REAL FLUSH
A decade before camera phones and GoPro my favorite student bought the latest thing in consumer video, a fist-size ‘digital eight’ cam equipped with then-new image stabilization. Mounting it on the forward instrument panel with a dark fabric baffle below the lens and a polarizing filter oriented straight up to the canopy’s arc, we completely eliminated reflections inside the canopy. At that same time I was getting to know my first digital still camera, so small you could wrap your fingers around it, with two whole megapixels and memory for sixty-four ‘high definition’ photos! With these toys and a whole summer ahead, we were ready to shoot the Sierras.Where other pilots would push hard for distance or speed we might wander into some especially interesting canyon hunting the perfect composition of foreground, background and lighting, unique images of kaleidoscopic GRANDEUR imprinted not just within the mind, but photographically as well (plus hopefully some lift to keep us out of trouble). Aerovisual addicts, we'd consume precious minutes and critical height translating what some would consider hellish locations into our idea of geoerotic art – then suddenly be desperate to climb out and scamper away. No badge for it, no digitized mileage total on the internet, but look who’s having the most fun.
Distance is not to be found. It melts away.And escape has never led anywhere.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
As the day begins we promise to not stop at every rock and shoot video, but we leave the camera running sometimes just because we can. When something better comes along we’ll roll the film back and rerecord. Extra film and extra batteries, that’s the key!By around one we’re dawdling past California's only glaciers, at the Palisades where the watershed bends westward. Everybody else is east across the valley, hightailing the Inyos and Whites to reach Gabbs or Fallon or some other parched noplace ASAP, but for us to rush past this mountain splendor would be a waste of treasure. Why leave it behind? Better to meander and explore, loiter in eddies, snap closeups of fractured cliffs, then follow raptors up into the best lift around. Soaring's etherial grace is never sweeter than when drawn from convolutions of stone.Ahead is Mt. Humphreys, a 13-something knife-edge with one striking obelisk for a peak. Its east face drops into canyons more than a vertical mile above the valley, and the safety of Bishop Airport twenty miles away. To the west lie several square miles of naked bedrock all above timberline, a rolling plain the ropey texture of untroweled concrete where a dozen or so scattered ponds form headwaters of the San Joaquin River. These ponds are mere dots on the sectional chart, but their official names speak volumes. The one big enough to be called a lake is Desolation. Its nearest neighbor, Forsaken. You can guess the rest.We fly one wide circle admiring the starkness, sensing too late a change in wind strength from mild to ripping, and in direction from horizontal to DOWN. It pushes us straight toward a saddle a mile east, the only way out, but pulls us down so hard my toenails curl. Having no choice, we run for it. Seconds ago we were fat and happy; now if we do fall short a retreat to Desolation Lake will leave us swimming in ice water above our sunken glider.Amazing how you can fall so fast, yet take so long to gain a little airspeed! Once again though, diving through sink is what makes the difference. Speed-to-fly minus a smidge for the roaring tailwind still equals maneuvering speed, so we get there tout de suite, slowing only at the gap and shoot through with at least a hundred feet to spare.Over atmospheric Niagara...
TO BE CONTINUED