A NO BRAINER, MORE OR LESS
Snug your straps. You’re crabbing into a 20+ crosswind up a miniscule but seemingly endless ridge, pounding sideways over naked hardwoods so near the highway you can read logos on the sides of freight trucks as you overtake them. The chariot is a burly old 1-26, stout as a brick and with even better glide performance. Every few miles you nose down and gather speed to hop high-voltage power lines. Then a bigger one appears in the haze ahead and you wonder if you might need to duck under. Surely other yahoos would have done so over the years, but this is your first look. Are there unseen GUY WIRES? Better not. Slow up beforehand and gain as much height as possible, then pitch over as those menacing cables hiss by below. Rushing on, disappointment at not shooting under almost cancels honest pride in actually doing something smart. Whatever. You can undo all that on the way back… Next comes a forested valley with no place landable in sight. Shouldn’t matter if you stay on the ridge, but an urge to climb higher than 1800 MSL makes your teeth grate. One skimpy thermal could lower your heart rate, but it’s cold and gray the nearest sunlight on this ridge is hundreds of miles south.Further north the slope bends away at an angle softer to the wind, yielding zero at best. Any weaker, you'll be seconds from landing somewhere you’ve never seen. Time to stop. Higher performance could buy more courage, but today the road ends here. Now to run the other way, even faster in a quartering tailwind. An hour later you’re eighty miles south, back abeam the home field. The ridge runs on forever in that direction too, but here a river cuts through, too wide to cross without climbing higher than is possible today. You're about a thousand above the low ground with plenty of lift where you just came from, but stuck on this hill for the duration. Your grass strip is visible over the top, scarcely a mile downwind – with monster sink the whole way. The source of all this lift could now prevent reaching home. The ridge is twice as wide as it is tall and you can’t crawl high enough to glide across without maybe dropping into trees. Even if you did squeak over, you’d leave the hill much lower, and if you reached the runway, too low for a turn, leaving no choice but to land cross-field in a ripping tailwind. Unacceptable.
Fields lie all along the ridge on this side that would be easy and safe to land in, but set down by that picturesque barn and someone will have to schlep on indirect country roads, sixty miles through the wind gap and around, then all the way back after helping you trailer the ship on a blustery November evening. Long before then it'll be dark.
Or get down the same way you were towed up here, but in reverse. Fly off the end of the ridge, out low over the river to where the lift quits, and dash downstream from there. Requires greater distance flown, but limits the amount of sink and turbulence. You’ll approach the runway very low but in line with it, crosswind be danged. Either high enough... or if you do fall short it'll be in a big field off the end of the runway that, after this morning's checkout, you’re already familiar with.
No other way to get there in flight.
By now you should be shouting NUTS. You'ld never do something that risky! You wanna land on this side, into the wind. And after dark be danged. Right? Mm hmm...
But no, you'll be going for broke, and here's why. At this field it's standard procedure on ridge days. That downriver run is a mile-long base leg for criminy sake. The owner grew up here and learned it from his dad thirty years ago. Demonstrates it every chance he gets, they say, and has "hardly ever" had to open those big gates and walk a bird home.
In fact here he comes now. Perfect! Just let him go first, watch closely and mimic his every move.
(The fact that his ship gets nearly double your performance? That's a whole 'nother bucket of bolts.)