From: Jim Macklow
Activity_Date: 9/30/01
Remote Name: 12.44.115.28
Distance: 36 Km
Duration: 3:40
Max Altitude: 12061'
Reached the LZ at 11:00 or so. Only one HG pilot was there. While I was filling my water bag, about 10 pilots showed up, but no one had a driver.
I told them I was going to drive up by myself, and figure out the retrieve later. They were not very understanding, so I said I wanted to launch before it blew out.
Go up to launch, but do to some problems with my radio, vario, and sunglasses, I land after about 15 minutes of flying. I sort everything out a bit better, and relaunch at 11:56. About 3 minutes later the first truck of HG pilots showed up.
"Good", I thought. I can go downrange a bit, they'll catch up, and we can all fly together a bit.
I valiantly searched and searched for a nice thermal to take me skyward. For 50 minutes, I found nothing.
Meanwhile, a huge cu-nimb was spreading out above me, filling in the area behind launch with its shadow. Then Kagel Mtn itself was in shadow, and soon I was too. But my 12:46 thermal was working good, and even though there was no more heating of the ground by the sun. Above me a dark grey cloud grew darker, and the north side of the cloud starting dumping its virga.
I left the thermal at 5637', and crossed over to "little T", dropping down to 3411' in the crossing. I found a nice thermal at the west end of the ridge, and stayed in it. And stayed, and stayed... Luckily the thermal was drifting to the east, so I just hung on for the ride. Ten minutes later it had drifted to the other end of the ridge, and I was at 6165'.
I decided I'd jump over to Lukens. Dropped to 4015' on the crossing. Tried to thermal in lots of sharp little bullets, but each one had a different drift, and were very hard to snag, and were _very_ violent. Suddenly a light went on in my head... where have I flown in conditions like this before??? Why, in the lee side! Those lee side "thermals" down low are always trashy and uncooperative. I worked and worked to stay up, trying to work my way up high enough to jump to the ridge behind me. Finally I thought I was high enough. I dove for the back ridge, and lost a lot of altitude in the process. Just short of the ridge, and I didn't have the altitude to cross. I turned around and started sniffing around for another (last?) lee-sider, and in few seconds one came blasting through. I let it push me back towards the ridge, and then jumped to the north side, and was rewarded with a nice big smooth strong thermal.
After 1000' feet or so of turning, I drifted with the thermal, this time to the south-southeast. Lukens was crazy with lift, I took this thermal(s) from 4709 to 12061 in 23 minutes. (it took 3 1/2 minutes to blast from 7000' to 10000', less than 1 minute to go from 8999' to 9999').
During this ride up, I began to feel the effects of the lack of O2, just noticing the thin air, and bit of tightness at the temples. Since there was another huge black-bottomed cloud forming over me, I decide to leave (in case the lift at cloudbase, probably another 2000' above me, got too intense. In retrospect I should have gone higher). I didn't want to make any more dumb decisions than normal due to hypoxia, so I began the crossing to Mt Wilson.
By the time I reached Mt Wilson, I had lost a disappointing amount of altitude, and I was low on the spine in front of the west towers (Mt Lowe on the map). I had dropped to 5703' in 15 minutes. The cloud that was nicely forming over Mt Wilson as I was thermalling up at Lukens, was now exploding above my head. I scratched around looking for any scrap of lift, the little bits I found were drifting to the NE, which suited me just fine.
I finally found a thermal (broken and ugly, but reliable), and took it up to 6200', and began to feel a few raindrops. A few more hit me, and I jumped on the speed bar to escape anything else that might fall out of the sky. I made it over to the east end of Mt Wilson, down at 4121 on the spine that runs down from the HG launch on top. I worked up this spine, keeping an eye on the explosion 10000' or so above my head. By the time I had worked back up to even with the top of Mt Wilson, the whole range was in shadow. I boated around, contemplating top landing in the parking lot, but one last thermal beckoned me, and I took it up, but it was a slow climb. I started east again at 7283', and kept pretty far back along the ridge on the way to the next mountain, as I was not sinking very fast on this heading. However as I traveled across the valley, I noticed a disturbing lack of any sort of suitable landing areas. I decided to head a bit more south at this point, and as I lost altitude, and dropped below the ridgeline, I was soon reacquainted with an old friend: "Canyon Wind".
I realized I could not reach the far side with any kind of high (or low) probability, so I valiantly pushed south (instead of east). The ground was coming up alarmingly fast... and absolutely no LZ's. I saw a paved road with a bunch of people walking on it, so I thought I could drop my wing in there. In case of a bad landing I'd have company.
Then I spotted a helipad... very confined with high trees on 3 sides and cliff on the remaining. I was wondering how to set up a spot landing in heavy sink, when I got a few beeps on my vario. I got off the speed bar and started to work the lift. I kept the helipad in easy reach, while working forward to get around the spine in front of me.
As I rounded the spine, I spotted a windsock (pointing directly at me). Another helipad was only 30' feet below me! I could see out into the valley now, and briefly contemplated flying out into the valley and landing in the wash a few thousand feet below. But the helipad was right below me... and retrieval would be relatively easy (although retrieve distance would be longer).
So I dropped onto the Chantry Flats helipad at 3:35pm.
Jim Macklow
SCPA Secretary