Fall Flying at Rampart

5 October 2014

C.J. (photo by Heather)

The Second Day Rule ("It's never good flying on the day after a site has been awesome") notwithstanding, we joined a dozen paragliders and perhaps half that many hang gliders at Rampart. Wind was practically non-existent where we parked at the bridge over Gold Creek and, on launch, it was light and cross from the right. Owen Shoemaker is a believer in going early; he did, and sank out, slowly but ending up on the "carrier deck" LZ hoping for a ride up with the hangs. Unfortunately they had already left; fortunately someone drove his pickup down so he could have another try. I am a believer in going early, too. So when there began to be cycles light but straight in, I geared up. Then I stood there for a very long time as the sun had been obscured by a patch of cirrus. When it finally cleared I forward-launched in a light cycle and almost immediately found lift. It was easy to work as I

I was flying low enough for my shadow to be on the cliff

was the only one in the sky. After getting above the launch ridge, I went up the valley to the base of the cliffs. There was plenty of lift but it was very light and I never climbed above 5100' (launch at 4600'). Returning to launch I found the good, stronger house thermal, but by now there were several wings in the area. I got back up and returned up the valley pushing as far as seemed reasonable and staying close to the valley wall. The colors of the bushes in the clearings were brilliant in the sun. I made at least one more trek back to launch and then up valley before deciding that I'd flown for an hour and that was long enough. From the old lower launch at maybe 4000' I headed across the lake not expecting to find the continuous lift. I was almost to the hill before Hyak and moving slowly into the wind when the air became turbulent. I headed back toward launch thinking about landing in the soft, mossy ground north of the island. There was less turbulence but my GPS was showing 55 kph speed over the ground. As I turned to face into the wind I noticed that my altitude which had been down to 3100 (lake bed LZ at 2500') was back over 3200'. I wasn't losing any altitude, instead I was gaining. So I flew south thinking that then I would be getting out of the venturi at the base of the pass and could land out in the broad flats of "the Gobi". Now I was able to lose altitude slowly and I could see a pilot below me who was holding up a flag of some sort to show me the wind direction. Unfortunately I did not know that it was a relatively heavy t-shirt and I would have done better to study the streamers at the carrier deck. As I came around to line up into the wind for my final I realized that I wasn't moving forward and applied the speed bar. That helped a little and I landed in a nice smooth area with no forward speed. Either I did not disable my wing quickly enough, or a stronger gust came through, because I was jerked off my feet and dragged through a rock pile before I came to a halt, and Beth, the pilot on the ground, was able to disable my wing. I was lucky that the rocks were rounded river rocks, but even so, I sustained a badly-bruised knee and a twisted neck along with a cut inside my mouth and minor scratches on my face. My full-face helmet took somewhat of a beating but I'm glad I had its increased protection. Beth helped me pack up in the windy conditions. Ernie landed just after I got packed and had much friendlier conditions -- he could kite for a moment before he put his wing down. Beth and I left our packs with Ernie and set off across the mostly-grassy lake bed to the north about a mile to where we could walk under the I-90 bridge over Gold Creek and reach our cars. Meanwhile, C.J. had contacted me after I got on the ground and said she was going to follow Wheely down to the dam. She arrived plenty high enough and found the conditions much mellower and had a perfect landing. Later when I caught up with her she told me that just after she landed two EMTs ran up to them and said they had been dispatched because of a report of two hang gliders crashing on the dam - must have been someone going by on I-90 who saw C.J. and Wheely landing. The EMTs gave all the PGs who landed there (five, all together) a ride to the rest area on I-90 where Iain was waiting to take them back to Gold Creek. I didn't know, at the time, how landing at the dam had been so I drove down there after recovering my pack from Ernie who had carried all three from the Gobi to the carrier deck parking lot. Just as I got to the dam service road, C.J. called me on the mobile and I was relieved to hear that she was safe at Gold Creek. I picked her up at the Hyak exit and we declined an invitation to join a bunch of the pilots at the NB Bar & Grill (a wise decision because it was hard enough for me to eat some scrambled eggs, much less a burger).

The Whole Dam Crew