THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Last week was a tough one for serious cross-country soaring, but one hardy soul proved yet again that the least likely successess are sweetest. Here's Barry McGarraugh's account of his adventure last Friday:Crew availability and the weather forecast made the decision to fly on Friday instead of Saturday. Since Karl recently replaced the transmission in his van, his vehicle was not quite up to long trip into the wilderness yet, and he offered to crew for me. The BLIP maps predicted that Fridays conditions would be slightly better than Saturday with less OD potential to the north, and slightly better thermal heights in the Mojave area, so we decided to head toward Gabbs. As usual, the problem was deciding when to launch without risking landing at Backus, or running into the over development to the north. A little after 11, we could see Cu’s starting to pop along the mountains that ring the south and west end of the desert as well as to the north near Tehachapi. I got off tow near the labor camp at 11:30 in a good thermal that got me up to 12.3K over Mt Lewis under a haze dome, and was on my way to Rosemond 20 min after launch. It was a good start, but I did not find a ripple until I was directly over Backus where I found a choppy thermal that went up to 7.5-8K. I probed to the north of Silver Queen, but only found sink and was promptly driven back to the relative comfort of the choppy thermal over Backus. As I got there, two Hawks flew under me, but they were flapping their wings. Not a good sign. About this time, a small cloud was starting to form well to the west of Backus that looked promising, but it was far enough away that I would probably not be able to get back to Backus if it did not work. Lloyds strip and some crop circles were just to the south of the cloud, so I decided to commit to it. After diverting ~6 miles directly to the west, I encountered good lift that got me up to 12K, and on glide to Inyokern. Sometimes even a blind squirrel finds a nut…!Good lift along the Barren Ridge made the connection to Boomer and the Southern Sierra fairly easy. Strong thermals were working between12-14K that made for a fast flight to Olancha Peak. By this time, towering Cu’s over the Sierras had overdeveloped, and the tops were being sheared off and blowing to the east. Conditions on the Inyos and White Mtns were much drier, but the race was on to get to Boundary Peak before the blow off shadowed the mountains and shut down the lift. I crossed the Owens valley at the switchbacks and connected with a good thermal to the south of New York Butte that got me up to ~16K and on my way north. By this time, it was evident that the cloud shadow was starting to soften the conditions along the Inyos as I glided up to Westgard Pass where I finally encountered a good thermal that go me back up to 14K. To the north, there was what looked like the remnants of a cloud street that was sandwiched between the Whites and the high cirrus that hooked off of White Mountain to the south west toward Chalfant. These clouds had little vertical development and were strangely “pancaked”, but they were the only game in town so I headed for them. I pushed ahead, but fell below the ridgeline just to the north of Schulman Grove. I eventually connected with the clouds and found good lift in the canyon to the west of Piute Mtn that got me back up to 15K. The “pancake” clouds turned out to pull really well and they got me to Boundary Peak in short order. The sky was dark from the high overcast toward Bridgeport and Hawthorne, and there was lots of virga hanging to the north/north west, but I could see spots of sunlight on the ground near Mina so I headed that direction. About 23 miles out of Mina, I ran into a good thermal under the flat bottom cloud deck that got me up to 16.4K and well on glide to Gabbs. As I crossed into the Gabbs valley I encountered slight rain between some bands of virga that were hanging to the north of Mina. The high overcast still covered the general area, but the lower layer was drier and it still had well defined Cu’s that ran to the north. I think the trip to Austin would have been easy, but Karl had an appointment Saturday evening so I decided to call it quits a Gabbs so we could get him back home early Saturday afternoon. I had extra altitude to burn, so I ran about 10 miles further to the north for OLC points then turned back to Gabbs when I saw Karl and the trailer heading into town. I watched Karl pull into the airport ~5:45, and I landed about 10 minutes after he got there. We had the glider in the box and were back on the road and on our way to Bishop by 7PM where we spent the night. We were up early the next morning and dropped the glider off at the Bishop Airport for the Soaring Academy’s Safari next week and were back at my house in Quartz Hill by 11AM. Even though I lost ~ ½ hour staying afloat in the Backus area and had the cloud shadow from the Sierra OD to contend with, I still overflew Gabbs ~5.7 hours after I launched. All in all it turned out to be a really good day!