Headed out Friday morning early after grabbing some light breakfast for the road. The traffic was just about what I was expecting on the way to Issaquah to meet up with Sabrina and Andrey. I double checked my gear and went over to Andrey’s place where we moved gear around to vehicles and started to head out. It turned out that Andrey didn’t need to go into work later, so we consolidated everything into one car. We drove on out past Monroe for a brief snack and potty break. I brought out another layer because it was rather brisk.
We met up with the rest of the pilots, Matty Senior, David Milroy, Noah Briller, and piled into a minivan along with the driver who happened to live nearby. I can’t remember his name though. We drove up to the trailhead where we unloaded and said our goodbyes to the driver. There was a small group of adults and kids who were about to depart on a hike. We were very casual in our appearance and it attracted one of the adults attention who seemed concerned that we weren’t prepared nor had enough water for our hike as it seemed he encountered some last week who weren’t prepared. After he saw the size of our backpacks, he seemed to abandon the lecture. We started hiking up as it seemed like we were already running about an hour behind. During the hike we could hear thermals ripping off the slopes, and it was a little concerning that we might have gotten too late of a start. We made our way to a few overlooks where we could see our route, but most was obscured with forest fire smoke. Shortly thereafter we made it to the launch site.
It was a little brushy and had a few trees here and there, but it seemed doable. There were some pretty fierce thermals when we first arrived, and I was a little nervous at feeling the energy behind them, but things started to calm down a little. I was mostly concerned about the lack of any sort of landing zone down below, aside from the highway rest area which didn’t seem ideal. I got my stuff together and snacked on some food and swigged some water. I was carrying about 1.5 liters of extra water, and plenty of snacks along with various emergency equipment in the chance I got separated and had to land somewhere remote. The night previous I had downloaded about 300meg of topo maps on my phone, along with an extra battery/solar charger. I felt pretty prepared to spend some time out there just in case, and sent Catherine a text before taking off. I was the 3rd pilot off, and it seemed to be “on”. Plenty of lift, as well as sink. Soon I saw the rest of the pilots below gaining altitude fast, and we all seemed to make our way across Lake Wenatchee over to Dirty Face around the same time. Matty and Andrey seemed to go a little south, where Sabrina, Noah, and David went more north. There seemed to be quite a bit of drift that pushed us south, but it wasn’t too bad. I managed to snap a few photos during this glide, as it was pretty mellow over the water.
Lift wasn’t terribly difficult to find on Dirty Face. Close to the ridge it was surprisingly “spicy” air, and a bit bumpy. A lot of small profile strong lift and sink close to the rocky terrain. As soon as I started moving a bit further away from the cliffs, I had better luck. Eventually I connected with a decent thermal and encountered some typical ridge thermalling. When I reached the summit of Dirty Face a nearly frightening thermal rapidly brought me up to just under 10K! A significant portion of the climb I was averaging about 4.6m/s, and a few turns were pushing 5.8m/s which was rather alarming. It was extremely cold up there, and my fingers froze quickly. The rapid change in pressure made my sinuses feel weird or slightly congested. Perhaps it was just the shock of cold air too. I continued on glide to head for the gap of the ridge, passing by Twin lakes to my right. It was pretty smooth air considering how turbulent and energetic it was lower, and I was able to snap off a few pictures. There were a few surprises that had me scrambling to prevent a wingtip from curling inwards, but it wasn’t too bad. I could see the distant dots of David and Noah ahead, and Sabrina a little ways behind me. I could only hear Matty and Andrey on the radio, as they were a ways back behind me.
I wasn’t able to connect to any thermals when I reached the end of the ridge before the gap, but Noah and David caught something high enough to make the jump. I started getting low, and decided to head back along the ridge and find something that would assist me making the jump. I wasn’t able to find anything for a while, and got lower and lower. I saw Andrey and Matty both soar over me well over a thousand feet above and made the gap crossing effortlessly. Eventually I found something that gave me a little lift. Unfortunately I was pretty far back towards Dirty Face again, but I also met up with Sabrina who was making her way north. We both thermalled together and found some good lift. She broke off towards the gap after the thermal kinda squirreled away. I stuck around for a few more turns until I found the core again that had drifted significantly, which gave me a few extra hundred feet and thus felt more confident in making the crossing.
I made my way over to the next ridge on a decent glide and was able to connect with another thermal quickly upon reaching the ridge. I could see Sabrina below getting lower as it appeared she was struggling to find a thermal that could pull her back up to the ridge crest. I lingered around trying to get higher than 8k. However, whenever I’d reach some threshold in that area, the air got violent and would toss me around like a ragdoll. The air was acting unpredictably, and seemingly random directions. After battling to keep my wing above my head, I realized that I had a cravat for possibly a minute or so. Each battle I encountered around the 8k mark would send me back down where I had to climb back up to that same level to be battered once again. It stopped becoming fun. Time to turn around I suppose. I noticed that Sabrina was much lower than before, and was heading back due to a full bladder. She was in broken communication with the rest of the group, so I acted to relay her message to the rest of the crew, and I decided to follow. On my way back I got pummeled with sink, and couldn’t really connect with any significant thermals. I wasn’t terribly concerned because I could see Sabrina below me, and figured she’d land before me and I could radio her location to the rest. I pushed on ahead to mark lift for her, but got drilled with more sink on the way. I looked behind me and could see Sabrina thermalling higher than me. I had enough altitude to make it there with a tailwind, so I gambled and went backwards to thermal with her. I connected with the thermal and we climbed together until we couldn’t get any higher on the ridge, and pushed forward towards Lake Wenatchee. We could tell there was a significant headwind at this point, and by the time I got back to where I had originally gambled with the backtrack, I was at pretty much the same altitude. We scratched along the ridge side looking for lift, and pulling a few gradual circles where some slight lift resided. We never got anything significant, but just barely able to delay our descent. We were behind part of the ridge that was shielding the valley wind blast over Lake Wenatchee and the rotor started to bump me around. I figured I could peek around the ridge and perhaps get in front of it and ride some mechanical lift or at least get into a better location where I could potentially catch a thermal being ripped off by the lake air. I didn’t find much other than more bumpy air, with not enough energy to pull a full circle so I decided to land. The headwind got pretty strong, and I figured I’d be making my landing approach on speedbar. The landing went smoothly and I put down in a tall grassy field pasture just west of Lake Wenatchee. I radioed in, watched Sabrina land about 200 yards away, and packed my gear. I extracted my radio and an apple snack for my hike out.
In order to get to the road, I crossed through someone’s property where a nice fellow came out to talk. He asked, “Was that you that just landed?” We talked briefly about my flight and friends in the area, and he even offered a ride. However, as I was discussing, Sabrina called me on the radio about her location, and I figured we’d find a ride. I walked down the road while munching on my apple, happy to be moving my legs again after nearly a 3 hour flight. When I reached an intersection, I spotted Sabrina hopping into a pickup truck where I thankfully accompanied her. As we were leaving we could hear on the radio about the others who were landing. David was landing close to where we had, but figured he’d get a ride soon enough. Andrey and Noah went onward to land near where we launched. Matty ended up landing at the other end of the lake by a pub.
Our ride dropped us off at a gas station where they needed to run some errands. We continued to walk along the road trying to hitch another ride. A few people stopped, but none were going the way we were. Eventually our original truck driver came by again to carry us to HW2. From there we stuck around the gas station waiting for Andrey to come by with the car. We then piled in and headed home. Mission success!
Pics:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47536040@N03/shares/z8YoS8
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