NONPAREIL
“Come and see the sunset tree! The day is past and gone.”
In your ever lengthening roll of most memorable thermals, what do you suppose ‘elevates’ any particular one above countless others? Raw climb rate can count for a lot, but I’ve forgotten more boomers than I remember, while still revering a few squeakers long after their enshrinement in my own personal Pantheon. We’ve all seen lowly bug farts transform themselves into beneficent colossi (or if you haven’t you will), yet even many of those are forgettable too.
Height? It’s all relative. I’ve circled to 17,999 at 2000 fpm, and heard plausible tales far exceeding that. (Of course the very strongest and highest thermals always go entirely unsoared inside every standard cumulonimbus.) No, altitudes that ring my memory bell are of the three digit variety: how bug-eyed low when a save began? My personal hard floor was below the level of our launch point, from which we absconded with a quick and dirty two-mile climb. That thermal ranks in the top ten alright, but qualifying for GRANDEST EVER demands more.
Uniqueness? Well they’re all unique, that’s the point. Okay, then how about most unique? Some hall of fame thermals, like HOF athletes, work their marvels against what are called ‘the odds’, over-performing in one category or many despite all handicaps. A blue boomer from flatass nowhere powering up through thirty-knot wind, or a grey cripple under low overcast, meager yet persistent as the dandelion cracking your sidewalk; both are welcome surprises you’d never bet on, but neither's exactly rare. Again, too many to remember, so no cigar there either.
So what is it that renders any sort of thing most memorable? What makes one recipe better than another, or one relationship… Hard to say sometimes. Could be a lot of one ingredient or a perfect union of many. We may not understand why we remember some things forever, but it’s good we do.
“The sunset of life awards mystical lore,
As coming events cast their shadows before.”
It was 6:30 P.M. in September, and we’d crawled against the grain two hundred miles from Crystal to Bishop, average ground speed no better than forty. The whole area had been soaked by thundershowers before we arrived, but wouldn’t you know, searching for a way down is how we ended up at the highest point of our flight.
"Say what?" Don't forget, this is the Owens Valley we're talking about.
Ragged scraps of storm cloud were still dissipating above that 14,000-foot skyline, their combined shadows painting the backlit valley almost black. We were exhausted and ready for dinner, but the sun hadn’t set quite yet so we meandered across town and happened upon some unexpected shear. [see curiosity / cat] Improving zero led upwind in the direction of Coyote Flats, where everything below eye level was shades of darkening gray. Obviously time to turn back, but more and more improving zero made doing so constitutionally impossible. And then we stumbled over the darkest thermal I’ve ever not seen. It was small at first, with hard edges, and a distinctive feel I can only characterize as attitude. Crazy as it sounds, it seemed to be saying, “I’m an ugly runt now, but watch THIS…”
Soaring is pure indulgence, we can’t deny it. But could any indulgence be less worthy of moderation? The brightening of ambient light as we rose, faster each moment, soon obliterated any resistance to temptation. From down inside cubic miles of deepest shade, we were drawn up into some hybrid phenomenon too enormous to define, so exceptional I turned on the flight computer for the first time in ages, to verify a sustained 15-knot climb. That’s twenty-five feet higher every second — which after five minutes caused the sun to rise again!
“At some glad moment it was Nature’s choice to dower this sunset with a voice.”
At seventeen five we peered all around for cops, then agreed to ignore the altimeter for at least one more wide circle or two, just because. Yeah yeah, when the lift finally weakened to ten knots we dutifully nosed over and scrammed, leave it at that.
The double threat of excess altitude and approaching darkness bestows an ultimate kind of liberty: fly your bird as fast as she can safely go. Compelled to indulge in this way, we wove our descent through an alpenglow sunset within the Golden State’s most spectacular mountain vista, where… happy to confess, words utterly fail.
West of the crest, it grew quickly spookier as those canyons deepened ahead, so we smoked back around on a ragged knife edge to the east facing drop-off, into what had now become a blank and bottomless void. Lights were winking on all around Bishop, except straight beyond, where the airport lay. Looked like twenty miles, but being dusk, call it twenty five.
Pounding downwind, still way above glide slope, we had time to speculate, what in the world was that lift, anyway? Wet foothills downwind of looming snowcaps, no sunlight at all, and insufficient wind for wave, then Shazam! Here’s a half baked theory that’s hardly original: subsidence from high ground undercutting the valley’s much warmer air (duh), plus some indecipherable cocktail of who knows how many other phenomena. In other words, no idea.
Obviously the musclebound landscape had profound influence, as it usually does in the Owens Valley. Makes one wonder if such marvels are normal there in the evening after storms — and how many similar gray behemoths might have been surging at that same time along the 80-mile rampart down past Lone Pine! Good questions for some other autumn evening, maybe one with a rising moon…
Until then, this one goes into my book as the GRANDEST THERMAL EVER. And the magic ingredient was, it found us exactly when we needed it least.
“The schooners and their merry crews are laid away to rest, A little east of sunset in the Islands of the Blest.”