Lakeview August 8 - 16, 2007

C.J. and I are in Lakeview for our annual camping/flying get-together with Wally and Ginny. The camping part has been good with cooler than usual weather but the flying has either been blown-out (i.e., perfect for hang gliders like Wally, Roger, Dirk and Page Perrin - who was up from his lair at Hat Creek to do a gold Lilienthal award flight) or, like last night, almost calm and not soarable.

We've done some exploring since the flying has not been great. [The first three days there was some kind of international air force maneuvers and we were restricted form flying until after 1500. In fact, on Friday morning, F-16s screamed over our heads in camp several times - fast and low!] One day we drove west of town to Drews Gap and up toward Grizzly Pk to a new hang gliding ramp that Mark Webber and Mike Tingy built. It juts out over a cliff facing east and is secured with chains bolted to the clifftop and cliff face. It's definitely not for paragliders and I think many hang glider pilots would consider it pretty extreme. Ken Musio and Mike Tingy are the only ones to have flown it so far and they did not need to utilize the LZ near Cottonwood Lake, flying to Abert Lake and Lakeview, respectively. Sunday we drove down to Canby to see the progress that Debbie and Roger (debbie@strawfly.com) have made on their property and straw-bale home. It looks really good with the stucco on the outside and some new concrete windowledges. They have an 800 kilowatt bank of solar panels for the house and another rotating arrangement of panels for the well pump. For such a dry ridgetop, they have a great garden (two gardens, actually) with serious fencing with electric wiring to keep out the rodents. Yesterday we went out to the airport to see Jules Gilpatrick in his hangar. He's got a big rotary engine Howard and a towplane he calls an "ag wagon". He flew the Howard out to Oshkosh again this year.

Last night we drove up a road behind the Buck Creek Guard Station to a high point and hiked out about 0.6 mi to Wally's launch. The idea is that when you launch you are already across the Fandango Valley gap and can hope to get up in the glassoff and head N toward Lakeview. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong night because the wind pretty much died and we had barely-extended flydowns to the field below (owned by Ray Cloud, whom a neighbor assured us would have no problem with us landing there; the neighbor even invited us to hand in his field where he has mowed a perfect heart enclosing "B+E"). C.J. and Ginny accompanied us down to launch and had to hike back out to the car. Along the way Ginny lost her fleece jacket so we went back to look for it this morning - and found it! Then we went up Sugar hoping to get C.J. and Wally flights on their hang gliders. It looked good until the wind picked up around 1130 and canceled the flying. Later we tried Sweet-N-Low and were able to soar our paragliders, and Wally managed to get to 9200' at Sugar and cross the Fandango Gap as far as where the county road meets US 395 south of New Pine Creek. Shortly after I returned from Sugar (having climbed only to 6600 ft) the wind died down and the hang gliders watched Roger sink to the bailout. I toplanded on Sweet-N-Low; or rather sank out and stalled my wing in the last three feet. C.J. and Dirk broke down their gliders and we all drove down.

The last day we tried Sugar again but much earlier - still too strong and lots of cumulus we haven't seen this week until now. We had toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and veg-ed around camp until Ginny suggested we go in to town to check out Blackcap. We did, but it was way too south so we headed back to Sweet-N-Low once again. Dirk was already there and optimistic on the radio about conditions. By the time we got there I thought it was too strong for PG (although Wally was getting his PG gear ready). C.J. set up her Falcon and the wind got even stronger. It looked like we were skunked again. Wally gave up on the PG reluctantly and set up his U-2, and the wind moderated. Roger and Dirk launched; we helped C.J. get her glider out to launch where she had a great takeoff and ridge soared for a while before heading over to Sugar. Conditions had improved enough for me to launch and I got off pretty easily and crept slooowly over to Sugar climbing steadily. When I got to 7000 ft (launch at 5600), I had single-digit speed into the wind and didn't waste any time crabbing out to 395 in front of S&L and heading downwind over the back. Crabbing I was making 24 mph and turning straight N (lined up with the road to Buck Creek) I saw 33 mph on my GPS. Not a bit of lift so, after crossing the Lassen Creek canyon, I turned NW down FS 30 and glided out as far as I could, turned around and landed in no (!) wind. C.J. checked with me about wind speed and direction and chose to go out to the Sugar LZ. Meanwhile, the hang gliders had all gotten to 7500 or higher and flown across the gap, landing about the same time I did just north of New Pine. Ginny drove down and checked on C.J. then picked me up and dropped me at camp so I could get the Trooper and go retrieve C.J. while she went after Wally and crew. C.J. and I got back to camp with plenty of time to shower (in the dark) and heat up some more of Wally's Mexican spaghetti sauce for dinner. It was a great to end on a winner" for our Lakeview trip".

Thursday we got up around 0700 before the sun had a chance to heat up the tent and broke camp. We were out of Lassen Creek by 0845 and home almost exactly twelve hours later. We stopped at Picture Rock Pass between Summer Lake and Silver Lake to walk off the road to see the pictographs (petroglyphs?), in Bend at the Columbia Outlet, in Madras at the Dairy Queen, and for dinner in Yakima. Just outside of Madras there was a raging brush fire right alongside the road, and for the whole trip there was plenty of wind especially up near the OR-WA border. {C.J., Ginny and the bears}