The winds were stronger on Tuesday, both helping Rick with a short launch run, and setting up a quick task. Doherty Slide LZ was called, about 50 miles downwind to the east. We added Patti Cameron to our retrieve list, as my Dad had gone to Crater Lake for the day. We’d flown (and partied) with Patti at Hobbs the last two years, so she fit right in.
I got up fine at launch, actually climbing with the best of ’em. I drifted back across the pass, and got low at Fandango (again!). Rick was right there with me, scratching the turbulent face. At one point we both made the adrenaline-sopped choice to soar the southwest (windward) face of the peak, even though the main valley LZ was then unreachable. A meadow just below the peak looked like an acceptable bailout—although, once seen the next day from another angle, it sloped anywhere from 10¡ to 30¡!
I finally caught one right in front of the peak, took my photo on the way up, and took it all the way to 10,500. There were plenty of gliders marking thermals in front of me, so I headed out on course. This was almost the same terrain we had covered the day before, so the first 30 miles were a piece of cake navigationally. And the rest was along the same road we had driven to the Slide, the day we arrived. The diagonal slash of highway climbing up the Slide was unmistakable from 40 miles away, enticing me from the top of each thermal.
Patti, Greg and I all took our start shots within 5 minutes of each other. Rick finally got tired of scratching, took his shot, and bailed over the side to Bidwell with only a few hundred feet clearance; he was on the deck at Bidwell 5 miles later… and ended up in a nice, flat, grassy field. In knee-deep water. At least it was soft for his ankle! And he managed to keep his instruments dry too, a tricky thing considering…
I got ahead of Patti, finding a stronger core in a thermal just
this side of Greaser, and climbed higher. Greg kept finding killer sink between cores,
forcing him to scratch low each climb. I topped out at 12,000 MSL, 16 miles out, with that
slash highway like a beacon in the distance. For grins, I checked the navigation screen of
my GC-70, and was shocked to see it shout GO ON FINAL! I kicked it into S2F mode, and
watched the miles tick by. My ground speed was 58-60 mph!
The small brown patch at the base of the ridge that must be goal kept wavering slightly up, slightly down, as I adjusted my glide to the tones. The readout for the expected altitude at goal (which was at 5,500 MSL) kept going from as much as 1,200 over to –500 under. I started looking for some insurance lift. I had another pilot gliding below and in front of me, anonymously white on top. I knew it would have to climb again, and sure enough, as we crossed the rolling badlands a few miles past Greaser ridge, we came to a nice 400-up core, already marked by a glider even lower. I took a quick gain of 800 feet, and started to glide again. The readout stayed positive and the glide stayed buoyant, despite some minor burbles.
As I passed 2,000 AGL over some poor soul only 2 miles out, I knew I would make it. I could see the welcome mat rolled out (the 100-foot red ‘finish line’), right at the base of the Slide cliff! Good thing the course line was diagonal—I could just see someone diving in at 60 mph, and splattering against the wall… My track was even more off-line to the south, so my path was from an angle. I switched freqs to announce (got no response), and accelerated to about 40, diving at the Doherty wall. Crossing the line at 400 feet, I eased the bar out and veered along the face off to the north. Yeah!
My excess energy and the abundant lift had me quickly back up to ridge height, and I had the treat of watching 3 or 4 gliders zoom across the line from ¹ mile up the ridge. I was tempted to relax and extend the flight, maybe cruise the ridge, but I figured I might want to verify my time (since I made it, I would actually be getting some speed points). I actually had to fly out away from the ridge to get down, coring modest sink. I landed just to the north of the accumulating gliders. Greg called down to have me mark his time, not realizing I was on still final as he and Patti blazed in. Greg had the same idea—get me to check his time, so he could soar…
Once down, though, I noted the long line waiting to verify times, and recalled that I had no response from the goal crew by radio, and realized that I hadn’t noted my time at all. Uh-oh. I noticed general unrest in the long line of pilots waiting to confirm their times, and only then discovered the final straw of several days’ complaints about the goal crew. I spotted their radio, on the ground by their truck, 75 feet away. No wonder I got no acknowledgement. When I finally confirmed, they had me by colors, but not by the number on the sail. They assigned it then… Good thing I checked. The poor goal crew was overwhelmed—65% of the pilots made it, most crossing goal within a 10-minute period! Many pilots’ times were hosed. The next day GW fired that crew, and goal the rest of the meet was tracked by a crew made up of pilots, with better tools.
Chris Arai won again, blazing in just over an hour, (1:02:55) by a margin of 6 seconds. My 1:22:18 was good for 31st, which would end up being my best finish of the meet. Too bad it was on such an ‘easy’ day. The percentage making goal each day dropped back to around 10% for the rest of the meet.
Text and photos © 1997, Phammer