THE ONE THAT WOULDN'T DIE

Last week we told of climibing in 20-knot wave lift here at Crystal – can thermals do that too? Oh yeah!After decades of daily commercial soaring activity including fifteen years in the Mojave Desert, my short list of most bodacious thermals has grown long. Values more dear than mere strength and height can put a thermal on that list, such as timeliness, strategic location, degree of serendipity, or plain old magestic grandeur. This one's a contender on several counts, but wins top honors for... longevity? The day featured something rare around here in July, enemic thermal conditions. While we were loitering near the airport a dust devil sprang up over the farm fields east of Gray Butte and quickly grew tall. We supposed it'd be gone before we got there but went anyway, as not much was happening anywhere else. And bingo, it kept growing as we approached. You gotta love when that happens. To describe this thermal, the usual adjectives hardly apply. Our Grob 103 carried front seat weight right at the upper limit and me in the back wondering about gravitational anomalies as (like that wave we spoke of last week) we rose a steady hundred feet every three seconds. At 14,000 feet we were still climbing 20 knots, but having no supplimental oxygen and height enough for anything, we chose to glide away and find where this monster's cousins were hiding. Twenty-five miles later, nothing but nibbles. Looking back, imagine our surprise in seeing that same devil churning the whole square mile around its base into a soft mound of floating dust. Despite some unknown factor suppressing normal convection across the entire valley, all that solar heat needed a release somewhere, and our one giant devil seemed to be the only vent around. We'd lost several thousand feet by then, but had enough left to head right back there and start over. The devil's central column was looming higher than before as we glided onto the top of its lower dust cloud and our long descent finally ended. The energy fueling our second climb was actually greater, believe it or not, but (after a 50-mile out and return, from and to the very same thermal!) we reached 14,000 somewhat slower – because we topped out the second time with FULL SPOILERS just to say so. Other noteworthy adventures took place later on that flight as well, too much in fact to fit on this page. So why not save some for another day? Too bad that's not possible with the actual lift itself... As we've mentioned before, somebody out there should start researching a way to divvy up such surplus energy into digestible chunks and store them for times of scarcity. Like January 2015 for example.