Owen Valley (part 3)

Prior to this particular flight, I had spent a few summer weekends in the Owens Valley flying from Gunther launch on the White Mountains. Everything about the sixty-mile long stretch of mountains from south of Bishop to Boundary Peak is exaggerated. The enormous Canyons, peaks and alluvial fans are on the grandest of scale. The thermals, wind, dust devils and weather in general can be truly extreme. For the most part my flying time in the Owens has rewarded me with unbelievable memories with only a few terrorizing moments.

Almost a year before the date of my 100+ miler, I had a similar flight from Horseshoe Meadows in the Sierras. Only a few miles short of the crossing point, and close to Middle Palisades Mountain, what begun as milk run quickly became my most desperate moment hang gliding. Usually the morning’s convective heat expands in the valley and blows gently up the east facing aspects of the Sierras. This east flow allows soaring pilots to fly the length of the workable Sierra range and cross to the Whites before the afternoon Westerlys kick in. Once the predominate westerly flow arrives on the Sierras, the severe lee side flow creates extremely dangerous rotors and descending air. A place no aircraft of any sort would want to be. So there I was, just barely above the lower and most forward peaks of the range when the predominate westerly flow hit early. At first the air just seemed different and rough. Hard to put a finger on exactly what was going on. My mind raced through a list of possibilities. My glider? Is there something wrong with my wing? Maybe the thermals have gotten stronger. Or possibly it’s my location on this particular mountain. Suddenly my glider surged forward in an uncontrollable dive. I eased forward on the control bar and the glider responded nosing up and regaining it’s normal flight attitude. Within seconds the glider violently pitched forward again, and the following moments were sheer survival. I fought to keep the glider flying, but each time I corrected the wing the glider was thrown uncontrollably into a dive or some other awkward attitude. After only minutes, but what seemed to be an eternity, I had lost thousands of feet of altitude and was quickly coming up on the ground. Finally out of the rotor and in somewhat of a stable glide, I headed east toward a field close to highway 395 and safely landed.

With this memory still fresh in my mind, I was somewhat relieved to have the crossing behind me, and the more familiar Whites lying ahead.