BREAKFAST NOOK

Over most of four decades now I’ve had the unusual, some would say dubious privilege of being first up almost every soaring day. As such, uncertainty of many kinds provides a convenient excuse for failing to stay aloft, but that satisfies only if I manage to do so anyway. Ordinarily, if I can gain 300 feet I like to think I can stay up all day. That first 300 though, is indispensable.Whether ride or lesson, it’s often a challenge of scratching feeble incipient lift or inventing ways to dodge gravity until that lift develops. Often I can feel it simmering, and know that once it eventually begins it’ll quickly improve. This pregnant suspense at the very onset is a treat which those who wait for ideal conditions cannot enjoy.Local knowledge and local conditions count for a lot of course, and here at Crystal we’re blessed with a perfect little breakfast nook in the mountains. Breakfast nooks typically sport bright cheery decor, but ours features mostly dark rock - facing east! From the airport all we see is a small steep sided pyramid, but straight behind it a mile-and-a-half-long ridge separates two wilderness canyons whose upper ends form the base of 9000-ft Mt. Williamson.The ridge amounts to a chain of rocky peaks and knife-edge saddles atop tight couloirs and near-vertical hogback spurs too steep to support much vegetation. Often as not there’ll be no hint of activity until the moment we reach that first peak and the towplane begins to wiggle. The convective day begins with tiny, dynamic ‘thermlets’ effervescing off the crest, each topographic feature spawning different kinds of bubbles, and at different rates. They can be surprisingly powerful but last only part of a circle at first, and strength only makes their edges seem sharper. We might need to switch directions every circle, cutting figure-eights on both sides of a summit, and dolphin aggressively up the ridge or down, from one hiccup to the next until bigger ones finally rise.Anticipation can be a very good thing - if one’s guesses are right. Turn into weak lift slow and tight, then find stronger stuff pushing you to the backside… And if wind is strong across the top, good lift can become bad sink in a heartbeat.All part of the fun.An hour later when there’s great lift everywhere our breakfast nook may lose its appeal. But where else could you ride a 6-knot thermal to ten thousand feet (a full mile above ground) at NINE AM? This little ridge is so steep on each side there’s never been a foot trail to the top, and so insignificant within the landscape it had no name. So what the hay, we named it Morning Mountain.Reminiscing once, a pilot from before my time said, “Let me tell you a secret. First thing in the morning…” and then went on to describe that very place and the special methods needed there. He smiled when I told him it was no longer a secret, and winked like Popeye when he heard its name.Many who soar here regularly have yet to experience the Morning Mountain effect - because they never come up until too late. That’s their problem. Flying over Morning Mountain in the afternoon when everything’s going up is like swinging at the piñata after its busted: just not the same.