Baldy Butte Fly-in

22-24 September 2017

G and C.J. near Baldy north take-off

Tough decision whether to go to The Can-Am at Black Mtn or the Fly-in at Baldy. But
the Baldy site needed more support to stay open, and our friends were going there, too. C.J and I thought we’d leave Friday – and we did, but not before getting a flight at Tiger. 

22 Sep, Fri - Unfortunately, the bright blue sky with burgeoning cumulus clouds had morphed into high overcast by the time we were ready to launch. I had an abort on the upper takeoff and then had a mushy launch (someone said, “not like George, at all” which made me feel a bit better). I went around the north side of the Dome and scratched for a while, then flew back south to the Yaher Wall where there was very little lift. Soon I was setting up with another pilot who took the left while I went right. (:15). C.J. also had a short flight and we were packed up and on our way home by 1700. Since we only had to put the last items in the trailer and car, we were out the driveway by 1800. It was dark when we pulled into Lmuma Rec Area after 1930 and we were surprised to find that there was an open campsite. After setting up we had a late dinner then crossed the barbed wire to the camping area for the Fly-in. This year the organizers (mostly Rick and Karen Ely, helped by Randy Lettau) were allowing attendees to drive down into the camping area, but no trailers per Mr. Eaton’s request. Someone had a small campfire going (despite the statewide fire ban) and we hung out for a while before returning to the Aliner. We were careful to not turn on a light inside until we had the door closed, however, once the lights were on we were swarmed by tiny flying bugs. We wondered if they were coming in through gaps in the weatherstripping, but we soon found out that they were small enough to get through the window screens. Bummer! We swatted a few thousand with towels, etc. and we tried removing the vent screen and turning the fan on high to suck them out. That worked but more just came in so we finally gave up and shut the lights off and went to bed. It was pretty chilly, and the bugs quieted down as soon as the lights were off.

23 Sep, Sat – We didn’t get up early but when we did we had to sweep up the bug carcasses before we could make breakfast. Later we drove over to the fly-in site and parked in the shade. Registration was once again at the entrance near “the rock” and there were already 40-50 pilots signed up who had arrived early to fly on Friday. After registering we ran into Randy Sprague who was taking a bunch of RPC guys up (Griz, Wayne, Joe Stermitz, and ?). He offered us a ride so we didn’t have to wait for one of the shuttles. There were a lot of people standing around up near the towers waiting for it to get a little stronger. I watched for a while then decided that I’d rather go early than wait in line for what might be strong conditions. The sky had become partly overcast but I pulled up on a steep slope after C.J. and flew left in lift (!). I should have stayed there (photo above) but I continued west and sank below the ridgetop. I reversed course and returned to the bowl below launch and worked light lift but not enough to get up to the pilot flying a BGD who had stayed in the lift near launch. Eventually I decided to head out along the north spine to look for lift: Not much, and then serious sink. My GPS was saying that it was a 5:1 glide to the LZ but the best I was getting was 3:1. I was thinking that I would be landing in the sagebrush and hoping that I wouldn’t end up in a gully, when I ran into some decent lift which seemed to be centered over a couple of apparently dead cows. I was able to gain some altitude and widen my circles. Now the LZ was within an easy glide and when the lift quit, I headed in to land (:20). C.J. was already packing up. We grabbed some lunch stuff from the trailer and then hooked up with Randy to go back up. I wasn’t too keen to fly in midday conditions so I volunteered to drive. Randy took us down to Big Pines CG to see if Wayne had landed there, but he was still in the air to the south. We picked up a load at the HQ and I drove Randy’s big Dodge Ram up to launch. By then people were mostly launching to the SW, but some were still getting off to the north. Peter launched to the north in his hang glider, the only hang at the fly-in, and got up and stayed high. C.J. decided that she didn’t want to fly for various reasons, a headache being the main one, so we drove down. Back at the LZ we hung out with Patricia and Penny until it got late enough to start setting up for dinner. We brought the “bluebarb” crisp over and added it to the potluck items. Rick had a full-size gas grill which he used to cook up a bunch of chicken and bratwursts; someone else (maybe Karen) brought a big pot of pulled pork. There were two kegs of Iron Horse ale; the one I had was really good, Mocha Death (even better than their Irish Death). There weren’t too many homemade desserts and C.J.’s got all eaten up, even before the cheesecake slices were gone. Sitting around the (illegal) fire we got to hear about all the great flights – some out toward the west, others flew triangles; everyone seemed to get nearly to cloudbase at 7-8000 ft. Sometime after 2000 we drove back to the trailer and endured another episode of the bug infestation from Hell. It wasn’t as cold as it had been the previous night.

24 Sep, Sun – After sweeping up the bugs and having breakfast outside at the picnic table we packed up the trailer and moved it up near the rock (a BLM official was telling other campers that there was going to be maintenance work done on the CG and there would be a lot of dust. We took a shuttle ride up with Rick Ely. This time the preferred launch was the more typical south-facing one. After waiting a while for conditions to improve (no one was staying up) I took off after Christel. There was lift right at launch, then more spotty lift over the ridge crest to the west. It wasn’t friendly enough for me to continue working it, so I just headed north across the river to the ridge that people had followed up on Saturday. It wasn’t working on Sunday and I headed toward the LZ while I was still high enough to make it easily (apparently it did not appear that way to some observers). The LZ was soarable so I circled my way back up a few hundred feet and drifted across the highway remembering that there had been lift near the dead cows the previous day. Not so much this time so I did not get up as high as Christel, nor as far away from the LZ as she was. I returned to the LZ to land to the SE which appeared to be into the wind, but as I approached the ground the wind must have switched so I ended up skidding across the ground on the seat of my harness – no damage (:16). I wasn’t watching Christel while I was packing up but when I looked up I saw a few people going over to help her where she had landed on the other side of the road in a rocky area. Tom drove his truck over to help her get back to the camp area. After C.J. got packed up after her short flight we hung out for a while before deciding to see if there would be another shuttle. Craig’s wife, Shirleyann (?), offered to drive us up with Patricia, and Peter who needed to retrieve his truck. On the way up, Peter met his truck being driven down. Not long after 1500, just as we were arriving at the top of the butte, Randy Lettau ran into a dustdevil when he was taking off from the south launch. I did not see the accident but other witnesses said his wing took a big collapse on the left side (others said the right side) and he was spun to the left and then dropped about ten feet to land on the rocky ground on his left side. (Randy thought that he had landed on his feet first). There was a ding in his helmet over his forehead, and he reported hearing/feeling cracking in his neck area. The only pain he was feeling was high on his neck, he was able to move all extremities and there seemed to be no bone or joint damage according to Matt, a local pilot and EMT on the scene. Karen Ely, an ER nurse, also checked Randy over. Soon afterward, Mark Larson, an ER doctor and pilot from Olympia, arrived and agreed with Matt’s assessment. He removed Randy’s helmet and we got the harness disconnected (Randy Sprague cut just the tip of one strap so we could unthread it from the buckle.) Meanwhile, medical aid had been requested and two Kitsap County fire/aid units responded within an hour. The commander of the unit took into account the injury and the roughness of the road and called for a helicopter evacuation. Randy had a c-collar applied and was carefully rolled onto a backboard; a head-bed kept his neck from moving. C.J. and I drove back down with Rick and Matt before the helicopter arrived (in fact, we were back at the LZ before it got there). After watching the helicopter land on the ridge in a big cloud of dust, load Randy on board and take off again, we drove down to Big Pines CG to meet up with Chris, waiting there for Patricia who had hiked down from launch with Sabrina. We hung out with the RPC gang and even got to try Wayne’s Ninebot, an electric unicycle, definitely a challenge to ride. Griz had an even larger one which I understood to be considerably more expensive than Wayne’s $600 one. After giving Sabrina a ride to the LZ, we drove into E-burg and got gas at Circle-K (2.929) on the way to the Yellow Church Café. Chris and Patricia helped drive Randy’s Jeep to Rick’s home and then joined us at about 1930. We had a good dinner of pork street tacos, Caesar salad and Thai shrimp stirfry in a green curry sauce (and a local ale). During dinner we received word that x-rays indicated that Randy had sustained a fracture of C-2 and was being flown to Harborview in Seattle for treatment. [Later Randy reported that the fracture was “very stable” and would require only a neck brace for three months.]  We He also had some bruising on his heel so it appears that he did hit feet first.] We headed home about 2030 and traffic was minimal. We made a pit stop at Snoqualmie Pass just after we noticed that there was a little mouse running around just below our windshield in the windshield wiper area. We couldn’t remove it even after we opened the hood. He was still there when we arrived home around 2200 and parked out in front of the hedge. We hadn't got awesome flights but there's more to a fly-in than the flying. It was a good time to visit with people we don't see all that often.