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PG Site Record at Dunlap By Eric Reed - Easter Sunday, April 23, 2000 OK. Here's the blow by blow on my Dunlap flight. My first time to Dunlap since Steve's presence and the improvements -- What a nice vacation spot! Sunday began with a late sleep, a hangover from Saturday evening's festivities and full cloud cover. I've learned from those more experienced that a good night of drinking (or what have you) is the best way to bring in the good weather -- kind of like the way T-Shirt and shorts get you a high flight. My experience thus far bears that rule out. A too early drive to launch to shiver in the cloud on launch for hours and watch the water vapor blow down. Not inspiring at all, but we couldn't give up since things had started in almost the same on Saturday and it had turned out pretty nice. Eventually the ceiling lifted to about launch level and the LZ became visible. "Enough!" said the intrepid bag pilots and launched. "Enough!" said some strange hang pilots and drove home. One by one bags hucked off and soared under a low but ever rising ceiling. With sun now on the valley, things looked pretty reasonable and at least as good as Saturday. I launched at 2:23 and I think by then the ceiling was around 700' over launch. After reaching it, I saw Quinton and Michel high on the south side of the valley under good clouds and starting to push up onto the plateau. I followed but couldn't catch them. By the time I arrived in the vicinity of Granny's (or Sontag or whatever you want to call it) the clouds were breaking up somewhat leaving a disorganized jumble of Northwest wind with bits of lift and sink. I spent a long time zigzagging a slow staircase up onto the plateau -- climbing a little while drifting back toward the LZ and then pushing forward against the wind trying not to loose to much altitude. It probably took me an hour of this to make my way halfway up the plateau (i.e. Ruth Hill Rd) but I maintained decent height (4K+ ft). Around that time Michel who'd been fighting into wind up above Ruth Hill Rd ran out of altitude. Tom, who'd been trying to work up from Granny's below me wasn't getting up and left to glide back toward the LZ. Quinton who still had some altitude decided to land next to Michel for retrieve simplicity. And the clouds dried up. Following some advice from Michel about headwind on the plateau (and Manfred's or Thomas Suchanek's or someone's good advice I'd read in XC Mag -- "If you see someone landing, and you don't want to land, don't follow them" ;~] ) I decided to let myself drift off the south side of the plateau. Still somewhat into wind, but not as directly. I could see a paved road down there with an occasional car and plenty of fields. Between sink and the headwind in the valley I got quite low and set my final hope on a low ridge next to the road that was facing into sun and wind. I crossed over the road with only a few hundred feet (below ridge height) but sure enough I got some beeps almost as soon as I arrived. This was probably the most difficult spot of the flight. Windy and a bit turbulent -- small bits of lift that were hard to work since I didn't want to drift over the back without something pretty solid. But between some ridge lift and a number of little bubbles I was able to maintain and gain a little until something did eventually come through. After a few circles in something that felt solid some vultures showed up to help and hung around for the first thousand feet or so. From there, the rest of the climb back up to 4K was easy. It looked like I'd make it out into the central valley. I radioed my position back to Michel and Quinton and flew south and west towards Orange Cove -- keeping Sand Creek road more or less within glide. I tried to follow some north-south oriented terrain features that weren't producing and wound up very low near Orange Cove. This time I fixed my hopes on the north side of an east - west oriented ridge (Curtis Mountain) that sticks out into the flats of central valley. Even though it faces north it was getting good sun and all the warm air from the flat fields and ranches blowing against it. Well below ridge level, two or three hundred feet above the ranches I started getting something workable with figure eights up to around ridge height (1000 Ft MSL) and then started circling in good lift back up to the ceiling. I'd been hearing transmissions on the radio that Tom and Kitty had offered to retrieve Michel and Quinton and sometime around my climb up from Curtis I learned that they were on their for me. Woohoo! That climb was pure joy. Fat and smooth, drifting downwind over the flats, with a highway to follow and a retrieve party on the way. The rest of the flight was a cruise down the central valley, generally following the edge of the mountains, but buoyed by thermals off the flats as well. From Curtis Mtn to Lindsay was probably 75% of the mileage, but took maybe 25% of the time and 0% of the work. I'm not sure Tom, Kitty, Michel and Quinton were expecting to find me still in the air when they arrived -- and I'm not sure I was either. So when they arrived I offered to land but, of course, I was hoping they'd offer to chase me instead. I can't say what got exchanged in the car, but what came over the radio was uniformly supportive. I should keep flying (though Michel cleverly saw their bargaining position and didn't miss the opportunity to lever it.) South of the towns of Orosi and Cutler the mountain edge (and towns and roads) cut back southeast so I was able to fly directly downwind toward the town of Woodlake making groundspeeds in the 30s (mph.) Before Woodlake there's a smooth grassy butte (Colvin Mountain) that produced nicely and send me back up from the low 1s into the 4s. Kitty & Co. watching from below and cheering me on. From high above Woodlake it was a quick cruise to Rocky Hill -- just outside the town of Exeter. Rocky hill offered some ridge lift and scraps but nothing I could use before the north wind shooed me along and on my way. It was now after 6pm and I wasn't expecting much but with the road and retrieve party right below me I gave the little hills next to Lindsay one last chance before turning to cross the canal and land in the smooth evening wind in an empty field next to the road. Kitty made friends with the landowners while Tom helped me pack up. The landowners were relieved I hadn't crashed into the canal or the Olive trees next door but once they understood that you can steer these things and get them around pretty well, their only regret was that they hadn't called the local paper to send a photographer out! Fun to pull off a good XC on a day declared to be just another low cloudbase day at Dunlap. Same as the day before, no fun. Oh well. Thanks again Tom, Kitty, Quinton and Michel. Launch Dunlap 14:23 36N45.909' 119W05.829' Landing Lindsay 18:26 36N13.413' 119W04.320' Distance 60K / 37.4M |
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