Saddle Mtn XC Flight Sep 8, 2007

Weather forecast looked good in the morning. Patti and Steve agreed, so we were on the road by 0945. We found the gate at the LZ locked and a second gate of barbed wire beyond that. Steve left his big white van at the Crab Creek ORV park and we headed up. The road has a coat of coarse gravel and the upper gully has some deep sandy spots but we were on top by 1230 or so and were surprised to find no one else there. The wind was light and straight in so we wasted no time getting geared up. However, by the time we were ready to launch, it was gusting and blowing pretty hard. It wasn’t until after 1400 that the cycles became more regular and the gusts less violent. I launched first in a lull and started sinking as I headed right so I turned back and returned to launch, still getting lower. Finally I turned east and headed to the microwave tower where I began climbing in edgy thermal lift. At that point I cut the ties to the launch area and the LZ and continued east.

The air was pretty turbulent and I spent more time just flying straight at first but gradually either I got more comfortable or the air smoothed out and I was able to make use of the thermals. At one point I hit lift that caused my vario to fill the scale and begin the second scale so it was more than 1000 fpm up …and smooth. As I approached the first power lines at about six miles, I was getting low and this was the low point on the ridge anyway. I was too low to safely cross the lines so I turned away from the hill and stumbled into some good lift which I cored up well above the ridge and power lines. At some point I reached my highest altitude of the flight – 4600 ft. msl. My goal had been to fly more than ten miles so I could count this flight as a cross-country flight but as I passed that mark I was in full XC mode. My track on Google Earth shows the typical pattern of spiraling up in a thermal and then going on glide to the next thermal and spiraling up again.

The ridge changed character becoming less cliff-y and developing a secondary ridge north of the main ridge. I could see the tower on Wahatis in the far distance and thought that it was unlikely I would get that far. At 12.7 miles I passed the point where the Crab Creek Road turns away from the ridge and a smaller road continues to the east. I started getting low again and radioed my position. There were big “pivot” fields below on the bench but it looked like it would be a pretty long walk out just to the road. So I started heading northeast hoping to cross a canyon and land on a farm road but I was sinking pretty fast. Just then I hit another good patch of lift and climbed high enough to make the valley road easily. It seemed like a smart thing to do, so I continued heading out and found still more lift in the valley. The buoyant air allowed me to stretch my flight to a good field 15.98 miles from launch and just about even with Wahatis. After packing up I started walking along the road; only one car passed me before Steve and C.J. pulled up in the van. I was glad I didn’t have to walk too much farther even though the weather was pleasant for Eastern Washington.

I really thought a lot about how similar the flying was to my experience in Iquique, Chile, last year. You could just keep flying along the ridge and even when you were sinking, you could be pretty sure that you would run into a thermal before you hit the ground. Also, knowing that we had a retrieve vehicle in the LZ freed me up from feeling like I had to topland. Patti did the noble thing and landed on top near the microwave tower so we didn’t have to drive up to retrieve the Trooper. Both C.J. and Steve decided to land in the sand at the bottom because the air seemed too squirrelly for a toplanding.