Owen's Valley (part 4)

Over an hour passed, and the miles seemed to drag by. The thermals were strong with very defined edges that sent me over the falls when my concentration waned. The phrase “over the falls” means unintentionally flying out the edge of a thermal - feeling as though one is flying one’s glider over a waterfall. In this case a very big waterfall. Typically, it’s somewhat easy for a veteran thermal pilot to stay in a nicely defined core, but often thermals consist of multiple cores and are therefore complex by nature.

The air was becoming rougher, especially as I was gliding toward the southwest aspects of the canyons. My climbs were great, typically topping out between fourteen and sixteen thousand feet asl. However, once I left the thermals, my glide was poor, leaving me lower than I cared to be, and at times deep in the canyons. The texture of the air and my slow progress were both indications that I was bucking a light headwind coming from the northeast. Now five hours into my flight, I was tempted to turn the glider toward the flats, find a nice field to land in, and call it a day. But I decided to give things a bit more time and continued to drive north. From time to time, generally at or close to the top of a climb, Boundary Peak was clearly visible. Its faint reddish outline marked the end of my hundred-mile journey and fueled my motivation to stay the course. Twenty miles out from Boundary Peak, the turbulence intensified. I found that when I was high, the air seemed a bit more tame. It was only when I was below the peaks and to the west that the air was intolerable, which made sense as I was on the west side of the Whites – the lee side. My next climb maxed out at sixteen thousand and some change. My strategy changed. Cumulus clouds began forming marking the top of the thermals. The lift was strong enough to allow me to cruse from cloud base to cloud base without losing to much altitude. It also permitted me to remain well above the peaks and out of the turbulent mess below.

At six o’clock pm I arrived over Boundary, well above its summit. As I flew out from its massive peak, the turbulence subsided and the air became silky smooth. Now at fourteen thousand asl, roughly eight thousand feet above the ground, I could barely make out what appeared to be a complex of buildings with an airstrip close to highway 395, a perfect place to end my seven hour flight. After almost thirty minutes of circling in the velvet-like air, I was low enough to begin setting up an approach for a landing. Conveniently, the airstrip was real, complete with a huge orange windsock. I raised my body in the upright position, kicked my legs out of the harness boot, and gently turned the glider into the cooling evening wind. The glider settled in ground effect and slipped along the groomed dirt strip until at the right moment, I flared hard. WHACK! My spent body flailed against the glider’s control bar uprights, coming to a stop in a cloud of flying dirt and dust.

After partially breaking down my glider, I walked over to the main building in the complex with the intention of trying to contact my driver. It had been over two hours since I had lost radio contact with Bob, and though he had a good idea where my flight was going to end, I wanted to call and gloat - as well as give him my exact location. The sign over the door of the main structure read “Janies.” The building was actually a dozen or so double wides hacked together in the crudest way. Yes, I was in Nevada, and yes, it was a bordello. After phoning Bob, I returned to my glider , finished packing up in the waning evening light, and continued to gloat.