by Todd Borg
Vince rode the updraft, circling upward like an eagle.
In just a few minutes, we’d climbed above the peaks that made up the ridgetop of Alpine Meadows. We could see down into the valley on the front side of the ski resort. The landscape was sprinkled with lights from ski lodges and vacation chalets. There was enough snow on the north facing slopes to see the layout of the mountain in the starlight. The summer crowd hadn’t yet arrived in force, so the valley had a bucolic, country feel, the few residents asleep, unaware of the drama in the sky above their beds.
“Nice move back there,” I said.
“I can call it nice now that it succeeded,” he said. “It was looking pretty stupid for a minute there.”
“What puts you and me more at risk provides the possibility of putting your kid less at risk. I knew we might get banged up. But your kid is worth it.”
“Thanks.” Vince banked around into another steep turn. We rose into the cold, dark sky.
It was exhilarating, flying through the dark. We were now over a thousand feet above the ground. The pattern of lights showed the neighborhoods and streets to the east and far below. Even in the dark night, the view was dominated by the huge blackness of the lake, a vast oblong with no lights except from a very few boats near the shore. No lights shone from the center of the lake because no one had cause to cross the big water at four in the morning.
Vince spoke. “The mountain waves of air pushed up by the ridge lines don’t just keep rising straight above the ridge. They flow out like water waves. And just like with water, the air goes up and then down. So to get the altitude we need, we’ll need to stay in the updraft part of the wave and stay out of the trough that would be a downdraft. Both parts of the wave move farther east the higher we go. But that’s an advantage. Earlier, I’d thought we’d be riding an air wave farther to the north.”
“Away from our target,” I said.
“Yeah. But with a west wind instead of a south wind, the mountain wave moves toward the lake and closer to the lodge.”
I looked around, trying to visualize waves of air, invisible but no less powerful for it. Pilots in planes always try to be aware of air movements. But we don’t pay attention at the same level as someone flying a craft that’s powered by those silent air movements.
The air had been cold when we first launched. Now, as we climbed high into the night sky, it was getting crispy cold.
“Do you have an altimeter on your wrist?” I asked.
“Yeah. Neither my rate-of-climb indicator nor my altimeter have dashboard lights, so to speak. I’ll have to turn on my light to read them. So don’t look toward me or you’ll lose your night vision.”
Light came on behind me and then was off in a moment.
“Our altitude is up to ninety-four hundred feet. So we’ve come up almost two thousand feet since we hit the treetops. But we’ve lost our lift. Our rate of climb is down to zero.”
“Good work, nevertheless,” I said. “I’ll call Diamond and let him know we’re airborne.”
I dialed the number.
“Sí?”
“We’ve launched. I’ll call when we have an idea of our approach time.”
“Got it.” He hung up.
Vince said, “We had talked about eleven thousand feet as enough safety zone to get to the target even if the wind stopped. It doesn’t look like we’ll get even close to that. But with this west wind, we’re going to be much closer to the lodge. Maybe we can still make our target even without more altitude.”
We were heading southwest. I scanned the vague shapes of the mountains before us.
“Twin Peaks,” I said, pointing. “Those two little saw teeth barely visible against the faint backdrop of stars.”
“I see them,” Vince said. “Now we need to follow the ridge that extends from them to the west. Hold on. Dashboard lights coming.”
The light came on behind my head, then went off.
“Hold on for a turn.”
Vince pulled lines. We banked into a steep turn to the left.
“Hit a trough?” I said.
“Exactly. It’s one thing to lose updraft. But downdraft is something we need to escape. You better call Diamond. We’re at ninety-two hundred feet. But our rate-of-climb indicator says we’re back to dropping. We may still get to the ridge. It wasn’t in our plan, but we’ve come east from our launch spot. I’d guess we’re about two miles northeast of our target. Depending on the mountain waves we’re riding, we might be able to head that direction without going for higher altitude. In that case, we could be there in maybe fifteen minutes. Give or take ten.”
I dialed Diamond. He answered with the softest of grunts.
I repeated what Vince had told me and added, “We’re not confident we’ll make it. But you and Spot should head up the mountain now.”
“Already most of the way there. Your Jeep is well hidden. Call me when you’re sixty seconds out.” He clicked off.
We glided through the cold, night air. We didn’t talk for several minutes. The stars above were brilliant, and the Milky Way was pronounced, a view across the galaxy through billions of stars so distant they were only visible in their foggy white aggregate. The view was serene and beautiful. But the tension of coming down out of the dark sky to unseen trees and rocks made it hard to breathe.
At one point, I felt us do an elevator drop, stomachs in our throats. Then we stabilized. I didn’t have a feel for sink and climb in a glider. But my lay-person’s sense told me we were going down much too fast.
I felt us rise for a moment, the glider and harness lifting us up. Another updraft. Vince put us into a tight turn, trying to stay in the rising air. We looped around in a tight bank. But just as quickly, we stopped rising. Vince straightened out and headed toward the distant ridge.
“No more climbing,” Vince said. “We’re on our last glideslope. Where do you think the lodge is?” Now his voice was tight.
“I can still sense Twin Peaks in the distance to the west. Between Twin Peaks and us is Stanford Rock. I feel like I can see that against the night sky, too. But it may be wishful thinking. The lodge is between Stanford Rock and Eagle Rock, which is much lower. If we can spot Eagle Rock, we can track our eyes toward Stanford Rock and get a sense of where the lodge is.”
My phone rang.
“Yeah?” I said in a soft voice even though we were still over one thousand feet up and several thousand feet distant from our target.
“Got a problem,” Diamond whispered. “Spot and I are at the lodge, looking over the fence from a distance. There’s a German Shepherd roaming the yard. He made the circuit of the yard, following the fence line the way a human would. Now he’s in a shaded area. Invisible. To say he looks menacing would be an understatement.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Any men visible?” I asked.
“No,” Diamond whispered. “Probably got the dog so they’d feel more comfortable sleeping.”
“Has the dog smelled you? Made any noise?”
“No. I’m downwind of it, so it doesn’t sense us yet. Either way, the dog means trouble for us, right? Even if it doesn’t attack, it’ll bark the moment it senses you coming out of the sky. Or maybe the wind shifts and it smells Largeness and makes a fuss. You got a guess why these guys would bring in a German Shepherd in the middle of the night, the same night we’re planning a raid?”
I paused. “Maybe the dog was there before and I just didn’t see it. Or someone tipped them to our raid. But there’s only us three who know about it directly.”
“Indirectly?” Diamond said.
“It could be someone who has been assigned to watch me or Vince and has figured out our plan.”
“You got advice regarding the hound?” Diamond asked.
“Hopefully, the wind won’t shift, and you’ll remain downwind from the dog. If you’re quiet, the dog won’t detect you. Spot, on the other hand, will smell the German Shepherd because Spot will be downwind. So you might want to put you
r finger across his nose or your palm in front of his nose. That’s the signal to be quiet.”
“Will he obey that coming from me?”
“Probably not,” I said. “He doesn’t obey it coming from me, either, unless he’s in a good mood and thinks he’s getting a treat. But it’s worth a try.”
“How will you land in a yard with a German Shepherd inside the fence?”
“I don’t know.”
“Reassuring,” Diamond said.
“Here’s an idea,” I said. “Remember that time I showed you how to make Spot howl? You make a soft rahr-oooo sound next to his head?”
“Yeah,” Diamond said.
“You and Spot wait in the trees by the gate. I’ll have Vince give me a sixty-second warning before we land. I’ll dial your phone and then hang up. When you get my call, you get Spot to make a howl. The shepherd’s job is to bark if he senses a human intruder. But he might not bark if he thinks there’s another dog nearby, a friendly dog.”
“Sounds risky,” Diamond said.
“It will make the shepherd curious, and he’ll trot toward the fence wherever Spot is, a bit cautious, but probably not aggressive. I’m hoping that’s the exact time when we land.”
“Then what?”
“If the shepherd and Spot are sniffing each other through the fence, that will disarm the shepherd’s protective instinct. Dogs are social. Given the chance, they all just want to run and play. Meanwhile, Vince and I will jump out of our harness and follow our previous plan.”
“You got a likelihood on whether or not you’ll make it here?”
I held the phone up above my shoulder, hoping Diamond could hear both of us. “Vince, Diamond wonders our likelihood of making it.”
Vince spoke louder than before, but not so loud I worried we’d be heard from the ridge in the distance. “I don’t think we can count on any additional altitude gain. I’d give us fifty-fifty odds. But I won’t know our exact height above the ground as we come in. It could be we won’t be making a gentle circle down to our landing site. We might try a straight shot to the yard, coming in full blast from the side to utilize every bit of whatever altitude we have.”
“Okay,” Diamond said. “When you’re a minute from touchdown, call and give me two buzzes. I’ll see about getting His Largeness to howl.” He hung up.
“No point in trying to find any more updraft,” Vince said. He put the glider into another bank, turning until we were pointing west toward the ridge where the lodge stood nestled in the trees. “We’ll try to make a line drive straight to the yard,” Vince said. “It’s not looking good.” His words didn’t waver. But I detected fear in his voice.
“Anything I should do to prepare for landing?” I asked.
“Feel around for your strap adjustments. Familiarize yourself with the buckle locations. Once we’re down on the ground, you’ll want to get yourself free from the harness fast.”
Directly below us was the highway that crawled down the West Shore. I could make out the Sunnyside Restaurant and resort on the water. Its parking lot lights illuminated the cars of guests. Across the highway from Sunnyside, directly below us, was the road up Ward Creek Canyon where we’d driven Vince’s pickup and left it at the parking lot in the dark forest below.
The giant black lake was behind us. The mountains were in front of us. I knew Vince’s earlier altimeter reading put us a little higher than the mountains. But the peaks of the Sierra Crest looked higher than we were.
In the far distance off to our right was Alpine Meadows Ski Resort, its snowfields visible in the starlight.
Vince tapped me on the shoulder. “Any idea of where Stone Lodge is?”
I scanned the mountains to the west, trying to divine the ridges that stretched our way from Twin Peaks and Stanford Rock. I looked down.
“There’s Eagle Rock, south down Highway Eighty-nine. If we draw a line from Eagle Rock to Stanford Rock, the lodge should be…”
I stopped as I saw a faint sparkle of light in the distance at an elevation that didn’t seem much below us. I studied it, trying to sense how the ridge dropped below it on three sides.
“That light,” I said. “Do you see it?” I pointed toward the dark mountain ridge just south of Ward Creek Canyon.
“Yeah.”
“I think that’s Stone Lodge. Head for that light.”
“It looks almost level with us,” Vince said. “Meaning we won’t make it,” Vince said. “We’ll probably crash on the mountain just below the lodge.”
“Okay. Do whatever you can to maximize our chances of making the target. If that makes us come in toward the lodge on the wrong track, so be it. Whatever you have to do is worth it if we can get over the fence. If not, maybe you can crash land close below the fence and we can climb up to it and scramble over it before the German Shepherd knows we’re there.”
We had another sensation of being in an elevator that goes down fast. The glider dropped for some time before we felt the canopy start pulling back.
The light at the ridgetop lodge was still visible in the distance. It looked about three-quarters of a mile out. As I stared, I could sense our loss of altitude as we glided forward. The lodge light went from looking a bit below us to appearing roughly level. As a pilot, I knew that your eyes can give you all manner of perceptions that are a long way from reality. So I told myself to stay calm and trust the paraglider pilot.
As we sailed through the dark, I was acutely aware of the sound of the wind rushing through the air tubes of our glider canopy. I felt the bracing, icy pressure on my face. The cold scent of pine and fir trees reminded me of the forest in winter.
“We’re definitely not going to make it,” Vince whispered. “At least not in the traditional way.”
“If you’ve got a non-traditional way,” I whispered back, “Go for it.”
“There’s an aerobatic maneuver you might be familiar with,” he said. “Barrel rolls are not just for planes. You can do them in a paraglider.”
“You mean rolling us over in a circle.”
“Right,” Vince said. “Not a forward/backward loop-the-loop like in a Ferris Wheel. But swinging around to the side as we still glide forward.”
“So, like a plane, we always face forward, but we do a sideways roll so that we’re upside down for a bit.”
“Right.”
“And why would we do that?”
“If I can time it perfectly, I could possibly do a barrel roll so that we’re upside down but at the top of the roll when we get to the fence. That might toss us over the top of the fence and into the yard.”
“Upside down,” I said.
“Upside down,” Vince repeated. “I think getting into the yard upside down is better than not getting in at all.”
I thought about it. “Give me a sixty-second warning, and I’ll alert Diamond.”
We kept gliding forward through the night. The lodge with its single lonely light grew in size. It seemed to get higher above us. I kept reminding myself of how hard it is to estimate angles and distances at night.
The trees went from looking like a soft mat of mountain cover to individual trees, huge and menacing.
“Okay. Sixty seconds,” Vince said.
I pulled out my phone and hit speed dial for Diamond’s phone. I let it ring twice, then hung up, and tucked my phone back in my pocket.
“Just as I thought,” Vince whispered. We’d dropped below the level of the lodge’s fence, and we could no longer see the lodge’s yard light. We were hurtling toward the dark mountainside on a course that would have us slamming into the rocks and trees below the lodge.
When we were just a few yards away, Vince whispered, “Prepare for the roll.”
I sensed a dramatic movement behind me, as if he were pulling on the lines hard enough to rip them off. The glider wing arced clockwise above us. We arced below the wing, lifting clockwise up to the left. I felt a sensation of increased weight. Our rotation began slowly and then sped up.
In front of us was nothing but the blackness of mountain. It seemed the lodge had disappeared above us.
Our barrel-roll rotation increased. I was pressed harder down into the seat of the harness. I had the vague sense of roller coaster rides from my childhood.
I couldn’t tell my precise orientation. But it was clear I was swinging clockwise in a grand loop, from six o’clock to nine o’clock, to midnight.
In a sudden moment, I was flung upside down into the air so that I was just above the top of the fence. I couldn’t fully understand what I was seeing. But as the glider canopy hit the fence, Vince and I, upside down at the top of our barrel-roll arc, were launched above the fence. I put my hands in front of my head as we crashed onto the hard ground. The lines from our harness to the glider wing seemed tied around our bodies. The light we’d seen when we were up in the sky above was now a single bright flood, mounted above one of the lodge doors. It shined directly into our eyes.
As I tried to right myself and stand up with the harness still attached to me, I was distracted by movement. I turned and saw a large, black German Shepherd racing toward us, a ferocious growl coming from its bared teeth.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Incoming dog,” I said as Vince struggled behind me.
I thought of the bear spray on my belt. But I couldn’t do that to a dog. Although I considered myself skillful when it came to grappling with dogs, the shepherd intimidated me. He was only half the size and weight of Spot, but like everyone else, I’d been conditioned to think of a German Shepherd as a potentially dangerous adversary.