DOWN AND DIRTY / UP AND GONE

It was May, when each afternoon is apt to bring even better soaring than the day before. The previous two started early and really boomed, so we were stoked for an epic caper (that's X-gen talk, fellow geezers). We’d planned a long cross-country but couldn't get high enough early enough for an aggressive start, so instead flew three different 100+-mile out-and-returns, sneaking beyond range of home for awhile in each direction. Overall the day was easy as it was long and too much fun to shamelessly admit. In fact the first of those legs was the only tough one.

Lift we expected over the Shadow Mountains after our initial glide hadn’t kicked off yet, but I knew it soon would. Retreating, we turned back across El Mirage lakebed – rational and conservative but a tactical mistake for one reason I failed to consider until debriefing the flight later. Lakebeds are the lowest place around, so that's where cool air pools overnight, making them the last place to look for lift early in the day. And here it was not quite noon.

El Mirage’s name comes from the way skylight sometimes reflects off its supersmooth surface when dry with a watery blue sheen far lovelier than the mucky brine that collects there after rains. From high overhead it always displays shades of tan, but our oblique sight angle down near the lakebed conjured weird glossy splotches like shapeshifting mirrors, while a featureless desert island sailed along directly under us. Depth perception can be problematic over any extremely uniform surface, but these chimeras' liquish undulations were disorienting. Fortunately the San Gabriel horizon twenty miles south provided comforting frame of reference.

We held two advantages that morning, a tiny one that made all the difference and a huge one we wouldn't quite need. Our altimeter was reading 3400 feet MSL, which is to say every molecule between that lakebed and ourselves was below ground level back at Crystal. The lake's elevation? Didn't know at the time, but it appeared we were about as high as base leg (given the optical anomalies however, such a guess could be off by ?? either way). Our bigger advantage: calm surface winds gave us the option of landing straight ahead in any direction. Knowing we could roll out of a turn at any time and be on mid- to late final was intensely liberating.

Now the air everywhere was swelling like yeasty bread, whirlies growing bigger and lasting longer – but also further apart with more near-surface sink between. Infants sprang up from within those mirages only to vanish in seconds. We'd rush toward a new one and see it sputter before we arrived, then another would pop where we’d just come from. Several desperate glides we dragged our little island around the lakebed, always losing nibbles of altitude... yet so slowly even that felt unreal.

It was nearing a practical limit though. Alluring as these visions were from aloft, a little lower even the best lift would present only hazards in getting down and staying there. First too little too early, and now too much too late! It seemed gravity might be about to win when one last temptation blossomed half a mile away, frenetic little demon beyond a pole line across the lake's narrow end. Did we have the height to reach it and fail, then land back toward the wide middle? No way to be sure but one way to find out.

Landing with minimal ground reference is always tough, even when a surface does not itself reflect the sky. The wire between those poles is what, a quarter inch in diameter? Once you're close enough you might as easily see its shadow and misjudge ground level by more than twenty feet! No, the reference must be one of those poles anchored to its shadow at the base. "If we have to land," I told my student, "find the pole you want, aim short of it and off to one side, then hold wings level till we touch down – even if that takes all afternooon.”

As we slid closer to the growing dust column (and the ground) I could see parallel streams of blowsand skiffing across the surface in a broad uniform curve, toward us from the left and away to the right, counterclockwise. This disturbance was fixing to go big.

We had a video camera mounted on the forward instrument panel, and while swirling dust filled its wide-angle lens the internal mike recorded a rattle of sand peppering our airframe. We closed the vents to keep it out of our eyes and teeth. The surest of sure things was now rising all around us if only we were still high enough to grab hold and hang on... and for another hairy minute or so there was nothing sure about that.

First a gritty blast threw our nose frightfully high... It's not unusual to do stall recoveries in lift so strong you actually gain altitude, but this near the ground it was shocking to watch! Then came the remnants of someone's pup tent without the slightest respect for right-of-way protocal. We almost tied oursevles into a knot missing that. Twice in fact. But by the third time around, it and the earth were beginning to fall away as grudgingly then eagerly our quarrelsome dustup became a bona fide boomer. Pay dirt in every sense. A quick celebratory climb put us outta Dodge with two miles of altitude to spend, almost like we knew what we were doing – except for that sand stuck to the sweat on our grinning faces. Yada yada.

Back home that evening, shadows stretched toward towns thirty miles east where thousands of reflectorized signs and bumper stickers glittered in the horizontal sun like Christmas lights. As the hour hand crept toward eight we were finding smoooth 1- to 2-knot lift everywhere within a couple miles of the airport, but a low save was no longer what we needed. Time was up. We had to land.

So much for a typical spring day in Paradise.