GRAVITATIONAL EVENT

 Any glider guider with a little common sense or even a few days’ experience knows that downwind of a big mountain is where to find big sink. As a thirty-year soaring instructor I knew that too, with or without the common sense. I’d proven it time and again behind this very hill, demonstrating the atmospheric throwdown we get when we wander too close to the edge.But why even go there, you ask? Well, assuming every student will do the exact wrong thing later if not sooner, I’d rather they do it with me at their back than alone and unprepared. Besides, we’d always gotten away with it before…The half-mile crest of Mt. Williamson is ideal for this purpose, super steep on both sides and knife edge narrow along the top. Wind there will snap from up to down in a heartbeat, but the highest section is so short an end run can put you back on the good side before getting too low. Normally that is.The wind aloft on this day was unusually strong, well over forty knots, and somehow I decided that would only add extra spice… Uh huh, like when you fill a pepper shaker and forget to tighten the top. Bad angel approved, anyway. Instantly we’re thrown too far below the ridge top for that nifty end run. Rough? No, cruel. Negative Gs feel exponential. Hammer down and more’s coming. Time to think worst-case.On this side best case is downwind through monster sink, fifteen miles over forested canyons plus (I looked it up later) another five miles of urban deathscape to the nearest airport. Chance of getting back where we came from? The farther we fall the longer our flight path grows around a widening enclosure, and straight upwind from there on down. Either way it’s all or nothing, and we dare not go the wrong direction for even half a second. Decide NOW!Having never before glided clear across these mountains to the city, I favor perils near and familiar, diving crosswind through ferocious turbulence for the highest saddle I think we can reach. Massaging the yellow arc, each wallop seems it might be our last, but these noble wings flex as one and, glory be, the tail feathers stay on too. So hideous it’s almost beautiful.We recross the watershed a thousand feet lower in a big left bank and now can at least see a way out. The nearest fields hide five circuitous miles into this gale. We need eighty knots even with no sink, and there’ll be plenty more of that between here and wherever we get to. Lucky for us the riverbed drops half a mile in the next two.When those fields do peek from behind higher ground we’re still losing height so fast, they as quickly fall behind the last low ridge — more precisely we fall behind it. So what’ll it be, treetops or boulders?Neither please. Naturally there’s a flip side to our speed’s horrifying cost in altitude. First patch of lift we slow up and the wind boosts our zoomie like spit on a griddle. Those fields creep almost into view again… but still no chance.Speed-to-fly, speed-to-fly, speed-to-fly. Who knew these boulders were so huge? Guess that’s why they call it Big Rock Creek… Then one more pull-up brings us to the base of Morning Mountain, lower than I’d ever been at this spot but able to tack across her windward face and actually begin a sane climb out! Voila.Yes, it can happen. And in this religion you don’t even need to believe — but you must perform the acts! Our whole wipeout took only a couple minutes, top to bottom. I hadn’t finished getting scared yet and already we were celebrating. Part of me wanted to ride that gravity warp all the way up again just to say so, and it would have been easy, then. But the dumbest thing you can do after getting away with murder is return to the scene. My shaken companion, a far more rational creature, asked why not embrace our miracle and bring it home intact, before we need another.For once the good angel concurred.