WITHOUT A NET

If not for the last moment, think of all that wouldn’t get done! Or found.They say lift is where you find it, but it’s a good bet more occurs where you never look. Nor does any law guarantee you’ll ever find it. Sometimes there ain’t any. Still, one certainty underlies a world of others: when you do find lift it’s always in the last place you look.One summer I had to ferry a sailplane from Bishop to Tehachapi, a 160-mile trip that on any normal day should be easy and fun. And yes it was fun, in retrospect, but would not be easy until that last…Willis, a friend’s friend, drove me to where the ship waited, but his car wasn’t up to pulling the trailer. No biggie said I, we shouldn’t need it.Surprise! Aeolus served blue headwinds all the way, nary a single cu to mark lift anywhere. Struggling on blue days can induce a special kind of mental torture. You know you’re gliding right past many fine thermals, but can hardly justify turning off course to chase ghosts that may not be there. It’s easy to end up lower than you like, wasting time in weak lift you can’t afford to leave — knowing all the while there’s better stuff booming silently somewhere nearby.After a slow start, the first of several hangups came on lowly Mazourka Peak thirty miles downrange. Normally you’d soar by there high and fast, cross the valley two miles up, and glide grandly into the Sierras where the Golden Trout Wilderness teases timberline… Not that day. Multiple paved alternates were still available, but no possibility of a second tow. Getting home meant remaining aloft, and that demanded staying over high ground. Many times in most of an hour sniffing around Mazourka, I had occasion to closely examine the one-lane work road across it’s broad summit, fantasizing how easy it would be to just open brakes and land right there at 9400 MSL. But never did get high enough to more than give up and trudge on.Slow climbs led to slow glides as the sun lowered and shadows deepened, meaning fewer thermals found. Grinding fifteen miles into the wind across the valley threw me down again, now miles off course just to regain high ground within range of the last remaining airport.Scrambling briefly northward along echelons of steep foothills, inching further from home for purchase on the highest terrain in fifteen hundred miles, I started to wonder if I’d need knee pads. Tried to follow a hawk, but it landed on a pinnacle and turned around to stare at me. So now what? My next stymie came beside the half-mile granite cliff below Lone Pine Peak. Cool wind off the crest high up out of sight was sinking everywhere except this one colossal wall, and zero sink, when it’s all you got, can be pure manna.Willis, monitoring 123.5 in his car below and jacked on free coffee from the Frontier Deli, tried to sound peppy, but was OUT OF SMOKES and manifestly bored. Me too by now. Zeal wanes when new adventures morph into dull movies. Fifth time past that same gnarled snag growing from a crack, I’d have loved a cuppa J. Fifteenth time, I craved one.Chances of a miracle were feeling slimmer each pass, so I risked landing at Cinder Cone dry lake to just get moving again before too late. Fall out there and all of tomorrow would be consumed by a spendy retrieve, but if I ever caught this day’s first sliver of luck we could still be home by sunset.After five hours aloft I’d come only a hundred miles and was scrubbing rocks again when the first cloud all day started forming maybe within reach, not much further ahead. One brave little wisp in an otherwise clear sky is probably a bold statement… of something. Might our elusive brass ring hang somewhere between that cu and the peak below it? Was it the near edge of a more convective airmass beyond? Only one way to find out…Another thing about blue thermal soaring. In a sky completely devoid of cumulus reasonable hope can gradually fade into pessimism, where the very sight of distant markers, even beyond reach, can provide a desperate soul with vital encouragement. And sometimes that’s all it takes to improve one’s luck. I was already headed toward the cloud before it formed, intending to fly right through that airspace if I could get that far, but honestly doubting I would. No proof of course, but I believe having visual confirmation helped make it happen…In any case, sure enough, WHOOSH! At last, lift so strong and sure, well before leaving the day’s only bodacious climb I radioed Willis to hightail for home.Altogether it was a hundred and sixty miles into the wind, with a grand total of one truly generous thermal. What more can a lucky pilot say? Or do. First, thank your stars for that hallowed last moment and bear witness that refusing to quit is what got you there. Then celebrate the possibility of doing better next week, and reward Willis with a year’s supply of Nicorette before eventually going back to retrieve the trailer.