 |
"Think anyone knows where we are?
"I dunno. Did you speak to Ernie?" "Not after Todd landed and radioed to me where he was. I couldn't raise Ernie on the radio. I got Bob and told him where you and Todd were, and that I was heading the same way." "Well, when Ernie finds Bob they'll come and get us." "I just hope Ernie can find Bob!" "It's gonna be dark pretty soon. We might be out here for a long time" "***king mosquitoes." (The actual words were, "Gosh, these mosquitoes really are bothersome, aren't they!"). |
Matt Jagelka, 1998 Lost-in-the-Desert Poster Boy
Matt, Todd, and myself sat on the side of a dirt road somewhere in south eastern Oregon. A ranch just up the road, and a series of giant circles of irrigated alfalfa a few miles away, were just about the only signs of habitation in an immensity of sagebrush plains rolling away in all directions to scattered distant blue mountains. To the east the sagebrush desert yielded to green marshy flatlands, overlooked by snow capped peaks far away. This region, the great sagebrush deserts and mountains of south east Oregon, north west Nevada and southern Idaho, is the least populated in the USA outside of Alaska. This place makes the Owens Valley of California look crowded by comparison.
The sun was burning hot, even though it was only an hour or so until sunset. Marshes and ponds around the ranch were home to an abundance of birds, even out here in what was otherwise a desert. They also provided a home for large numbers of ferocious mosquitoes, which weren't waiting until sundown to feed. We were all in shorts, and regretting it! We had no food, and only a few ounces of lukewarm water between us. We were reluctant to bother the people at the ranch, but it looked as if we would have to before long. The mosquitoes were getting worse by the minute. The radio was depressingly silent, we couldn't even raise Bob Stanley, who we knew had landed out in the desert somewhere to the south of us. We had no map, so we didn't really know where we were, though the ranch was called Rock Creek Ranch. We knew that we were a long way from Lakeview though. No-one mentioned cold beer, though all of us were trying not to think about it.
Lakeview, is a small town of 2500 people in south east Oregon, just over the border from California. This is a sparsely populated area, and it's not an easy place to make a living, but it does have excellent hang gliding and paragliding sites in abundance. The influx of visiting pilots is sufficiently important to the local economy for Lakeview to call itself the "Hang Gliding Capital of the West". The people there are pretty friendly, and unlike in more populated areas few landowners seem to mind hang glider pilots landing in their fields. The area is beautiful too, very much the "Wild West", with the rugged Warner Mountains rising to over 9000 ft, their flanks covered with pine forests, and with snow on the peaks even in late July. It's only about a nine hour drive from Santa Rosa, and the flying there is generally less extreme than places like the Owens, so about ten pilots from Sonoma Wings decided to spend a week there in mid July. We decided that we would stop on the way there at Hat Creek in Northern California near Mount Lassen, which is a site famed for its evening "glass offs". This is a volcanic rim facing west, a thousand feet or more above the valley, and running for several miles. It affords spectacular views to the volcanic peaks of Lassen and Shasta to the west. The landing area is a large grassy meadow in the forest below, probably fifty acres or more in extent, and it is also the camp site, very convenient. Even though the LZ is large and flat however, it is notoriously turbulent when still in sunshine, so we were warned that it was advisable not to take off too early, as landing before about 7.30 pm might not be fun. In any case the evening glass off wouldn't start until the thermal activity had died down somewhat. In the event, the lift was disappointing and most of us sunk out after less than half an hour, getting only a couple of hundred feet above the top. Only Todd and Ernie, who launched first, really got into it. Todd gained at least two thousand feet above the top and landed when it was nearly dark. The rest of us put on a exciting display of semi out of control landings in a wicked wind gradient, in the still very turbulent landing field, but no damage was done. High spirits at the start of our trip led to late night revelry and silliness in the campsite - we paid for it the next morning with general hangovers and bleariness, and then Todd and Matt woke everyone in camp at some terrible hour (like 5 a.m.) to go trout fishing, but after a blowout breakfast in Fall River Mills en route to Lakeview we were all feeling pretty good again. Matt and Todd made repeated efforts, in most of the streams on the way, to catch trout for their dinner that night, but the trout declined to sacrifice themselves.
We arrived at
Sugar Hill around midday. This is a large spur of the Warner mountains, about
twenty miles south of Lakeview, facing southwest with a takeoff at 7,200
ft, overlooking highway 395 and Goose Lake. It's a good XC site, but there's
a large gap to cross, several miles wide, immediately over the back, called
Fandango Pass. Winds tend to blow through this in a venturi effect in the
afternoons, so it's advisable to get to at least 10,000 ft if you can, before
going over the back. You can then either fly up the west side of the Warners,
to Lakeview and beyond, or head more northeast and out into the Oregon desert.
Sugar Hill often gets pretty windy in the afternoons, so we were keen to
get off as soon as we could. Todd again took off first, climbed to over 9000
ft in a thermal, and left with it before most of us had even set up our gliders.
It seemed fairly windy once in the air, and the thermals weren't very strong.
It was hard to get enough height to leave before being forced to make the
decision to go or to stay, - a bit like flying in Britain. One or two gaggles
of gliders left, but I couldn't get higher than 8,500 ft. Eventually I went
back too far with a thermal, lost it, turned to go back to the hill and realized
I was sinking like a brick in the lee of the hill, and risking being rotored
in if I didn't get out. I turned downwind and ran for it, now down to 8000
ft, sinking in the rotor, and cursing my stupidity. The nearest bailout LZ
was a clearing about three miles away, but there was an awful lot of forest
below me, and for a minute or so I wondered if I was going to make it. The
only other option was a swamp in a creek bed below, but that was better than
the tops of 100 ft high pine trees. I realized that I would just make the
bailout, and was a quarter of a mile away at about 300 ft AGL, harness zipper
undone, when I got a pop as I crossed a small tree covered ridge. I gained
about 50 feet, and wondered, looked at the LZ, decided I now had plenty of
height to get there safely, and turned back. Nothing, then a few beeps on
the vario. I s-turned and got zeros, then ones, then one down, then zeros.
I kept going backwards and forwards, only a hundred feet or so above the
trees, one eye on the landing area, just maintaining height. My radio was
turned down and I concentrated like mad, and started to find more and more
bits of lift, began to circle, and zipped my harness back up. It took me
over ten minutes to gain 500 ft, then the thermal really started to take
off, or I finally found a core, and I eventually climbed out to 8,700 ft
after what seemed like an age. I felt pretty pleased with myself for this,
but I had been drifted way up into Fandango Pass with the wind, and try as
I might I couldn't get out and round onto the west face of the Warners. I
could see a glider on the ground way up the pass, and another climbing out
over Fandango peak on the far side. I got onto the peak, but could find no
lift, and eventually had to join the glider on the ground, which turned out
to be Bob Stanley. All that work and only a measly five miler! No-one from
Sonoma Wings got very far, except for Todd, who flew up to Lakeview, landing
with the paragliders just north of town, where they were having a big
competition. Matt managed to make it as far as the Oregon border, landing
near New Pine Creek. Todd remarked how bleak it looked over the back of the
Warners to the north east, and how he didn't fancy flying across it, or
retrieving anyone from it!...
We all camped in a Forest Service campsite by a little stream called Lassen Creek, at the back of Sugar Hill. As a campsite it was hard to beat, being almost undeveloped, with lots of green grass and shady trees, by a little creek of perfectly cool water, and only about a fifteen minute drive from launch. There were few occupants other than about fifteen hang glider pilots, some from Portland, Oregon, and one at least, Dave Hopkins, from Portland, Maine. Dave had flown this area many times before, and had a huge scroll of topo maps showing vast stretches of little inhabited country out to about 300 miles.
Luckily for us he never tired of bringing this out ("the Dead Sea Scrolls!") and pointing out its landmarks and where the thermals were to be found. It's difficult though, to look at a 1:500,000 map, with few roads and fewer settlements, and relate it to millions of acres of sagebrush plains, alkali lakes and marshes, lava deserts, canyons, mesas and buttes, escarpments and mountains. I realised that I didn't even have a sectional chart! I' d meant to get one, and forgot, and now I was here, and had no clue as to what was downwind. I had come to Lakeview to "just fly for fun". I should have known that meant flying XC at every opportunity! The next day was a almost a repeat of the day before, except that the thermals were a bit better and there were a few clouds, more to the north. I went over too low again, and landed in a very pretty green grassy field, with pine trees at the edge, in the bottom of Fandango Pass, near the road, and full of flowers and horseflies. I was soon joined by another pilot. But John Blacet, Greg Sugg, Matt Jagelka, Bob Stanley, and a few other pilots made it over Fandango Pass and out beyond Fort Bidwell. Bob did the big sploosh, landing in "a nice green field" that turned out to be a marsh. Ernie Camacho took the day for Sonoma Wings with an 18 mile flight. But Hippy Mike from Portland OR, flew 103 miles on a Magic! That really took the wind out of our sails! Bill Vogel and his big red truck turned up that evening. We were all keen to fly cross country again the next day. In the morning we awoke to clouds in the sky before sunup. Something was going on. It was cooler and windier in the campsite too, and as we were eating breakfast we were watching cumulus clouds and lenticulars forming overhead. It seemed really windy up there. This didn't seem to bode well for the day. But as we prepared ourselves the sun grew warmer and the sky looked better and better, until by 10 a.m. small cloud streets were beginning to form. We felt for sure that this meant it would OD by the afternoon and there' d be thunderstorms. But as we were heading up to take off it was looking great, with cumulus clouds even out over Goose Lake. It didn't seem particularly windy on launch. We declared a goal of Doherty's Slide, a great west-facing escarpment in the desert about 50 miles away, declaring that we would fly there, and then catch the evening glass off that this site is famous for! (the one where it's getting dark and you are still 5000 ft above the ground and can't get down!) I took off at 1 p.m., determined that I would not leave the hill until I was at least 9,000 ft and in a thermal. Two or three gaggles of gliders left, but each time I failed to connect with the thermals that bore them away, and I stuck with my resolve not to leave too low. For some reason Todd elected to take off last today. Pushing forward to clouds forming in front of the ridge I eventually found the thermal I wanted, and left the hill at just about 9 grand, with about six other gliders, working several different cores, drifting over the back, climbing all the way over Fandango Pass. The thermal just kept going and we all kept climbing, until we had all been drifted across the valley and I was at cloudbase over Fandango Peak at 13,200 ft. Now this was more like it! Scattered ahead were several other gliders heading out across Fort Bidwell and into the desert beyond. Scott Huber, our new XC crazy Hang 2, was apparently walking over the tops of the trees down on the ridge about 5,000 ft below. Doherty's Slide was away to the north east, and several gliders were heading out in that direction across the green flats around Fort Bidwell, but it didn't look like a good thermal generating area, there was a big blue hole miles across, and nearly everyone seemed to be sinking. There were still good clouds on the east edge of the Warners though, and I decided to try and stay high and follow those to the north, at least for the present, and watch what happened. I was starting to get sucked into the cloud I was under, and the next cloud's base was about 200 ft lower, so I had to zoom about in steep turns to lose some height before continuing on my way. I realised at about this point that I had forgotten to do something very important, when planning to fly XC, and the effects of the breakfast coffee were still in evidence. Oh well, I have a pretty good bladder, so I' d just have to tough it out!
I managed to stay around 12,000 ft for a few miles until I was north of the flats around Bidwell, then I headed north east. The sky was still looking good with plenty of clouds, though some of them were a long way apart, and it seemed important to pick one's way carefully. Several gliders had gone down north of Fort Bidwell. I saw John Blacet's glider climbing a few miles ahead, and flew towards him. It was a good thermal, and by the time I had reached him he had climbed higher than me and was already heading off again. I climbed back to about 12,500 ft before the thermal got kind of ratty and I decided to leave. I could see John about three or four miles up ahead and much lower, but even as I flew towards him he started climbing again and once more skyed out and le ft by the time I had arrived there. I really like having folks mark the thermals for me like this, but today John was flying like his pants were on fire for some reason. Ahead was a deep and scary looking canyon - "Twelve Mile Canyon", and a lot of what looked like fairly unlandable terrain, but I was several thousand feet above this, and very glad to be there.
Beyond this
was a series of rather bleak looking strange muddy lakes in various shades
of grays and browns, with white alkali deposits around them, the largest
one, Coleman Lake, being a rich chocolate brown and two or three miles across.
John was already disappearing into the distance across this, but I stopped
to gain some more height in another thermal. Another glider appeared below
in the magical way that gliders seem to appear and disappear, and began climbing.
This turned out to be Matt, and pretty soon we were circling together in
what was becoming a very rough thermal. I went over the falls suddenly in
a wopper of a wire twanger, and was about to warn Matt when I saw him do
a near vertical dive for about a hundred feet out of the edge of the thermal.
We both decided at the same time I think, that we' d had enough of this one,
and set off across the muddy lake towards the west facing escarpment on the
other side. Bob Stanley also appeared suddenly. Todd was somewhere behind
and Ernie was somewhere up ahead, judging by the radio chatter.
This escarpment
was sliced by a canyon through which ran a road, a real road, one with asphalt
and occasional cars, highway 140, and this ran almost straight west across
an undulating plateau to Doherty Slide, which we could now see in the distance
perhaps 20 miles away. The wind up here was blowing towards the NNE judging
by the drift of the cloud shadows, so to get there meant flying across wind.
I was leery of just trying to head straight for Doherty, as there seemed
to be very few clouds en route, so I decided to head SE towards some wispies
that I could see forming a couple of miles away. Matt and Bob followed, and
we flew about half a mile apart. This proved to be a good move, as even though
we didn't gain much height under these clouds as they formed, there was a
general area of bits of lift, and just staying with it drifted us further
towards our goal without losing much height. Soon it became obvious that
we were going to make Doherty, but there didn't seem to be much sense in
just burning off height to get there. I could see a glider on the ground
by the highway a couple of miles short of the escarpment. This turned out
to be Ernie. Matt and I carried on working our own bits of lift at around
12,000 ft, but Bob either lost it or got impatient, and was soon two or three
thousand feet lower, and heading east along the road. It looked as if he
would be joining Ernie very shortly. Pretty soon I was there, at Doherty
Slide, with over 12,500 ft, more than seven thousand feet above the ground.
Matt was nearly as high, circling a mile or two back, and I could see John
even higher just ahead over the escarpment. Bob had found more lift and was
climbing again below us.
Now what? Highway 140 angled away sharply to the SSE after it cut through Doherty Slide, and disappeared into the distance. Following it meant bucking probably a 20kt headwind, not a real option. But to the east and north east of Doherty was a simply vast expanse of, well, nothing! Just a desert plateau. No roads, tracks, fencelines, stock ponds or any sign of human habitation or presence as far as one could see, and you can see a long way from nearly 13,000 ft! I struggled to remember what was on Dave Hopkins's map scroll, but I really hadn't a clue. Neither apparently, had anyone else. The radio exchanges would probably have been amusing to anyone listening, as we all milled around like lost sheep, wondering what to do next. No-one had thought they' d get this far, and no-one wanted to just burn off all this height early in the afternoon with a sky dotted with cumulus clouds, and great thermals everywhere. No-one had any intention though, of trying to fly across that great empty expanse of desert without knowing how far across it was to a road or settlement. There was only one other option, and that was to head north, following the only other road in view, a small dirt road that ran along the foot of the escarpment, and disappeared between two sharply pointed peaks about twenty miles away. >From our height it looked pretty small, a thin white thread running across a desolate plain, along the foot of a forbidding ridge, but it was a road, we just hoped that it was a navigable one. I for one, was completely darn sure that I wasn't going to fly even remotely away from that road, and that I was going to land right by it if I went down. I had never flown over any terrain so completely bleak and empty as this, and part of me felt pretty stupid doing it without a map. Oh well, just follow the road and fly.
We had talked to Ernie on the ground and told him we were heading north, and, we thought (yes, uh-oh!) that he knew we were following a road. His son ("Little Ernie") was driving, and heading to pick him up. I lost sight of Matt, who I last saw away to the south west, and John, who had just disappeared, and Bob was still thousands of feet lower and I last saw him heading for the escarpment. I seemed to be alone. Great! Just when I really would have liked some company. Half an hour later I was still following the road but down to below 7500 ft, probably 2,500 ft above the terrain. I was beginning to get more concerned with landing safely than with getting up again. I was also acutely aware of needing to pee. A vehicle came along the road heading south, a heartening sight, and by the dust it raised I could get a good assessment of wind speed and direction on the ground, always a concern when landing after a cross country flight. A mile or two ahead the road made a sharp dogleg turn before it began to pass between the two pointy hills. Beside it the road seemed reasonably clear of vegetation, and it looked as if I could probably land into wind, slightly uphill, right beside the road. I reached my intended landing area with just over 6000 ft, about 1000 ft above the ground, and then of course found lift. Got to try! The lift got better and soon I was circling back up past 8,000 ft and trying to ignore the pressure in my bladder. I couldn't seem to find a really good core in this thermal though, and the climb was slow. About this time I heard Todd on the radio acknowledging that he had a visual on John, who had apparently landed, somewhere. I didn't know where either of them were. The prevailing wind drifted me further north two or three miles and then I lost my thermal. I decided not to try to get back to my former LZ, but to keep going, as it looked as if I might make the slopes of the higher peak, the more easterly of the two, and find more lift there. This proved to be a short lived hope however, as I started to go down rapidly, and once again began to look up ahead for places to land if I needed to. Once again I got down to about 1500 ft over the ground when I found more bitty but workable lift. At this point I was entering a shallow col or valley between the smaller pointy butte (Lone Grave Butte) to the west, and the bigger one (Beatty's Butte), when I saw another hang glider lower than me about a mile to the west and heading for the lower south west facing slopes of Lone Grave Butte. It was too far away for me to see who it was, but whoever it was was going to have to walk a fair way back to the road if he went down., and he seemed to be pretty low to be out there. But he didn't go down, he turned steeply into lift and began to climb rapidly. It was Todd, and looking up I saw Matt circling and climbing too. They were both going up far faster than I was, but I couldn't fly to where they were, because the peak of Lone Grave Butte was between me and the thermal, and there was a lot of sink behind it. So I struggled in my bitty thermal down on the slopes of Beatty's Butte, which is 7900 ft high, whilst Matt and Todd skyed out above me up to cloudbase at over 13,000 ft. Matt kept saying what a great thermal this was and how it was really pretty cold up there, and how he was trying to stay out of cloud, and I was sweating, working ones and zeros and bits of twos, two thousand feet below the top of Beatty's. They had been gone for fifteen minutes or more and lost to sight when I finally climbed up to over 12,000 ft over Beatty's, in a thermal that in the end got to be a good one.
The view was amazing from up here, but somewhat unsettling, because of the virtual complete emptiness, and absence of the works of man. The road we had followed wound its way around between the two buttes, and then entered a region dissected by areas of sloughs and alkali marshes. It had seemed such a purposeful road, such an obvious white trail through the desert, but now it began to divide, and each time it did so it got less well defined. To the north the ground seemed to be a great plain, to the blue distance, where some indistinct patterns of green suggested cultivation. To the west the plain stretched to the sharp crest of Hart Mountain thirty miles away, and to the east to the equally distant snow covered peaks of the Catlow Rim. There were signs of former cultivation in the desert to the east, but it looked long abandoned, with just faint tracks here and there. Only below the Catlow Rim far to the east was there any real sign of settlement, some vague green patches, a glint on a ranch house or trailer here and there. The ground immediately below and to the west looked completely untouched by man.
Todd came on the radio confirming that he had a visual on Bob. I had forgotten about Bob, but he was obviously up ahead, and landing by the sound of it. I looked and looked for him, but could see nothing, though I was sure that he had to be by the road. Eventually I picked out a tiny light colored patch, several miles ahead. My thermal abandoned me before I could get to cloudbase, and so I set off towards Bob and the wild blue yonder. What I had thought to be his glider turned out to be a patch of white alkali or salt, probably acres in extent, but then I saw him a little further up ahead, a tiny white speck near the road. I called him and told him I could see him. He couldn't get a visual on me at first. I wasn't surprised. He wanted to know where the road was. "You' re a hundred feet from it," I told him. "But WHERE?" he wanted to know. He couldn't see it in the sagebrush he was standing in. I heard Todd and Matt talking on the radio about landing, There was some mention of a ranch. I could see a small black dot miles ahead that I surmised was a clump of trees and probably a ranch, but I was sure that I wouldn't be able to glide that far. The dirt road we' d been following for nearly two hours was now really breaking up into a network of tracks and trails, some that petered out after a mile or so, others that led through areas that were obviously swampy. I supposed that there was a road up ahead somewhere, and that the road that we had followed would somehow connect to it, but I wasn't certain. But there was nothing else to do but fly on and see what happened. I tried to ignore my bladder's wishes. I wished I knew where we were going. I had no food with me, and only about a quart of water. I thought of Andy Long and how prepared we would have been if he had been with us! I was down below 8000 ft again and knew that on this glide I would be several miles short of the ranch, the black dot having now resolved itself into a clump of trees and several structures. The smoothest thermal of the flight intervened on my behalf at this point, and carried me, in a few sweet effortless minutes, back up to over 13,000 ft. I pulled out to avoid being drawn up into cloud, and took in the view anew. I now had the ranch on about a four to one glide, and I could see a much bigger road that ran past it. At first I thought it was a real, asphalt road, and felt a certain relief, but a vehicle leaving a trail of dust in its wake told me we were still in the back of beyond. Matt and Todd had both landed somewhere ahead, a few miles apart, but I wasn't sure where. After a while, Todd came on the radio and said he was down near Rock Creek Ranch on Rock Creek Road, near Rock Creek Reservoir. I relayed this in hope that someone, especially Ernie, could hear me, but the only person to respond was Bob, from somewhere back in the desert which would undoubtedly turn out to be MUCH further on the ground than you could ever imagine from the air. Some miles past the ranch were a cluster of irrigated circles, bright green in the mottled tan and beige of the desert. I coasted on towards these, losing little height. The air seemed buoyant. I talked to Matt on the radio. Eventually I made out a glider by the "main" road, which I thought was Matt, but which turned out to be Todd. I had flown over Matt without even seeing him, and he didn't see me, I was so high. I looked up ahead past the irrigated circles to where the road disappeared around a low mesa in the distance. I could see no further sign of habitation, and that decided me. It was five p.m. I didn't want to go any further. My bladder agreed. I decided that I would see if there appeared to be a ranch or any sign of habitation at the irrigated area, it looked as if there might be some buildings in the middle of the cluster of green circles. If not I could fly back and land with Todd. I was still at over 12,000 ft when I flew over Todd, and was soon over the green circles, with more than six thousand feet to lose. I had plenty of time to study this strange geometrical puzzle in the landscape. Seven giant circles, in various shades of green, were set in squares bounded by dirt roads. In the middle of these was a cluster of buildings. There was also a building and a shed or trailer by the main road. I was pretty sure that the crop was alfalfa. There was plenty of space to land. At least two of the circles appeared to be fallow, or just harvested. As I got lower I could see no vehicles at the building by the by the road, a bad sign. The central area looked more promising, and eventually I could see a house, and a couple of trailers, and two vehicles. I was pretty sure that the wind down there would be from the south west, and I wondered if I should try to land in the corner of one of the squares left fallow by the rotating irrigation systems, which was near to the house, but decided to be safe and land in one of the entire fields just harvested. As I got lower I began to realised just how big these circles were, and landed in the corner of one of them, near the house after all. It turned out to be huge, - several football fields big. I had an easy landing. I tried to call Todd as I was going down but failed to make contact. He knew where I was anyway. The worst part of the landing was trying not to wet myself while struggling out of my harness.
The rancher came out and was very friendly, and though there were no farm maidens or cold beer, he gave me what I needed more, some cold water, and insisted on driving me up the road to find my buddies once he heard that there were three of us. I left all my gear there - he assured me that it would be fine - I believed him. I could probably have left it there for ten years and it would be fine. The ride was a lot further than I expected. It seemed to be a long way just out to the main dirt road, and I was amazed when he told me that the irrigated circles were a mile in diameter. The sense of vast empty space out here was very strong. After a few miles we came upon Todd who was walking towards us, having set out to find me. We drove on down the road to Rock Creek Ranch, where a couple of small dirt roads emerged from the south. Matt was apparently somewhere down one of them. A woman with three children, and a pony, were by the roadside at the ranch. She was very friendly, and told us that other hang glider pilots had landed there the year before, in the Nationals competition.. She told us we were welcome to come in, and there was accommodation for us in an unused house there if we didn't get picked up that night. The three children eyed us curiously. We thanked her and assured her that we would probably be picked up before long. The rancher who had given Todd and I a ride left. We set about trying to find Matt. Eventually we got him on the radio, and a half an hour later he walked out of the sagebrush along one of the small dirt roads. He had landed about three miles away he said, but he hadn't realised that it was that far until he had to walk out.
So there we were. The mosquitoes got worse as the sun got lower. I had left my flying suit with my harness back at the alfalfa ranch, and was regretting it more by the minute, as my bare legs got more and more bitten. I had also left my spare radio battery there, and it looked as if we might need it. Some things you need to learn the hard way. There was a haystack near the road, and we took turns at sitting on top of it and trying to raise someone on the radio. The haystack was also the main reserve base for the mosquitoes, so this was less than fun, but it did provide an impressive viewpoint. It doesn't take much when you' re in the middle of a plain fifty miles across. Just as the sun was setting we got Ernie on the radio. However he wasn't coming from the south as we expected, but from somewhere to the west. We told him to head east on Rock Creek Road, and though he wasn't sure where that was, there weren't that many roads in the area, so it seemed probable that he was heading our way. Twenty minutes later headlights appeared in the distance, none too soon for me - the mosquitoes were by now in veritable clouds. Close behind Ernie was Bill Vogel and Scott Huber, in Todd's truck. There was even cold beer, but our relief at being picked up was tempered by the realization that John and Bob were still out there in the desert somewhere, and it was now almost dark. Ernie hadn't realised that we had been following a road, he hadn't heard us discussing this, and he had no map with dirt roads marked. Consequently he had made a huge detour of over 150 miles, following the only paved roads in the area, guessing where we were. Apparently there had been some fairly heated discussion about this en route, but in fairness to Ernie it's hard to chase pilots on roads you don't know about with no map, and you cannot just go heading blindly across this sort of country following dirt tracks. As it was, Todd's truck was getting low on gas, and there were no gas stations between here and Lakeview, over 150 miles away. It was decided that Matt would go with Ernie to find his glider, and then they would try to locate the road heading south whilst there was still a glimmer of light left, and find Bob and John. I didn't envy them trying to do this, the last few miles of that road looked pretty sketchy from the air, and not easy to locate even in daylight. I was thankful to be heading back to Lakeview, even though there seemed a good chance that we would run out of gas before we got there.
We made it back to Lakeview near midnight, just about running on fumes, and had to bribe a gas station attendant to get him to unlock the pumps so that we could get back to camp. As I gratefully crawled into my tent I wondered how the guys out in the desert were faring. I was awake early, at first light, realising that I hadn't heard anyone arrive in camp in the night, and peering out of the tent I saw that Ernie's truck wasn't there. I didn't want to get up , but I knew we' d have to go and find them and I couldn't go back to sleep. Bill and Scott drove up to the top of Sugar Hill to retrieve Bob's truck, which was still up there, and they thought to try the radio, and sure enough got hold of Bob. He was sitting half way up on Beatty's Butte, and told them that Ernie had found him, but they had then got stuck. He had no idea where John was. Bill and I threw shovels and ropes and anything else we thought might be useful into his truck and headed for Lakeview. We stopped at Ralph Hyde's house and scrounged lengths of wood and more shovels, and found out that Jon James had arrived last night, and John Blacet had turned up in the early morning, having walked out thirteen miles to the road and then hitchhiked to Lakeview. They had both gone back to fetch John's glider and to help rescue the others. We headed out after them, first stocking up with food and beer, - there' d be some hungry and thirsty pilots out there.
It was nearly
midday by the time we reached them, twenty miles along the rough dirt road.
They were well and truly stuck. They had found Bob after some considerable
difficulty in the dark, but then had proceeded a mite too fast trying to
find John and get home. Ironically, out in this desert, a small spring had
turned the road into a quagmire, with deep ruts, and they hadn't seen it
in time to stop. Ernie's Landcruiser was tipped over at 30 degrees, and buried
up to its axles on one side. They' d had an interesting night - the spring
widened into a small marsh just beyond the road, and thousands of mosquitoes
were very happy to see them. In the wee hours it had got very cold here at
4,500 ft under clear skies, and glider bags made a poor substitute for down
sleeping bags! Matt got so cold that he simply set fire to a sage bush to
get warm. It looked as if extricating Ernie's vehicle would be a difficult
and dirty task as there was no way to drain the liquid mud and water from
around it, but to our surprise and relief Bill's truck hauled it out after
a couple of tries, with the rest of us pushing.
Back at camp we looked at Dave's map to see where we had been. We discovered that we had indeed had enough height when we were over Doherty Slide at 13,000 ft to make it across that forbidding stretch of desert to the east of it, and had we done so we would have found ourselves on the southern tip of the mountain range called the Catlow Rim. The route we had taken was an unusual one because it led into such wild country. I also found that just beyond that mesa I had seen up ahead before I decided to land was a place called French Glen, which had gas, and a bar with food and beer. It was 103 miles from Sugar Hill, and had been an easy glide for me from my altitude! As it was I' d flown 92 miles. Next time take a map! The rest of our trip turned out to be anti climactic. The weather became hotter and more stable, and we didn't get any more great flying days. On Thursday morning Fred Clement turned up. We all went to Horse Mountain. This was on the east side of the Warner mountains, a couple of hours south, in California. The launch was high, up at 8,000 ft on the edge of a wilderness area, with a spectacular view over the Surprise Valley and large alkali lakes, to the wilds of Nevada beyond. There was still snow up at launch, and lush wildflower meadows that showed that up this high spring had only just arrived. The launch was scary looking, almost a cleft between rocky outcroppings with a 75 ft cliff, and very little room to run. Dave Hopkins assured us that it was really quite easy, but we were unconvinced. The alternative was a take off from a snow cornice, but that entailed the possibility of slipping and simply falling over the cliff! In any case conditions didn't look very promising. Thermal cycles were weak, making launches even less attractive. In the end only four pilots flew, and Jon James was the only Sonoma Wings pilot brave enough to try. All had good launches, but no-one really got up, and all four pilots ended up a few miles away down in the valley by the road.
The following day we flew at Sugar Hill for the last time. Conditions weren't good enough to go XC, and it was pretty rough at first, with everyone bouncing around from 500 ft below launch to 1000 ft over, but later in the afternoon it got smoother and more buoyant. Most of us eventually landed in the bottom LZ, but Matt and Fred stuck it out, hoping to get a glass off and fly to Lakeview. That didn't happen, but they both went over the back anyway, just to see how far they could get. When we arrived back in camp we found out that Fred had somehow injured his leg upon landing. Todd and Matt took him to hospital and it turned out to be broken just below the knee. This was a real shock to us. It seemed to be almost a fluke, because apparently the landing wasn't that bad, - there wasn't even any damage to his glider. Fred just flared early to avoid running into a fence, and had come down hard with his leg locked out. He had to have surgery on the leg, but is now recovering well, and plans to be flying again next season. We headed home on Saturday, but most of us stopped at Indian Valley on the way for a final flight. This site at Greenville near Lake Almanor, is noted for its late afternoon glass offs, and we weren't disappointed. The launch is at 6,000 ft, and is shallow, so a good controlled run is needed to take off safely, but the site is top landable. It didn't look very good at first, with light winds, and no obvious signs of good thermal cycles. Jon James was off first and soon climbed out 1000 ft or more over launch, so the rest of us followed. I had a smooth climb to 10,000 ft in one thermal, marked for me by Bob Stanley, who got even higher. The view was terrific, with lake Almanor a few miles to the west. The air was smooth and cool up there, and it was pleasant to float around, high above the town of Greenville, before landing in the huge LZ on the edge of town. It was a nice way to end our trip. Some headed home that night, and some of us camped up on the mountain and headed back the next morning, but none of us wanted our flying trip to end, and I think we' re all looking forward to next year's.
Jon James launching at Horse
Things which seem obvious now but which I learned the hard way - Always pee before you fly! If you' re flying XC over country you don't know, carry a map! Make sure your driver knows where you are going and which road you are following! Long pants and spare radio batteries aren't much use if you don't have them with you! Carry more water, at least some food, some insect repellent, and in country like this, a space blanket.
Leo Jones, August 1998
Photos by Ernie Camacho
