Magic Wings

by Alden Moffatt

  The wind was calm as we drove, then, quite suddenly, the juniper trees lining the highway swayed furiously. For a mile or two of driving, it was hard to stay on the road. The gusts were powerful, like a river was flowing sideways across us. Then it became calm again.

  In a few minutes we pulled into the small landing area, only a hundred feet across, and both climbed out of the trucks.

  Duke said, "What do you suppose that wind was all about."

  "Kind of strange, wasn't it. Looks like a pretty nice day here though," I replied. "Maybe it was something swirling around Mount Shasta."

  "Hope we don't see any more of it," said Duke.

  We loaded my glider onto his truck and headed for the launch. The land was drier than I had seen it before. It was supposed to be relatively mild that day, a brief reprieve from the disastrous summer draught that had caused forests all over California to burn that year with a vengeance. Rain was even possible by nightfall.

  We got back on the highway and gained elevation just south of Sheep Rocks, six hundred foot crags on the edge of the Modoc Plateau. I hoped that we would be able to fly over the cliffs again, as we had the last time we visited here more than a year ago. That was a beautiful flight, but it had only lasted a half hour because the wind shifted directions and the air became swirly as it hit the rocks from the side instead of rising up the cliff face. Today I hoped the southwest wind would bring smooth thermals to Sheep Rocks from the dry valley below.

  A thousand feet higher we turned off the highway onto a dirt road again. The dusty road branched and then rounded a curve where the road crossed over from the south side of the mountain to the west side. We could now see the whole Shasta Valley and 14,000 foot Mount Shasta presiding over it. That was when we discovered that the wind that had buffeted us in the valley was part of a wider weather system that was also effecting higher elevations. The truck rocked back and forth in the gusts as the glider bags on the roof caught the wind.

  We looked at each-other and Duke knew I was thinking we should just head home. He said, "I want to just stand on the launch for a few minutes and see if it's steady. If it'll just calm down for a while, we'll be able to fly. It's only twenty." He looked at his wind gage. "Maybe it's something to do with the cool morning and it'll go away as the day warms up."

  So we drove another mile and parked in the deserted roadway where we always set up our gliders and launched. The wind was howling and uncomfortable, but it would not be impossible to fly in. The road cut was protected from the flow of air, so it was also possible to set up equipment. We stood at the edge of the road watching the few junipers twist and wreath in the gusty wind and we felt the punch of the gusts in our faces. The conditions and the danger seemed to subside as we stood there, though I think we were just eluding ourselves into thinking they did. We began talking ourselves into taking a flight.

  "I think it'll be OK if you just wait for a lull to launch. There are lulls down to ten or twelve miles an hour." Duke held up his wind meter constantly.

  "It might even be a good day to get some altitude," I said. "The wind's coming straight up the hill."

  "Yeah. Maybe that valley wind has nothing to do with this. Maybe this is a hugh thermal blowing up the hill. You know, Tweedie went all the way to Klamath Falls from here one day. Maybe we'll set a record," said Duke. "I wish Lily was here to drive for us."

  "It was pretty calm down there," I said looking out over the valley. "I bet it'll be smooth as silk once we get away from this mountainside."

  We waited around for ten more minutes. "Let's go for it!" said Duke.

  "OK. I think we'll be OK," I said. "I can launch in a twelve easy."

  We took the gliders off the truck and put them down in the roadway, unzipped the bags and popped them open. In fifteen minutes they were assembled and ready to fly. Now and then a strong gust would come along and I would become uneasy about what we were doing. 'Maybe we'll be alright. Maybe,' I thought. I had always had doubts and nothing had ever come of them. So, here I was again, tempting fate. It was nothing new.

  I didn't talk during the time I set up the glider. I concentrated on every part of the wing, every stitch. Was it strong enough? Was it engineered well enough?

  The wind calmed, then it howled, then it howled some more through the bushes. It flapped the dacron sail and I hurriedly grabbed the windward edge to hold it from lifting up and blowing away. We quickly took flight suits and helmets out of the truck, then Duke backed up the truck and parked it in a wide spot a couple of hundred yards away. He ran back and we put on the rest of our gear. I hooked in to the bottom of my glider.

  Duke grasped the nose wires to assist my control of the glider on the launch. I looked at both wings carefully as we shimmied the glider toward the road edge. My glider was being rocked back and forth in the gusts and was hard to control even with Duke's help. I kept my right foot in front of the control bar as it set on the ground at launch and applied as much pressure as I could to the downtubes, the top of the control tube triangle, with my shoulders to hold the nose of the glider down so I would not be flipped over backward.

  "We're definitely at our limit here," I yelled to Duke through the wind. "Go ahead and stand aside. I hope I can handle it!"

  Duke let go of the wires and went to one side, crouching down. Within a second one wing started to rise and the other jammed into the ground. I yelled to him to grab the wing as I could not control it. He forced the glider level again and I caught my breath. Then I nodded to him that I was ready to try again. Once more the wing started to try to flip over in the wind and Duke and I wrestled it back into position. I was getting tired from forcing the weight of the wind-filled wing around. "I'll give it one more try," I yelled. "If that doesn't work, I'm bagging up. If it works, I don't know how you're going to launch without help." I was getting worried and exhausted.

  I signaled to Duke that I was ready again, or as ready as I could be. The wind was howling. And then it lulled. Duke ducked aside. I ran down the steep road bank. The air was silent. There was no wind to speak of. The wing was not flying and I was almost out of room to run, quickly! There were large rocks below. I ran until I ran out of room and then pushed the nose of the glider out. I got off the ground but was flying down the slope of the hill and I still couldn't hear the wind rush by me. I pushed out a little more. I would crash into a tree very soon. So it really didn't matter if I stalled the glider. I had to clear the tree or I was going to be very hurt. I pushed out hard then pulled the control bar back in quickly. That push put me ten feet above the tree top, flying way too slow, but it was enough to embed the wing solidly into the gale wind which was howling up the side of Herd Peak.

  I started rising furiously, like a parachute caught in an updraft. I picked up my forward speed and gained control over the glider as much as was possible, then I put more distance between myself and the mountain. By the time I had flown a hundred feet forward, I had gained a thousand feet of elevation. I quickly glanced at Duke, now way below me, watching. Then I turned to contour the mountainside. In another minute, I was flying near the top of Herd Peak, looking into the windows of the fire lookout there. There was ice on the skeleton of a tree that had once fought with the wind to dominate the top of the mountain.

  There was a truck parked at the lookout, but I didn't have much time to ponder whether someone inside was watching me. "Christ sakes," they would say. "There's an idiot out there on a hang glider!"

  I was over the building now and was slowly being blown back over the top of the mountain. There would be a deadly rotor in back, I knew. I pointed my glider at the valley and pulled in for as much speed as I could get, and I started to move forward, but barely.

  If I had had a radio, I would have told Duke to stay on the ground. But he probably wouldn't have listened.

  I thought maybe the wind would be calmer away from the mountain, where it was not flowing over terrain. So I kept on flying as fast as I could, out over the valley, out toward my truck, where I wish
ed I was sitting right then. Slowly I went forward, but the air became unexpectedly, extremely turbulent. It threw me from side to side, and as I flew further it only became worse. I was not loosing elevation either. The wind howled like a hurricane. It was cold wind, an unforgiving wind. I could see my tiny red truck parked over a mile below in the tiny LZ. There was no way I was going to get to it. The air felt lonely and chilling to the bone. I was rocked back and forth violently, constantly, until I felt nearly hopeless.

  Duke was in the air too now. I could see his wing flicker near the mountain.

  There appeared to be no way down. I looked through the ocean of icy air at a large lake probably ten miles in the distance. I decided to fly toward it, hoping I might find a downdraft there, over the cooler water. Thermals coming off the dusty ground in all other directions below were relentless, I figured. It would take me most of the day to get to the lake, or I could wait for the evening cool-down. I doubted I would survive that long. The glider thrashed and groaned.

  I slowed down for a second to see if the wind was howling as strong as it had been. Quickly I blew back toward Herd Peak, so I sped up again. Holding the weight of the control bar and the weight of the wind on the sail was exhausting. It would have been much easier to let the bar go and let the glider flail around in the wind until it crashed somewhere in the mountains or broke apart. My hands were tingling. Suddenly one of my wings fell into a big empty hole in the lift. The glider turned sideways and slipped downward a few feet. I saw an opportunity. There were sharp holes in the lift, downdrafts on the back sides of thermals. The thermals were rising at a furious rate and the downdrafts must be falling just as fast, I thought. As I flew through the up and down winds, my wing was being punched from side to side, but I was not gaining elevation. If I could find a big enough hole, I might go down. It would be a squeeze though.

  As soon as I had figured that out, I plopped into a violent little hole in the sky. I threw my wing to one side and pushed out into a spiral dive. The wind stopped blowing in my face. I was falling, not flying! I pointed the nose of the wing and my body like an arrow toward the ground. I was skydiving. There was nothing holding me up. The ground got bigger and the truck got closer. In five seconds, I was half a mile closer to them.

  Then I hit the side of the thermal that had caused the sinkhole. I was down close enough to the ground so the cliffs of Sheep Rocks looked ominous. The wind was blowing powerfully across the arid valley toward them. I felt the glider stabbing into the heart of the invisible thermal like a spear penetrating water. The glider was headed straight for the ground, but it started rising. I leveled it out and hurriedly tried to find another sinkhole. My heart was racing. I would loose what I had just gained in only a few seconds.

  The wing continued to thrash around. If the wind increased anymore

  I would drift back toward the cliffs and in a matter of minutes I would collide with them. Sheep Rocks looked like the Himalaya, an impenetrable mass of mountains. I would be nothing against them. I would be a bug splat. The glider would be torn to shreds. No one would ever know I was there, tiny, invisible in the huge wilderness. Duke would be killed there too. No one would see us again. The cliffs were rugged, not an easy place to venture. Certainly no hikers would ever stumble upon what remained. It was treacherous country, unforgiving, and beautiful.

  Duke was closer to the cliffs and higher than myself. He was inching closer to the landing area but was not making much progress against the wind. I didn't take time to watch him for long. I kept up the bar pressure to speed myself up and moved back and forth across the wind looking for another downdraft. The ground was still three thousand feet away.

  The wing tilted again and I jammed the control bar sideways and fell into another extreme dive. The ground below me looked ominous. I wanted to ride the sinkhole right down to the truck, but I had to enter the thermal next to it before I plowed into the dirt. Space was screaming by. The ground drew near in a hurry. In seconds I had lost two thousand more feet. I hit the side of the thermal and got buoyant again.

  Wind howled through the bushes and junipers below. I could see them swaying and twisting now. 'A thousand feet,' I thought. 'I can't make a mistake.' I found another hole and dove into it. My gut was tied in knots and my hands were numb. I could only see them clenching tightly on the control bar. My whole body was ridged, pointed straight at the ground. I plummeted until I was a hundred feet up and then I tried to level the glider out and to my relief, the wing flew cooperatively above the landing area. The air was still as rowdy as a bull ride, but I felt like I might actually live through the flight.

  The landing area was the size of a baseball diamond, hard enough to land in on a calm day. I didn't care if I crashed in the brush anymore. If I walked away from this flight, I would have to seriously consider quitting flying, so I didn't care if the glider got trashed. The only thing that was important was getting back to the ground without being dead or dismembered.

  Duke had somehow gotten close to the LZ and it appeared that we might be landing at about the same time. I was less than a hundred feet up and he was at the other side of the tiny clearing, just a little higher. We had just about made it back to Mother Earth, but if we crashed into each-other at this point, the last half hour of struggling to survive would have been for nothing. We would be killed anyway.

  I put the glider into a downwind circle away from the LZ trying to loose my remaining elevation. As soon as I turned down wind, I was blown back. The cliffs were not a threat anymore. They were a mile away. But by the time I had completed a full circle and was facing the landing area again, I was thirty feet up and a hundred yards from the field and the wind was blowing me slowly backwards. I pulled in the control bar as far as I could and forced the glider down in a little grass area between some bushes.

  The wind was howling. I staggered over some brush and set the glider out of the wind behind a tree. Duke landed beside the truck, confidently looking like everything had turned out exactly as he had expected.

  I threw my helmet down and yelled an obscenity into the wind.

  As we drove home, the wind buffeted our trucks around on the road. By the time we got to the divide between the Shasta and Rogue Valleys, it was sprinkling. Duke and I drove to my house.

  I said as we climbed out of the trucks, "I guess you shouldn't fly if the wind's so strong it's hard to drive. I hope I never see crappy air like that again! If I had a radio and told you not to fly, would you have listened?"

  "I would have flown. Looked like you were having a great ride up there. Right off the launch you were going up half a mile a minute. If we'd had any guts, we'd have gone over the back and flown to Lakeview. As far as air goes, I've seen worse."

  Doherty Slide

  I've always been intrigued by seeing things from extraordinary perspectives. Flying, for me is not a sport as much as it is an exploration. People go to great lengths to walk on the moon. And there are huge risks attached to that endeavor. It is risky, but not crazy, to put your senses into a lot of situations that expand your knowledge of the World. Imagination is no substitute for actually being there. Armchair travel is only a fantasy. Things are never as they are imagined. Even now, when I see an eagle soaring on a clear, blue day, in my imagination I see something peaceful and full of freedom. I have to look more closely and use my knowledge of what flying really is like to see that the bird is being tossed around by upper level winds and its wings have broken feathers, a sure sign that it has been through heavy turbulence recently and possibly has barely survived. I have seen the air that has done that kind of damage. I have flown in conditions I have been warned to avoid. It was scary to fly in those conditions, and I'm sure birds are hesitant to fly sometimes, but they have no choice. And they don't question it. They don't resent their situation. Walking or driving is not an option.

  There were not many more chances for me to fly that summer. I went to Woodrat again, just to 'get back on the horse,' after the Herd Peak gale. If the air got a
t all bumpy, I flew out toward the river where the air was cooler.

  Then the long winter came and I had to turn my attention to other things.

  The next spring, when the wind blew from the northwest again, I was cautious still, but I did fly. Sometimes I flew long and high, when the thermals were wide.

  At the first of summer, I headed for Lakeview to fly at Doherty Slide, a place I had heard about since I was a trainee on the bunny hill. Doherty is a spot far out in the center of Oregon, a hang glider launch on a west facing scarp of a fault-block mountain range. That means, one very large chunk of Earth is sinking and has become a flat valley. And right next to it, another huge chunk is rising to become a plateau. There is a very steep area that divides the two pieces of flat ground. The ground at the bottom of the scarp is pulverized by massive earthquakes that have occurred there over millions of years. The earthquake fault is long. You cannot see both ends of it from the ground. And so the edge of the plateau is also very long and straight, perfect for catching the west valley wind and bringing thermals to hang gliders flying over it. The thermals break off at the top of the scarp and bubble up into the sky.

  There is nothing strikingly beautiful or even scenic about the area. It is a barren desert and flat as a pancake, except for that one mountain feature. And the scarp is only 800 feet high. There are salt pans and sand and sparse sagebrush, not a drop of water. There is a highway that noone in his right mind would drive on except to get across the area as quickly as possible. That highway angles up from the valley floor to the top of the plateau. Other than the 90 degree curve at both ends of that rise, the highway is straight as far as the eye can see.

  The heat of summer is intense at Doherty. The nights are shockingly cold. The only pleasant time of day is at sunrise or sunset, when the sun is comfortable and colors the land purple.

  It's a perfect place to fly a hang glider though. The lift is consistent in summer. The ridge is expansive, and the drive from the top to the bottom of the hill takes only about a minute. But it is a six hour drive from where I live to Doherty and the drive there is extremely monotonous. That is why I hadn't flown there before. Other pilots come there from across the country. I guess they like driving more than I do.