pilots who run a morning and, weather permitting, a
five o’clock evening shuttle up the mountain, using one of the club’s two heavy
duty pick-up trucks that are eminently suited for the very steep drive up what
is now a remarkably well maintained road.
At the present time there are almost no hang glider pilots flying there,
so one is usually going up with the paraglider pilots who are themselves not
very numerous. In any event, at eight am
Mark and I signed our waivers, paid our money and loaded up with a few
paraglider pilots for the drive to the top of the world. As it was still early, the paraglider pilots
launched off the eastern, Bear Creek, side of the hill while Mark and I elected
to set up on the crest in order to launch to the west later in the day.
Conditions were not ideal, being
crossed from the left and a bit strong. When I finally did launch it was into
somewhat rotary conditions. However, I
got up quite quickly which spared me the worst of the turbulence as climbed at
700 fpm above the mountain ridges and into clean air. As I had no oxygen with me I pulled out of
the climb at 16,500 feet and began pushing upwind towards the west and out of
the mountains. After a while I noticed
that the clouds were beginning to blow up over the mountains behind me, so I
decided it was time to glide back and land quickly. Gust fronts associated with storms are very
dangerous in those valleys, and I wanted no part of them. I glided back eleven miles and then quickly
spiraled down to land. I was somewhat
apprehensive as the winds were light and switchy, and Mark had already whacked
hard in the lz. The flight was an hour and twenty minutes long.
Mark had launched a bit after me
and had at first struggled to get up before finding the mother of all thermals
on a lower ridge. He reported seeing
something like 1450 fpm on his vario in that thermal and eventually pulled out
of the thermal before it got him too close to the clouds. Like me he then soon decided to land due to
the deteriorating weather, but landed in the wrong field and possibly in a
tree-line rotor that resulted in a hard whack.
Fortunately, both Mark and the glider undamaged.
Gold Hill, Day 2
Once again we rode up the hill
with the paraglider pilots, and good ones at that (Jeff Cristol is really
good). They launched into the spooky
looking Bear Creek while we again chose to wait for the later west launch to
turn on. Unfortunately, once we began to
set-up Mark had one of his glider’s sprog zippers blow out, thereby preventing
him from flying. This created a problem
as the truck was gone and Mark now had to walk halfway down the mountain to
catch the tram into town to see about getting a vehicle up onto the mountain to
retrieve his glider.
While Mark walked, I finished
setting up and then went, alone, to wait on launch for a cycle. I had made a bad mistake by not choosing to
go earlier in the day with the paraglider pilots as conditions did not want to
turn around to the west as they normally do.
I sat for a long time on launch carefully watching for a suitably
reliable, light up-cycle in which to take-off.
I feared I might be stuck on the mountain.
Finally, a cycle did appear and
I ran off into the thin air. Very soon I
found myself in a staggeringly strong thermal that averaged 800fpm for almost
six thousand feet, and showed bits of 1,300 fpm in it. As it went through 17,000 msl I left it and
ran away to avoid being sucked into the cloud at near 20,000 feet. And as I glided away at high speed I looked
back to see that once again I had waited far too late to fly as the clouds were
already dumping rain further back in the mountains. It was time to land, asap. I immediately began searching for sink in
which to get down. After having then
spiraled down low enough, I thought, to just glide back to the lz and land, I
left the sink and began to glide…but then ran into a patch of lifting air that
caused me to gain back a thousand feet while flying in a straight line. Finally, I found another patch of sink I
spiraled down 4,000 feet at 600 fpm to land uneventfully after only fifty-nine
intense minutes in the air.
The day was not yet over as we
still had to go back up the mountain to get Mark’s glider. But in that we were lucky as the paraglider
pilots were once again going up, gambling on a late evening flight after the
storms had abated. We therefore could
retrieve Mark’s glider and pack-up for the drive to our last flying site before
heading home.
Gunnison Gliders: bags, bag repairs and a lot of weed gets smoked
Before Mark could fly again, we
had to fix the glider’s zipper, but as it so happened, Rusty Whitley’s Gunnison
Gliders shop was two hours east of Telluride and directly en route to our destination
of Villa Grove. We called Rusty who gave
us directions and told us to stop by. In
addition to the zipper repair, Mark realized he needed a new glider bag and
asked Rusty if he could make one up for him.
I thought this’d be a great time to have a heavy bag made for my Sport
2….and my harness could use a lighter cross country bag…and my flight suit
needed new leg zippers. Rusty said yes
to all of it. Arriving at Rusty’s place we
found that he already had the glider bags partially finished. But there was still much work to be done, and
Rusty being the Colorado stoner that he is, that required the burning of much
weed. And while he worked friends
stopped by for a chat, and some more weed was burned. Eventually, and before the weed supply was exhausted,
all of our bags and repairs were expertly done, and to our full
satisfaction. So, with thanks, we drove
off to Villa Grove.
Villa Grove, CO
I had originally hoped to stay
with my friends Jim and Amy Zeiset in Salida, but they were out of town and
incommunicado on an Oregon bicycle trip, so it looked like we were going to be
camping. Knowing that, we called Larry
and Tiffany Smith whose wonderful house is found below the Villa Grove launch,
and asked if we might camp at their place.
They told us that instead of camping we could ‘camp’ in their garage,
which is dry and has a shower. We were
set.
For those who’ve not read the
articles on the Colorado Fly Days events, their compound is the core of that affair
and consists of a wonderful, modern, electrically self-sufficient house built
on a rise above the valley floor and below the 14,000 foot Sangre de Cristo
mountains. There is also an enclosed
courtyard garden, the garage, and a grove of trees that Larry has painstakingly
nurtured for over ten years, having started their cultivation even before he
dug the first foundation. It’s a
spectacular location.
The following morning Mark and I
hooked up with my friend Greg, aka Veeger, now a Villa local, but another of
Larry Smith’s old gang of Minnesota hang glider pilots. He and his wife volunteered to drive for us,
and we went first drove up to Whale, a 12,200 foot launch on the west side of
the valley that can be flown early in the day due to the heating of its east
facing slopes. However, getting up to
launch involves traveling the worst long hang gliding road I am familiar
with. Fortunately, Veeger has a suitable
vehicle with the power and ground clearance to get us up there. Sadly, once we got to launch it quickly
became apparent that the wind was blowing over the back and that setting up
would be pointless. So, we went back
down the Burma Road, drove across the valley and up to the Villa Grove launch
where things didn’t look too good either.
There the wind was too light and high cirrus clouds were suppressing the
thermal heating. Eventually we decided to set up, and finally
found satisfactory conditions into which to launch.
Mark and I soon climbed out
although not before first getting a bit low.
Mark wound up getting to over 15,000 msl in a thermal that averaged 827
fpm. The problem was, like in Telluride,
that the clouds on the mountains were beginning to blow up, while at the same
time the cirrus was thickening over the valley.
We were between a rock and a hard place, but I had an objective in mind
for these reduced circumstances: the newly legal marijuana store in Moffat,
twenty two miles from launch.
More or less as a joke, I had
put the store’s coordinates into my gps before launch, and now that long
flights had become unlikely I flew off the mountain and out into the valley in
an attempt to fly to Moffat before conditions deteriorated too far. Mark followed, but we both came up about
eight miles short as the sky really started to go to hell. We were soon picked up by Veeger and his wife
and we all then drove to the weed store.
I no longer smoke dope, but I was really curious to see how such a legal
business is conducted. In we trooped, to
be greeted by a knowledgeable staff who professionally explained the virtues of
the candies, oils, buds, brownies and cookies on offer. Veeger and his wife left with muffins, and
the four of us went back to Villa for a remarkable local end-of-week custom.
Every Friday evening many locals gather in the back room of a shuttered local
business, bringing twelve packs of beer, rum, and weed for what amounts to a
municipal happy hour. The muffins made their contribution to the
merriment. Tiffany too had shown up
after work, and we all then went over to the Steel Horse, Villa’s only restaurant,
for dinner to conclude a weirdly fun day that marked the end of our long
trip. The following morning we took
leave of Tiffany and Larry and began the long drive home in our faithful
mini-van.
It had been quite a trip. Thank you, Toshiba.
Pete Lehmann
