THE FAT LADY DOESN’T SING ‘TILL SUNSET (PART 4)

Both sorties turned for home at about the same time, ninety miles apart, but while we crept beneath looming foothills Tango Whiskey was retracing steps at twice our height and three times the ground speed, looking to catch us yet again. If they get all the way back it will exceed a long broken O&R record from 1975 flown with a home-built two-seater that hangs today in the national museum. (On that fabled night the victors returned so late, friends did indeed mark the runway with their cars’ headlights!)We reach the Switchbacks just high enough for purchase on the low end of a giant ridge aimed toward 14000-foot Mt. Langley. A wide turnout in the road below known as Walt’s Point is a legendary launching site for hang glider pilots — so there should be lift somewhere. Though a full mile higher than back at the Alabama Hills and ten closer to home, we’re nearer the earth now than we were then, and Lone Pine airport is still our prime alternate. Time for another sketchy save if we can find what works.The trick in this situation is a narrow ellipse, swooping in close on one side to absorb energy from rising wind, then lofting up the other direction where thermlets drift as they rise away. It amounts to a slow-mo version of what RCers call dynamic soaring, with a nifty thermal assist.Waddling up the ridge this way, we watch bright cumuli float toward us, seductive but beyond reach. They seem almost touchable until we look down, where we’re still basically at ground level. Heck, there are lakes here as high as us! We could continue scratching up this hill to the very top, but that leads the wrong direction and it’s too late to be going further from home.Instead we turn back, swallow misgivings and head south down the main watershed bumping the tops of huge spurs that extend out from the broad Sierra massif. Hopefully one of these canyons will yield a route back up to where the real lift waits.Olancha, the last 12k peak, stands fifteen miles ahead. Lone Pine is out of range now and we’re betting everything on either of two well-known dry lakes with easy access from the highway. (I once retrieved a friend from there and we got home well after midnight, but up here in real time, having that as a worst case provides surprising comfort.)Cruising along the crest within shouting distance, we chase a series of weather blasted rock gardens dressed with pines dwarfed by altitude and wind. Dreamlike minutes on end, it’s one Zen watercolor after another, each as different as alike. Even crawling by at minimum sink speed there’s more to see than we have time for — until this last and lowest rock garden emerges from below the horizon like a coral reef hidden where none but the lost can find it. Castellated towers and battlements taller than the ancient pines themselves flash by so quickly and so hyperreal, they seem almost imaginary. Despite the time of day and a stern list of other imperatives, we simply cannot resist turning back for another look. Third pass ends with a nap-of-the-earth fall through the uprights and off the far slope into an open void between here and the great wide cone of Olancha herself. (Film on request!)Its shaded gray base a mile ahead poses what seems an insurmountable barrier, granite chevrons on vertiginous chevrons like the teeth of an opening maw. Now it’s this that we have to climb over or glide around…And here’s where Tango Whiskey finds us.TO BE CONTINUED