There were a few gliders in the air now who were also flying too and fro. One glider was heading for a bailout landing area half way to Greenville, a good sized field, but a very long, back breaking walk to any car. I got as high as I could in the stronger of the two thermals, then set out in a straight line, straight into the howling wind, toward Greenville. It looked very far away.
I made some progress forward, but slow. And I dropped nearly with the slope of the mountain. I was above the bailout and had lost much of my elevation. It would take a perfect glide to get to Greenville with only 600 feet of clearance above the trees. I could see from there that the walk out of the bailout field would be a hassle at best and the glider below me who was just now landing looked lonely and isolated. I quickly analyzed the options aloud. “ If I get half way to Greenville and haven’t lost too much altitude, I’ll make it. Otherwise, I can turn back to this field.” I could not hesitate though. My timing would be critical.
Duke said that once he had flown out to Greenville and had not lost any elevation so he flew back to the launch and flew to Greenville again. I tried to reassure myself. I got a quarter mile past the bailout and had dropped a little. The trees below were not intimidating yet , but the forest for much of what lay ahead was thick and continuous. There was a driveway, a brush patch and a couple of back yards where I could crash land. In one of the back yards , someone was hanging their laundry, probably oblivious to what was happening overhead. That would certainly complicate a landing there. And on the dirt driveway, right along the widest, straightest stretch, there was a tractor working, kicking up dust. The tractor looked like a toy, but Greenville looked much smaller in the distance.
No, it would not be acceptable to my family for me to come home broken or not at all. August, my son had begun to play the violin the year before. He practiced feverishly every day. I could hear music coming at me in the wind. I wanted to hear more, too.
The distance to the bailout field became long and unmanageable. I could barely see it behind and I could barely see Greenville school over the treetops in front of me.
The trees drew closer and occasionally I could see the shadow of my glider flash across one. The treetops were swaying gently, peacefully, uninterested in the little drama overhead. I was progressing forward at running speed, not far above the trees, but I was not sinking anymore.
This was my destiny, I let go of all control of the situation, I relaxed and the beauty of the earth and sky filled me; me, a microscopic speck unseen now by even the other glider pilots so distant, unnoticed by the ground bound people who never lift their heads to notice the huge expanse of sky. I cruised forward, disturbing only Earths gasses, beneath the unknowable universe, drawn down toward the ground a little more quickly now.
As the ground came closer it moved by more quickly, it seemed. Everything seemed to speed up. The last tree in the forest passed very close to me. Yards became bigger and more plentiful. Roads became wider and cars seemed to move faster. The flight was over now, and now I had to deal with the land. I was barely a hundred feet above the houses and my landing area was in sight but behind a fence line and a small canal. Telephone wires passed under me. I was below the highest treetops. I cleared a few oak trees then, without making a turn since leaving the far away ridge, I barreled toward the landing field. The glider skimmed over the canal and the last fence and I came to rest a hundred feet from the car, which had also just arrived. The pilot driving our car got out and offered me a beer. Talk about luck!
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The next day, the wind was more south than the day before, and some clouds were moving in. The launch wind blew more from the side, eddied even more by the tiny side ridge that had caused me a terrible launch on my first flight at Indian Valley. Once again there was nobody there as we arrived at the ridge top. The wind howled even harder than it had the day before.
We waited and waited again, then as evening came a few other gliders showed up and once again a motivated party atmosphere replaced the lonely dysfunctional hang out mope. There was no one to drive our car down the many miles of dirt forest roads to our camp at the valley floor though, which made for a burden of anxiety on top of that caused by the deteriorated conditions compared to the day before. Today, everyone who had come to the mountain launch intended to fly.
After setting up the gliders and suiting up in our flight gear, Duke held my front wires, stabilizing the glider as I shimmied over to the launch slope. I waited for the wind to become straight up the hill. My wing lifted up and steadied itself. Duke moved around to the side. “Clear,” I yelled, which is standard flight procedure, then I charged down the hill, hoping for a better launch than the near disaster of my first launch where I almost ended up crashing into the bushes. I had been ready for the worst, but this time there were no surprises in the air and I immediately rose over the ridge top but could only maintain my elevation there.
Secretly I made plans to land in the tiny clearing atop the ridge, and drive the car down. Duke could land after sunset at the school. He would see the car moving down the dusty road from the air and would be able to have a more worry free, enjoyable flight. But I didn’t want to tell him, just in case I aborted the tricky landing and skimmed back out over the launch on a disappointing glide toward Greenville, maybe causing a walk from the bailout, a hitchhike to our camp five miles north of town and a long, long walk back up to our car the next day. The hassle was almost unthinkable. I had to land on top. There was no choice.
So every time I flew over the ridge top landing are, I calculated my positions. What bush would I want to center on and how high must I be to position myself perfectly to squeeze in between the brush and be at a standstill, landing on the ground before being picked up by the powerful wind that raced up the launch that would throw me back into the sky in a destiny aimed toward the valley. And I calculated the motion of the rotor wind, circulating down behind the ridge. How far back behind the ridge did I dare to go to make the maneuvers I needed to make. The safe area would be narrow. I could not venture beyond it, or my glider and I would become a tangled, broken mess on the hillside. I thought about the botched landings I had had even in big green fields. My flying career had begun only two years before and included a variety of minor disasters, each one costing money and a lot of time to fix. I decided not to think about the probability of crashing, and instead analyzed how this landing ( it would be successful ) might actually be looked upon as a challenge. I would truly be a genius to make it work. And with that I felt a grin on my face.
I flew back and forth on that two mile stretch of wilderness ridge top, but could only maintain my elevation there. The treetops were close and I could not get up and away from them enough to relax and enjoy the view. There was no thermal carrying me skyward. Hawks also flew back and forth looking for food and a few other gliders crowded my route flying slightly higher or lower but never leaving the same lift band that kept all of us tethered on the ridge, unable to explore.
I cruised over the launch and noticed that Duke was ready to fly, with several people holding his glider in position. A half hour had gone by since I started flying today and now it was time for my landing. I had had enough flying for the day, not a spectacular ride, but enough to make it worth the while setting up. I only had about two hundred feet of elevation above the ridge top, so I didn’t have much time to set up my position or to look at the wind flag. I glided over the area and a little way beyond, not allowing myself much distance beyond the back of the ridge. I was out of the lift band and just barely touching the rotor with one side of my wing. The glider lurched toward the down draft but I grabbed the control bar tight and forced a turn in the other direction. Then with one wing straight at the ground and plummeting radically I forced a turn to level out and glided a few feet beyond the tiny clearing and onto the opposite side. Then at fifty feet up and gliding exactly above the down wind side of the hundred foot long clearing, I turned the wing sideways diving at the ground ag
ain. I had pushed the wing back to level five feet before the tip touched the dirt and I skated in a perfect line with the center of the landing area, stopping gently a glider width before a small tree. The whole landing took only a few seconds. I turned the glider around so it wouldn’t be blown away, and unhooked hurriedly and dropped my helmet and flight suit on the ground. “Yeah!” I yelled, pumping with adrenalin. The wind blew the sound away. “ That’s the way it’s done, see!” I yelled. “I am awesome!” I looked up and hit at the sky.
Then I hurried over to Duke to tell him what I had done. Duke, it turned out, had launched while I was landing, and he had been caught in the squirrley winds that had almost ruined my launch a day ago. His glider was on top of a bush below launch, and he stood there, attached to it, stumbling across the tops of bushes, trying to free his guy wires and control bar from the twisted branches. All the time the wind kept rushing up hill, blowing on the sail, making it nearly impossible for him to control the glider. I grabbed the nose wires of the glider. “You OK?” I yelled across the roar of the wind.
“I’m OK, but I’m bagging it. This place gives me the creeps,” he yelled into the wind. It was a long struggle to get his glider out of the brush safely and behind some trees. I told Duke what I had done, but he was preoccupied with his own predicament. I don’t think he even really saw me there.
We both drove down out of the mountains and after a lousy nights sleep at our noisy camp too close to the highway, we packed up and headed for Hat Creek Rim, three hours drive to the north.
Hat Creek Rim
Hat Creek Rim is a black lava cliff hundreds of feet high, facing west, that extends for over twenty miles to the north and south. It’s the edge of a basalt flow from the ancient Modoc Plateau eruptions. It is flat and dry on top, with scattered brush patches and sage meandering between lava fields, and at the base of the cliff, for miles there is only crumbled black boulders, lava domes, small cinder cones and an occasional dry lake bed that has long ago filled with silt. The desert there is almost devoid of trees, except along Hat Creek and around the edges of the dry lake beds. Hat Creek is an icy cold stream with steep banks that meanders below the cliff. It begins near Mount Lassen, in the high country snowfields, and zig zags crystal clear through the boulder strewn ruins of the giant lava flows, picking up almost no sediment. The area is full of Indian Medicine Lore. Every cliff top there is a place to ponder the vast, empty surroundings.
Hang gliding is a waiting game most of the time, only punctuated by an occasional flight. It is a medicine experience, usually involving a quiet meditation at a dry launch area above some isolated valley that has been barely touched by human activity. At Hat Creek Rim you wait for the north wind to turn west as the hot afternoon sun heats the rock bluffs and black boulder fields below. That local wind over powers the larger flow of air circling clockwise around a high pressure system a thousand miles out to sea.
There is usually a flag that someone has set up on top of a launch and another is in the most popular landing area. People come from distant places to fly the Rim because of it’s predictable thermals and ridge lift.
The day we arrived at the Rim, it was stifling hot and the prevailing wind, as predicted, blew at a 45 degree angle to the cliff, which was not a particularly good direction for a long flight as the wind flow would not be compressed as it hit the cliff from below and would not be squeezed upward. Unpredictable eddies would form in the wind, like water flowing over rocks in a river, around every uneven spot in the black wall. The wind was also not strong enough to hold up a glider just in ridge lift. For that a ten mile an hour wind would be needed. A launch now, with a crossed light wind at about noon in July, if one could get off the ground at all, would make for a quick landing. The landing area was a three minute ride away for someone too eager to launch. After that, the eager pilot would wait, panting in the stifling desert under one of the small junipers surrounding the dry lake bed that was the main landing area, waiting for a ride back to the top where the food, water and slightly cooling breeze was.
The LZ looked to me not far enough below for getting a spectacular ride like Duke had promised me, but the cliff was certainly high enough to leave me breathless as I first looked over the edge.
Flying from higher terrain, many of my flights had been ‘sled rides’ , short slides straight from the top of a launch to the bottom and the landing area, partly because, not being familiar with the sky, I couldn’t feel the thermals or know how to utilize them, and partly because other more seasoned glider pilots would encourage me to launch when the weather was not right for it, so they could see if a glider would sink out or float up. I spent my share of time sitting in dry, cow pie covered landing areas feeling humiliated, watching as experienced pilots had long flights after launching an hour later than I had.
Hang gliding is about waiting and patience, and about watching any ‘wind dummies’ that come along, people who are too eager to fly, or so nervous they want to get their flight over with, like some miserable obligation they need to fulfill. Many times I have waited at the bottom of the hill, hungry and thirsty.
There is a much more spiritual experience on top of the mountain, watching the clouds, the flags, the hawks flapping or circling, shimmering heat waves rising off the rocks, dust from a car along a distant road, smoke from a distant forest fire, watching the invisible, the uncontrollable. Everything that can be seen tells of what the day will become.
Duke an I were again the only people at the launch area. Duke had been flying gliders for years, and with that experience, he would not be a wind dummy for me. He started flying from sand dunes with a glider made of sheet plastic, duct taped to PVC tubing, back in the days when hang gliding had a reputation for causing many untimely deaths and serious injuries due to equipment and design failure. When he got his first engineered glider, he’d fly from hay bale stacks on his father’s chicken ranch. That glider was set aside when it rolled over backward in mid air and nearly killed him. Gliding is more sophisticated now, having grown up for three decades, and equipment is safe, though conditions and judgments may not be.
I removed my glider, a twenty foot bag of folded aluminum tubing and sail cloth, from the car rack and began to set it up. I unzipped the bag after placing it in an area big enough and with the tail facing the wind. Then I stood up the down tubes to make sure the wing wires are not crossed, then I laid them back into position on the ground. I attached the control bar, lifted it, grabbed the nose of the glider and flipped the whole thing upright. Then I removed the bag and spread out the wings, inserted battens, attached the rear tension wires and put the nose cone in place. It takes about fifteen minutes if I'm in a hurry, but today I took my time.
The flag was steady and from the wrong direction. When I’d thoroughly checked my setup of the glider and all the parts, we began our launch-waiting. It was my first time at Hat Creek Rim, so Duke explained some of the pitfalls. There is a long cliff to the north, then a ‘point’ about a mile over where, “ the wind will blow against the cliff at a different angle and so if the wind becomes west for a while then turns back north, you could be trapped there over the lava beds, a long glide from the LZ.” And to the south the ridge gets lower then drops into the valley and a quarter mile back another ridge, which is much higher, takes over, but, he continues,” on a windy day the low ridge makes a lot of turbulence, so if you go any further than from the point to the left to the low ridge to the right, you better be way up in the sky and very cautious.”
But when I explained to Duke that I was always cautious, the words seemed naive. When someone says “trust me”, who believes them.
Duke did not set up his glider. At 5 o'clock, as I was lazily chewing on a handful of trail mix the wind flag caught my eye. The wind was coming straight up the hill, and I mentioned that to Duke. He acknowledged that he too was more interested in flying now, but the trauma of being rotored into the bushes at Indian Valley was making flying here a little spooky for him. I tried to act l
ike I understood the problem. For me flying was always spooky. I constantly had to fight instinct to be there at all. I was ‘nuts to even think about leaving the ground,’ the voice inside of me said. I heard my fathers voice in there too, and my grandparents, and every other dead person I used to know, saying the same thing. So Duke was spooked. So what.
I made a few preparations, then stepped into my flight harness, which was poorly designed, so I walked over to Duke. “Could you zip me please?”, I asked. Then I put on my helmet, took a big drink, because it was very dry up there, and I attached my harness to the glider with a climbing caribeaner. I always love to rotate the glider around to face the wind. It makes a certain sound that’s like music to me, cutting through the sky. The wing says it’s ready to fly. The sail was tight and symmetrical.
I stepped up to the launch area. There was a steep hill for twenty feet, then the ground disappeared and couldn’t be seen again from there until it was much lower, over a thousand feet below in the lava beds. The lava beds looked blazing hot now, with heat waves rising profusely. The wind was hot and blew fifteen miles an hour, straight in. There was a large juniper to the right, but other than that, the view was wide open and the exposure, which I was becoming used to, was still vivid.
I had learned to see exposure as my friend. A steep launch got you away from the ground quickly and into wide open sky. Not many pilots had been hurt by the wide open sky. It was contact with the ground that could kill you.
Standing there, looking over the vast ocean of sky, I thought about the billions of people who spent 29 million years unable to break free of the minuscule crust of Earth and had no sense of a huge ocean overhead, any more than they had a sense of the vast mind crushing depths of the core of Earth. To fly silent and alone was to experience a small corner of the raw, unprotected universe. It was a baby’s journey out of it’s mother’s womb, traumatic, but necessary.
Magic Wings Page 7