Even with the basic elemental goal of the trip merely to Not Suck, we could only be said to have partial success. Although, since I learned so much flying with the Big Boys, I thought I should document it.

Slide into the beginning of the tale, or skip to other sections in the list below...
   

Sliding In

The trip grew from Rick Floyd and Greg Chastain’s desire to improve on their trip to the ’96 Smashionals. Greg did well, but Rick’s hired driver rolling his Jeep kinda put a damper on the whole event. I went for the practice week, but didn’t compete last year, and it’s good thing I hadn’t planned to, as I massively sprained my ankle the day before it started. This year, we were going to fly up (Greg works for Southwest Airlines, and could get us all passes), rent a vehicle, hire Rick’s cousin Kat Calloway to drive, and just plain try to have fun as well. I again talked my dad Cliff into coming out for a few days, and Bart & Christine Weghorst were going to show up the last few days to free-fly, with a visiting horde of Flying Dutchmen. A few weeks before the trip, Greg learned he had to come back to Dallas the Friday night before the comp to win some silly award at Southwest Air. This would make him miss the first day of the comp, but career-wise, couldn’t be turned down.

The Dallas contingent left Love Field on Saturday morning, July 12^th. After four hops on Southwest’s Western Airports Tour, we made it to Reno, and met up with Kat. Greg picked up our rental Blazer; we stuffed it to the gills, and then spent the afternoon in the Southwest cargo facility. Greg and I unpacked our gliders and Rick sculpted a PVC front rack. The finishing touches were the bright orange straps, and the cargo stickers borrowed from Southwest: FRAGILE, and NFG (better than you think—‘Next Flight Guaranteed’!). Pool noodles strung between the top bars made the padding for the factory roof rack.

The cargo guy was like a Maytag repairman, so willing to help that he was getting obnoxious. His wife worked at a casino, so he was offering some possibility of a cheap/free hotel room, but he wasn’t able to reach her. So, with the sun lowering in the sky, we headed for the campground below Slide Mountain, where I had stayed on an October weekend trip up from SF a few years before.

In summer, though, the campground was White-Trash Hell, with radios blaring, kids screaming, and smoke lingering. It smelled like someone was burning their leftover house lumber. We set up the tent and bailed over the mountain to Incline Village on the shore of Lake Tahoe for dinner, came back, and crashed. Early the next morning (still on Texas Time) we tackled the final task in transforming the Blazer from mild-mannered Mall-Terrain Vehicle to Hang-Hell Retriever—the radio. I had brought my 50W mobile ham unit and roof mount antenna to ensure that Kat would be able to reach us no matter how far we got. Greg and I found a suitable fuse and ground (zap), and looked for a mounting location that wouldn’t be too obviously destructive. The dash was way too protected from simple screw access, but the cupholders on the seat console were just about right to mount it—if we had zip-ties. We didn’t have any zip-ties. So we lurked in front of an auto parts store at 8:55AM, picking up a small Fat-Bastard-Breakfast at the Burger King on the way. One zip-tie (and several Bacon Egg Biscuits) later, we had the ultimate (rental) hang vehicle.

We headed up to Slide, not knowing what the local situation was. At least I knew how to get there. Three years earlier, the kosher LZs had become quite rare, requiring a local’s knowledge to fly there. I figured we would ask around once we were on top. We pulled around the last bend in the road (2-lane paved) just before the ski area, and discovered we were alone. Uh-oh—Maybe the whole place is shut down. Maybe the locals took one look at the weather and stayed away. Or, worse, went somewhere else I didn’t know how to get to. It was cycling in lightly, though, and sure enough, other vehicles arrived after ½ an hour, and we joined the setup crowd. None of us wanted to be the first off, being unfamiliar with the site, and launch being at 7800… My one flight years before had been in a borrowed Vision—easy enough to launch. But now I was taking the steep gravel launch in my K5, and both Rick and Greg had never before foot-launched their new Laminar and Moyes SX. So none of us wanted to be the wind dummy.

Even once others launched, we were not in a huge rush. None were skying out, and despite the more than 2K vertical, some were scratching low already. The threat of switching launch winds finally convinced us to go for it. We went in Rick/Pete/Greg order, a pattern that would repeat almost every flying day. I got stuck for a while waiting for a straight cycle on the steeper east ramp, so Rick was up for a while by the time I launched in a sink cycle (but it was straight!). It took me scratching down to the last foothills at 700 AGL to get up. Rick came over to use the thermal I marked, and the two of us climbed out through a pile of locals, proving that we Flatland Flyers could thermal with the best of ’em. Rick even kept up with me, confirming the climbability of the new Laminar. Greg flailed briefly, but skyed over both of us. Later, we all got spectacular views of the lake over the back. I realized as my vario started to conk out that I hadn’t charged it, so I turned off the sound, and slowly lost the 12K. I ended up down in the grassy field in front of our campground, and as I discovered too late, in ankle-deep mud. The first impacts of my feet spluttered a cool gooshy brown mess right up the back of my legs, making it look like I’d had an unfortunate accident… Since I was the first of our group to land, I spent the next hour using the little irrigation stream and my bandana to wipe down my harness, glider and instruments. No embarrassing stains, nanh-uh.

Greg landed (in a drier portion of the field) later, and we chased Rick 30 miles south along the ridge to Minden, south of Carson City. A good warm-up.

next: Sliding Out

drive back to the Top

Text and photos © 1997, Phammer