Me and Willy Dydo made another trip to the Owens to get some extended airtime. Willy drove over Sunday night from his base in SantaBarbara as Monday the 22nd looked good for an out and return flight. I drove down Monday and told him I could retrieve him if he didn't quite make it back to Bartlett, where he had left his motorcycle..
He got a few miles farther then Owen Morse on his out flight and got high again just west of Benton, but he diagonalled across the valley instead of using his altitude to cross straight over to the White Mts.. He didn't get up and ended up landing in Hammil. I picked him up with no problem as he purchased an InReach and texted me his location from it. The rest of the adventure is from the next 2 days.
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| We went up Tuesday leaving Willys motorcycle and my car at Lone Pine airport. Willy was going to do a flight to Mt. Whitney and then land at the airport and chase. He made the airport but not Whitney as the day hadn't turned on when he launched at 10am. My experience was a little better. I launched around 10:15 and climbed out easily to 13k over Wanoga Pk. This pic is from somewhere up the range looking south after I got established over the top. Near Onion Valley I believe. I made good progress staying high and moving fairly fast. Clouds were forming here and there marking strong lift. I caught a boomer in front of Birch Mt. and rode it to over 16k and headed across the valley toward Black Mt. Was still above 13k when I crossed hwy 395, and had nice clouds forming on Black to guide me to the lift. |
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| This is looking west down Kings Canyon in the same spot as the last picture. |
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| Off the end of the Whites where I had good solid lift and stayed fairly high the whole time. Mono Lake and the Sierras in the distance. It took me 4 hrs. to do the first 100 miles but being only 2:15 I had plenty of daylight left to go for 155 more. |
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| Looking down the White Mt. Range and the nice cloud street marking nice fat lift down it. Some days the flying is better then others. Some days the first half of the day is better then the second. On this day the afternoon flying was ok. But the day started overdeveloping big time over by Bridgeport and Sonora Pass. This OD as we call it turned into a monster anvil shaped thunder head and although I was in no danger of being caught in it's lightning and gust front it eventually grew so tall it started shading out my path. |
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| Looking east into Nevada from near Boundary Peak. Nice dark bottomed clouds marking lift. Only problem was eventually they became saturated with moisture and started dropping virga or rain and shut down my path toward the Toiyabe Range. The winds were SE primarily also and I originally was going to fly toward Fallon down the west side of Walker Lake. But as the storm near Bridgeport grew it killed all the clouds on that path so I made a turn and headed up toward Luning instead. I was flying cross wind but staying high mostl of the time. Hit 18k+ at one point crossing under a big fat boomer or 2. My InReach said I got 20K but this is incorrect. It said I got 50K on my last flight in the Owens by White Mt. so something is up with it. Willy and I had perfect radio communication. He was sitting in Mina waiting to see which way I was going. |
Eventually with more virga building on the Toiyabe Range I headed over to Gabbs and landed, after 7.5hrs and 166.14 miles.
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| My InReach track log. So the next day I told Willy I would drive for him. He wanted to try for another out and return flight as he had to be back in Santa Barbara in the morning. He got off and climbed out quickly to 12K then headed out to tag Bartlett so on the return he could cross paths with his track for a legit run. Just as I got into the vehicle and was reaching for the door the mountain started shaking and rocks started falling making a lot of noise. I jumped out of the car to see if I needed to run from being squashed by a piece of granite. But nothing fell right at launch. There were massive avalanches of rocks down into the surrounding canyons which raised large clouds of dust into the sky. The road was completely blocked just past Walts Point but I was able to make it down the mt. to the valley just barely. Some other vehicles in front of me had to remove rocks in some areas to make it passable. Other rocks were the size of cars which luckily did not fall on anyone. The day was ODing and Willy got shut down just past Big Pine. That was all the flying for this trip to the Owens Valley. We are going back for the 4th for more. |
