YOUR LYING EYES

One thing about illusions: you need to know they exist to know you’re deceived by them. And by then it might be too late.In soaring, one illusion can lure you into high ground lower than you realize until you arrive. Say there’s a big mountain several miles ahead and a much lower one a couple miles closer. The high background will make any foreground appear lower than it is. You could be level with that hill, miles away, and think you’re high enough to glide down to it and pass over it. Hard to believe? That’s why it’s such a potent illusion! You wake up to it only after you’re halfway there and much of the harm is done.Another thing about illusions: knowledge of them, like knowledge of good and evil, is helpful only if you keep it in mind.See, I knew of this illusion because I had experienced it – but would I remember that before committing to what I hope will forever remain my longest straight glide over the most remote and inhospitable land I’ll ever traverse, into the wind with not a single cloud ahead… ridiculously late in the day? Heck no, that would’ve been the smart thing to do.It makes a compelling tale, but recalling today how I felt at the time, I’m no longer in the mood. See for yourself. Go on GoogleEarth and find Silver Peak, Nevada (understandably one of America’s least popular places while also the premier source of lithium for your rechargeable batteries and psychiatric meds). Draw a course line from Silver Peak, if you can find it, to Lone Pine, CA. Now imagine you’re leaving a thermal at 17,000 feet on a final leg with the only alternates 30 miles left or right, and 85 miles to go. That’s also when you notice that the line of cumulus you’d planned to use for your final leg has drifted too far downwind. Following it would add more distance than remaining daylight will allow. So?Surely over that vastness of naked stone tremendous blue thermals are still boiling, and more will rise to meet you, right? After all, old-timers tell of climbing in thermals, not just at sundown but late, late into dusk. The fields beneath them may have been less menacing than these rubble fields here – all the more reason to keep moving.With nowhere else to go but sideways or back, you swallow hard and head straight for a low point on the near horizon which the chart indicates is about 9,000 feet above sea level. Ah, the kingdom for even so much as a haze dome! It’s like peering into the wrong end of a telescope and staring at that spot of light until you get there, pondering all the while myriad gradations of disaster, from sentimental to existential. (You hear combat pilots speak of hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror? This tableau is unrelenting anxiety synced with unremitting tedium, each compressing the other in the rising heat of lower altitude.)  Oh another thing, you’ll find only one patch of real lift the rest of the way but, expecting better ahead you brashly dolphin through that without stopping to climb. Idiot.The meat and potatoes pleasure of gazing on a wilderness landscape soon withers. In a stark pallet of browns from nearly black to nearly white, the world below is contoured like the surface of a wild storm sea. Between monstrous breakers of gnarled basalt where deep wave troughs would be, smooth-seeming lowlands are themselves seas of boulders, ravines, dunes and silt-filled hollows – quicksand if there’s ever a rain. Such detail is indistinguishable from high aloft as every object in those valleys, even that newly discovered species of scorpion, flaunts the same bleached khaki. If you do see what looks like a road it’ll be a FWD trace that may not have borne traffic in years. Land there, and aside from trashing your bird you’re guaranteed an all-night ordeal followed by a summer day where the highest temperature in world history was recorded. That’s why they call it Death Valley. Idiot.Later (for you or your survivors), mandatory removal of the wreckage would entail an irksome permit process, probably a very expensive helicopter and according to the Park Service, a heavy fine.To elude this fate you must clear that lowest pass across mountains twenty miles short of the finish. Meanwhile, Lucifer’s secret lies just there, right out front, hiding in plane (sic) sight: The Sierras beyond, at 14,000 feet, make these gigantic Inyos look almost like foothills – until you arrive. One more factor: steadily rising ground between you and the lowering sun means that each second more of the earth is shaded, whittling thermic potential down toward an irreducible zero.That’s the pickle you’ve put yourself in. Good luck, and have fun!= / =Yes we squeaked through in the long run, as the numbers said we might. The critical portion of that glide amounted to 65 statute miles with 8,000 feet of height to spend. Almost doable in a 40/1 sailplane, maybe, with no safety factor. If we’d moped along at best L/D speed like too many pilots do, by the time anyone reached us they’d have found jerky in loose clothing. No, running tail high in all bad the stuff and tiptoeing at min-sink plus half the headwind only during luxurious sighs of zero can stretch descending glides immeasurably, and save more than just your reputation once poor decision making leaves the outcome to gravity and drag.With so few chances to slow up, our homeward leg became a very quick one, though it seemed to take hours. There was even enough left in the tank as we neared that high saddle to pour on a little extra juice, shooting across at 110 knots indicated (true airspeed 150 MPH), fifty yards above the rocks. Then from there to touchdown at Lone Pine was a mere 20/1 glide sweetened with hints of upslope breeze along the Inyos’ still-hot west facades. So with all our woes transformed into blessings and the air gone sunset smooth, why not pour on even more? Diving at VA from that pass to the finish, we completed a 260 mile triangle (launched at 3:30) with an average speed that was, for me anyway, eye-popping. All because I was too dumb to know better and too lucky to ever qualify for such fortune again.There was warm celebration on the ramp that night but I felt more like going to confession. And I’m not even Catholic. All evening a frustrated little demon squatted on my shoulder, angrily sucking the joy from every laugh. Even falling into bed, I could feel the sere, perpetual stillness of Death Valley tugging at my tail, luring me back for one more chance to become a statistic…