I was completely unprepared for an extended wave flight at high altitude. I had not brought thermal underwear, warm socks, gloves, or anything. In fact, when I arrived it was 71 degrees F on the ground and I was wishing that I had brought shorts! Then I heard that Kempton Izuno and Matt Epperson were in the wave and that they had been up for over an hour already. That changed my thinking completely. Kenny was wrapping up a BFR with another pilot and I asked him if I should bring something warm. He said yes, of course. All I had was my Patagonia pullover, but it would have to do.
We took off shortly after 2:00 PM, and after a 20 minute tow we were in the wave southwest of Goat Mountain. We released at about 6500' MSL and were climbing quickly in 6-8 knots of lift. Here we are approaching 14,000' MSL and I witnessed something I had never seen before from a glider, the Pacific Ocean. I had previously seen where the Pacific Ocean should be, but it was always under the cover of a marine layer. Clear Lake is in the foreground, and the Pacific Ocean is in the distance illuminated by the sun.
Here's a shot of our instrument panel taken right after that photo. (I apologize that the glare and reflection on the instrument panel is bad!)
It was a great day to explore the structure of the wave and to predict where it would be found. We flew to the north, where we would expect to encounter the wave off of Snow Mountain. Sure enough, it was there! Then we continued to Mt. St. Johns, and it wasn't there. Probably because Mt. St Johns is more of a peak than a range. So we retreated to the Snow Mountain wave, where we climbed back up close to 14,000' MSL before flying to Hull Mountain, just north of Lake Pillsbury. This photo is out of sequence, to show where we were. Lake Pillsbury is evident in the photo, just below the snow on Hull Mountain to the left of center in the picture. For those with a keen eye, the snow-capped peak of Mount Shasta can be seen in the distance to the right of center.
We didn't find much at Hull Mountain, so we returned to the predictable Goat Mountain wave and again climbed to 14,000' MSL. Kenny then suggested that we try to fly to the west to Ukiah. I said sure, why not? We flew far enough to the west, and we were still high enough, that we were able to see the beach of the Pacific Ocean (although I did not take a picture). We did not quite make it to Ukiah, but we were close. The next few photos were taken on our return to the Goat Mountain wave. Here's Clear Lake looking from the north to the south. Mount Konocti is the predominant feature of the largest natural lake entirely in California.
We re-encountered the Goat Mountain wave and made one more climb to 14,000' MSL before returning to Williams as fast as we could as the sun was setting on the ground, even though we were in full sunlight at altitude.
The winds on the ground when we returned to Williams were 13 knots out of the north, so we had to perform the tricky north Williams landing. It is always good to have Kenny in the back seat on those days to guide you and monitor your airspeed as you descend through a very strong wind gradient!
Total flight time was exactly 3 hours and we covered about 200 miles even though we were never much more than 50 miles away from Williams. The strongest winds aloft we encountered were about 42 knots, and the strongest lift we encountered was 8-10 knots. Outside air temperature at 14,000' MSL was -2 C, which wasn't too bad when we were flying at 50 knots in the climbs and the outside air wasn't rushing in. But when we were flying at over 100 knots, it definitely got uncomfortably cold.
Here's our flight trace from See You.
And here it is in Google Maps.
This was my first true wave flight at Williams. I had been there a couple of other days when the wave was kind of working, but not really in the full-up classical way. Thanks Kenny and Williams Soaring Center for a fantastic day!
