Monday, November 2, 2015

Adventures with Sam (Part 2)

  Para-alpinism is the sport of climbing mountains and then using a paraglider to fly down. It is an exhilarating and committing sport. It is usually the best in Fall. The colours are rich. The bugs are gone and the winds are light but still buoyant enough to stay up in the right conditions.
  This is certainly the case on a spectacular October day as Sam Waddington and I, joined by a third amigo, Brad Henry, huff and puff our way up the steep slopes of Mt. Macfarlane's west ridge. This  gnarly trail was created by a paraglider pilot whose sole aim was to get high into the alpine as quickly and efficiently as possible for the purpose of flying a wing from the alpine meadows located 1900 meters up. This is not a trail I would want to hike down as it averages 25% or steeper in grade. Some parts require a little hand work to hold onto the rocks with steep drop-offs.
  With ten to fifteen kilograms on our backs, we sweat and grunt our way up for three hours through forest, which gradually becomes more open and rocky, the cedars and firs give way to lodge pole pines at the higher elevation.

The endless trudge
Sam's political experiences on Chilliwack City Council help distract us from the discomfort of trudging up the seemingly never-ending trail.  Eventually, we break out into open alpine meadow with a stunning view of the mountains leading south to the magnificent spire of Mt. Slesse, a native word for "fang". The sun-warmed slopes have a light breeze blowing up carrying a subtle pine scent that is like a pheromone to alpinists. An old faded  piece of ribbon confirms that we are at the launch site which faces due west. The dramatic American and Canadian border peaks with their northeast slopes reveal the rough blue ice of a large and receding glacier tower high  across the Slesse valley. Far below us we can see the Slesse Creek from which we have ascended already in shadow as the sun moves west.
  We sit in the warm sunshine and take time to rehydrate, devouring some of Brad's homemade land jaeger sausage and shooting a few pics and clips before getting our flying gear organized.
Launch at last

Lunch before launch


All systems go
 The steep, heather slope will make a relatively easy launch but we need to carefully check our lines for twigs and sharp rocks before inflating our wings.  Brad offers to go first to "test the conditions" and report back to us by radio. After sorting out a line tangle, he stands still for a few minutes, holding his risers and waits for a gentle puff of upward moving air.  Brad leans forward and his white and orange wing pendulums into the sky, heading north across the short valley to the next sunny spine where we have just watched two ravens and an eagle working light lift a few minutes earlier. Brad is able to maintain his altitude for several minutes by turning in the rising air he encounters on the spine.
   Sam launches next and like Brad, flies over to the spine and begins working the available lift, bobbing up and down as he tries to stay in the core of the thermals. I offer some radio guidance to Sam as he has not done much thermalling but he seems pretty adept at keeping his glider in the lift so I abandon him to prepare my own wing for take off.

The Boys Take to the Sky

I've got a feeling this is going to be good!
  Being the last launcher means you have no one to watch your wing if anything goes wrong. I take my time and wait for a really good cycle before pulling up my  Alpina 2 wing and step into the sky to follow the same line as the other guys who are gradually sinking lower and lower into the valley.
  Nothing feels as good as lifting off into the air after battling gravity for hours; knowing that now one only has to relax, enjoy the ride and use one's bird sense to prolong the flight as long as possible. As I contour around to the same spine as the boys have been  working, I begin to feel those familiar tugs on my lines that indicate a thermal. The feeling is translated down from the canopy eight meters above through the nylon risers that connect the glider to the harness and from this feeling, I  work my magic. At first, I am lifted up  but fly through the narrow column of rising air and sink on the other side but my now my mind is mentally mapping out the thermal and each time I swing around, my period of lift lasts longer. Figure eight turns used at the beginning to avoid smashing into the rocky ridge beside me eventually give way to full, tight 360 degree circles. I begin to wind up through the thermal and the ridge drops below me with dizzying speed. I drift with the thermal to the east and soon I am over the un-named peak north of Macfarlane. Now I can see Lower Pierce Lake, a deep sapphire blue jewel in a verdant green cup. And, to its south, poured into a much rockier talus cup, lies the ever beautiful bahama blue Upper Pierce Lake.
  With this kind of altitude I radio the guys and tell them that I am heading south back towards Mt. Macfarlane and seconds later I am buzzing by the bright red cone that marks the summit pyramid where I find more lift along the ridge to the south. Soon I am spinning above the peak. This encourages me to continue playing along the dramatic spine.  I soar over to Crossover Peak which I last climbed twenty-nine years ago on a big day adventure before I knew that there was a fabric aircraft that could fly me to glorious summits like this.
  As I dance in the air along the rusty ridge, I glimpse a bright white object perched on ledge far below me and gasp as I recognize a huge billy goat oblivious to the large orange bird flying over it. When I yodel down, the goat slowly looks up but seems non-plussed by my presence.
  I quickly lose interest in the Billy because now a dream-come-true is within reach. I am soaring over Parkes Peak and the massif  that is Mt. Slesse is only a few hundred meters away. The autumn sun continues to warm the western slopes below me and it is easy to bob along and find lift in the huge bowl from which climbers ascend Slesse's standard route. I can see the steep trail zig-zagging its way up through heather and scree from the ridge below me. Slowly I soar Slesse's Northwest ridge sharing the air with a huge immature eagle transiting from north to south. Compared with the peaks I have just passed, Slesse is like some huge ogre rising dark and ominous from the meadows below.
  Try as I might, I can't find significant lift here and after  scouring the rock face and maintaining for several minutes, I turn back for Macfarlane almost four kilometres away and bob my way back in the buoyant air. The billy goat scuttles down the scree slope this time as I pass over him. The boys are packed up far below in the landing area and rather than scratch all the way down to join them, I radio down that I am going to fly out to main Chilliwack Valley and land as far west as I can.
  The air is smooth and liftless once I depart the Macfarlane ridge. I fly a straight line westward out over the Chilliwack River and begin to assess landing options which is somewhat difficult with the sun in my eyes. Eventually, I spy the old Mt. Thurston Prison site which some parafriends have told me is an easy clearing to land in. The glide out is effortless but there seems to be an uncomfortable number of tall trees around and in the middle of the old prison site so I pass it by hoping to glide all the way to Slesse Park where we sometimes land after flying Elk Mountain.  The sun continues to hinder me. I can't see with all the glare and consider landing on a long gravel bar near the road but the thought of landing on boulders deters me, so I turn back and commit to the old prison. The approach is a little tricky...I descend along an old road approaching from east to west and have to be careful to keep my wing away from the tall trees on either side, slowing the paraglider down to nearly a stall to keep from overshooting the field. In the end I touch down with lots of room to spare but from the ground I can immediately see that approaching south to north would have been easier and safer. The first landing in any area is always the trickiest!
Kevin's Line
  Meanwhile, Sam and Brad are already driving along Chilliwack Lake Road and fifteen minutes after landing, I am relaxing in Brad's truck with a cold beverage and what I hope will be the most spectacular footage I have ever taken from my helmet cam which was on for the entire flight. Alas, that night I am dismayed to discover that all of the files showing my flight are corrupted and unreadable. For days now, I have been trying out various file repair programs as well as sending out all calls to experts who might be able to recover these files.
So far, no success, but this disappointment motivates me to write a more detailed-than-usual description of this adventure and  I hope the reader is able to get a little sense of what it is like to soar with eagles at Mt. Slesse.
As for a movie version of this tale? Not looking promising.... I guess we'll just have to climb back up and do it again! Where do I sign up?
























Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Adventures With Sam (Part One)



I took advantage of the Mt. Waddington "Van Diego" to shuttle up Mt. Cheam on September 27th. I joined a group of seven clients guided by Emma Graham and Sam Waddington, owner of Waddingtons. The van was absolutely superb in getting up the rough Chipmonk Road.

The VanDiego - The Perfect Shuttle Van


Sam and I arrived on the summit to find the predicted east winds which were quite strong, gusty and mixing with southerly thermals so we were quite prepared to hike down. We lunched with Sam's guided group, took the requisite summit photos and enjoyed the spectacular fall day.

The Man The Myth The Legend - Sam Himself


After an hour of assessing the wind, I elected to give the east face a try. It was smooth and steady at 15-18 km/hr right on the edge, but where the wing was laid out it was twitchy.  With some launch helpers holding the wing to catch the breeze between rotors I launched into "Baby Bum Smooth" lift and worked my way over launch where I stayed for well over thirty minutes watching both Sam and a visiting Norwegian pilot, Morten Kals, launch. 

Launching the East Face


Sam got off cleanly and had a safe traverse around to the Fraser Valley where he landed at Bridal. Morten, who I've renamed, "Viking" had hiked up from the Fraser Valley looking as if he'd just stepped out of an elevator on his way to Starbucks. When Morten launched his speed wing, he immediately put it into such radical barrel rolls that I could not track him with my Iphone.

Sam - A Cheam Virgin No More


Meanwhile, I noticed a chopper circling the mountain and Morten ran into the photographer a few days ago, hooked me up and I'm sharing some of the most spectacular Cheam shots I've ever seen. Thanks to Ginnie Frede for the shots.

Beautiful Ridge Lift

Amusing Myself Whilst Waiting For Sam and Morten

Big Mountains - Puny Humans


After some doubt about whether we would fly, it ended up being a spectacular Mt. Cheam flight after all.
Special thanks to Mt. Waddingtons Outdoors for their great guiding and the VanDiego!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

The Golden Road

   In late July of this past summer, I took a little paragliding road trip to some of my favourite sites in the BC's interior. Over the next seven days, I spent fifteen hours in the air, flew further than I ever had and got higher than I have ever been in a paraglider.

   My first stop was Vernon where I joined another pilot to fly a popular site called Baldy Mountain. Launching at an altitude of about 1100 meters, we flew a nice route west  towards Kalamalka Lake and then back to the launch where a thermal took us up to almost 2600 meters. Alex and I  then flew east back to the town of Lumby for a nice little twenty-four kilometer XC (cross country) start to my trip.

   The next day, another friend Norm, and I drove to the Mara Lake launch. This time my flight path took me to and above the beautiful Enderby Cliffs, a truly breath-taking landmark in the Okanagan. I landed south of Armstrong for  another nice twenty-three k flight.
Flying towards the Enderby Cliffs
I landed several kilometres south of the cliffs

   From Vernon, I carried on to Golden, home of one of the most famous soaring sites in the world, Mount 7. There was a competition going on this week called the Willi Muller Classic. The NW-SE orientation of the Columbia Valley allows for some very long and dynamic flights towards the US border.  The dry interior air and immense mountains allow for huge thermals. Pilots can find themselves going up very high, very fast. Sure enough, On my first day, I climbed in thermals going up at 7-8 meters a second. Within minutes of launching I had climbed from 1800 meters to over 3,000 meters. Topped out at an altitude of 4300 meters. On this flight, I flew about eighty kilometres south of Golden, my furthest distance from this site.
Very high over very high mountains near Golden

Flying past Edgewater almost 90 km south of Golden

   On my second day, I reached 4500 meters or almost 15,000 feet and landed after eighty-six kilometres just past the town of Edgewater. If this seems impressive, some of my friends who had been there all week, flew 140 km and a really skilled US pilot flew almost 300 k into the US!
Mount 7 launch in Golden
Gliding over the verdant Columbia Valley

   On my third day in Golden, I had what is called an "out and return", flying downrange twenty-five kilometres and back to Mt. Seven. Out and returns are a little more challenging because the return is often against the wind and so the pilot has to choose the line very carefully to use the topography as a shield against the wind or fly further out to avoid turbulence.

   This flight ended the period of good weather in the interior and so I began my westward journey. The next day,  I had a chance to help my friend, Glenn Derouin of Vernon's Paraglide Canada with some tandem flights. Check out the photo of the little girl I took with a huge stuffed horse that was part of a global scavenger hunt being played by a friend of Glen's.
My young passenger and her big stuffy


   I returned to the smoky Fraser Valley a week after setting off.  It was wonderful to connect with so many pilots and experience some of the best flying in Canada.

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Dancing with the Devils in Eastern Washington

Dancing with the Devils in Eastern Washington

Chelan Butte, in Washington State is a very famous soaring area for hang gliders and paragliders. Located east of the Cascade mountains, the “Butte” has Lake Chelan on its north side and the Columbia River on its south side. The dry desert air provides for very powerful thermals in the summer months allowing pilots to rise on thermals to over 12,000 feet.Temperatures can also reach over 40C so pilots who land out somewhere need to be very prepared with the right clothing and enough water.
I have only flown Chelan during the Women's Fly in in October when conditions are quite mellow.  Ever since the first US nationals were held there in July in the 90's with some associated carnage, I assumed that pilots who flew in July were “a few episodes short of a full season.”
However, tempted by Al, Alex and Nicole, I ventured down on June 30th with Al to join in the fun happening at the Chelan Classic, a low stress comp similar to the Willie. (As it turned out, Alex and Nicole later opted for some spectacular flying at Pemberton).
Already at Chelan were Andrew, Guy and Igor and the day that Al and I travelled down, these guys flew an astounding 180K, attempting to get to Potlatch, Idaho. They were still rarin' to go the next morning despite the long (five hour) drive back from wherever the hell it was they landed. They had teamed up with some visiting Australians, Liz and Matt Graham. Matt had flown far the day before and Liz had used her Ipad and their Spots to track and locate them.
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Each morning the team would check their instruments and discuss possibilities

Our first day was not expected be anything like the day before and sure enough, it was blowing north on the Butte, with associated weird gusts that resulted in some exciting launches for about half the souls who took to the air.  Al and Guy launched and worked very hard, each getting quite low before achieving enough height to try crossing the Columbia.
Eventually, I decided to try the air and I had observed enough pilots passing through some strong lift right off launch that I decided to work the first bubble I got and sure enough, I was soon above the Bute and reached 2300 meters before crossing to the other side but deciding to fly back and land at the river LZ.

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Crossing the Columbia is easy - getting up and going further is not. Zoom to see the     dusties in the BG.

The next two days, I continued to develop my understanding of how to cross the river, get to the flats and then look for dust devils as thermal markers. However, it wasn’t til Saturday, our last day that the necessary combination of luck and wind occurred to give (some of) us a big day.

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Setting up on the Butte. Bring lots of water!
Al, Andrew, Matt and I planned to fly as a team. Matt launched first and discovered something wrong with his harness and had to go land immediately. Al, Andrew and I got very high above the Butte  (I got to 3200 meters) and we left together looking for joy on the other side.
We flew a long way onto the flats before seeing a dusty that looked workable. Andrew got there first, I second. Al arrived scant seconds after me but the lift was so light and he so low, that he was on the ground almost immediately. Andrew was doing quite well getting up but I struggled for about fifteen minutes before finally getting a decent climb and we were on our way!
Andrew and I flew mostly together. He led most of the time and the pattern was always the same. Look for a dust devil, fly above the debris cloud and hold on. Get as high as necessary to glide to another “dusty” and repeat the process.
Eventually, we got  too far apart for me to spot him  and I was on my own, actually ahead of him for a while but then I hit an area of sink, tried to get under a cloud and didn’t make it, going down at three to six meters a second all the way to a road I chose to land on. Minutes later, Andrew bobbed by. The sink cycle had ended and he kept going.
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Minutes after landing in the middle of nowhere.

But I was happy. A truck stopped by and a woman asked, “are you OK?”
I replied that I was fine and that I had flown my paraglider from Chelan Bute. I asked if she knew how far away that was and her reply was simply, F___cking far!”
Liz, Al, and Matt came along in my truck less than ten minutes later and we chased Andrew for about another hour until he landed. It took two and a half hours to drive back to Chelan. Eventually my uploaded GPS track revealed that I had flown one hundred six kilometers, my personal best flight ever.
The details of the flight can be seen here
Huge thanks go out to my paragliding mates, Al and Andrew for their encouragement and tips and to Liz and Matt for their excellent tracking skills as they chased us across the plains of eastern Washington.



Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Rolling the Dice on Mt. Baker




Washington state’s Mt. Baker towers 3300 meters over the Fraser Valley and is one of the loftiest landmarks in the Northwest. It can be clearly seen from almost anywhere in the Chilliwack area and many are beckoned by its sheer magnificence.  Climbing Mt. Baker is a demanding challenge which requires fitness and experience in mountaineering and glacier travel. Most climbers ascend Mt. Baker in two phases - on day one, they climb with camping  gear to approximately 1900-2100 meters, set up a base camp and acclimate (get used to thin air) by sleeping until about 2:00 am. Then they get up, have a light meal and complete the final 1100-1300  meters with just light gear, liquids and snacks. The climb down is a long one as they usually climb down to their base, have a rest,  break camp and descend all the way back to the parking lot at 1400 meters asl.


For those of us who have flown paragliders from Mt. Baker, the challenge is magnified in two ways. First, we complete the entire climb overnight, all the way from 1400 m to 3300 m in one long go with no acclimation time. Second, we carry all our climbing gear, food, liquid and our flying gear all the way to the summit, so the weight is considerable. Exhausted doesn’t nearly begin to describe how I feel when I step onto Baker’s summit, but if the winds are right, the physical ordeal is over. I can’t even put into words what is feels like to take those four or five steps and then fly seventeen kilometers and descend 3,000 meters to the town of Glacier with its warm, thick air and a fine meal just thirty-five minutes after standing on a the vast  snow sculptured plateau of Baker’s summit.


I have flown from the top of Mt. Baker five times. I have climbed it four times without a wing. Thankfully, I have never needed to carry a wing down from the top of Baker- until last Sunday. Despite, our usual pre-trip weather research which indicated a perfect 18 km/hr  (or less)  WNW  wind, the conditions did not allow me to launch. This was the first time I’ve rolled the dice on Mt. Baker and lost.  The adventure was nevertheless, wonderful in other ways so here is a brief synopsis with photos.
Sweet snow, sweet moon


This climb was done with my long time adventure partner, Richard Teszka. We began hiking at 12:30 am on June 7, 2015.   I have always tried to climb on a night with a moon and although it wasn’t full, the moon was stunning as it rose above the Deming Glacier after we had been climbing for about three hours. We could see the twinkling headlamps of several parties slowly making their way up the glacier above us, but by the time we reached the col at 2700 m, we had caught up to two of the parties. The snow conditions were perfect. We followed the obvious climber’s highway in snow that didn’t even require crampons. In late summer and fall the snow melts and exposes blue ice as well as crevasses and then crampons become essential on the steeper sections. For us, the crevasses were still mainly covered over and we stepped lightly over the thin depressions indicating what could could be huge crevasses below. There was only one gaping crevasse and it still had a nice snow bridge over it.
Only one significant crevasse to cross
A snow bridge makes this crevasse easy
The last part of the climb, up the Roman Wall is very steep and seems to take forever before the slope slowly rolls out onto a vast escarpment that a skilled pilot could land a plane on. We had noticed a significant amount of north wind on the Roman Wall, so we had an inkling that conditions might not allow a flight but at this point we just maintained our climber’s enthusiasm and hoped it would change.




Pumice Ridge with two converging lines of climbers ascending the Roman Wall


We completed the climb in record time (for me), six hours, forty-five minutes arriving at 7:15 am . Normally we launch between 9 and 10 am after the sun has begun warming the west side to create an updraft, so we we opted to hang out on top for a while and complete the 500 meter trudge to Grant’s summit. the highest point on the mountain.
Layering up on top in the cool breeze
The obligatory walk to Grant's Summit




It was cold, bitterly so. We bundled up and sat with some other climbers on the leeside of the summit but the wind was swirling from everywhere and it was gusty. Eventually, we walked back over to the west shoulder where our paragliding gear sat in the bright, snowy sunshine and accepted the reality that we would have to shoulder these packs and carry them back down. We began the descent at 8:30 am and despite feeling exhausted and nauseous from the altitude, we were back down to the col in forty minutes and with each meter descended, the effects of the altitude began to dissipate. Even the wind calmed down below 2600 meters and by 10 am it began to get very hot on the warming snow slopes. As the snow softened, we elected to remove our crampons so we could slip more easily down the slope and by 11:00 am we reached the toe of the glacier, called the hogsback. From here the trail descends steeply down to thick old growth forest and then all that remains is a long traversing trudge down another 600 meters, fording several creeks swollen with snow melt from the sun-baked snow slopes above.


Although the trail is easy, the hard ground and rock surfaces are are jarring on tired bodies wearing stiff climbing boots. Blisters began to form on my feet which had gotten damp from snow sliding into my non-gatored boots. My own fault - exhaustion leads to laziness when the end is in sight.
Fortunately, climbers don't need to navigate this part of the glacier
11:00 am. Off the glacier and descending from Hogsback - ninety minutes still to go


Finally, at 12:30 pm, Richard and I staggered into the stifling parking lot where we at last doffed our sweat-soaked packs and guzzled the water we had waiting for us in the vehicle. A frantic search of the vehicle yielded some Advil to ease the ache in our battered bodies. Soon we were down to my truck, stashed at the landing field just north of Glacier where I could, at last, take off my boots and expose my feet with several bleeding blisters to the fresh air and slip on a welcome pair of sandals.


Richard was so tired, he opted to sleep in his car for a while before driving home. I can hardly remember my own drive apart from the usual joy of using my Nexus to slip past the vehicles lined up at the border.  By 3 pm, I was home. By 3:30. I was showered and horizontal on a couch. Apart from missing the opportunity to fly, we had enjoyed a safe climb in splendid conditions and I’m sure that when the blisters have healed and the sore muscles and joints have recovered, I will be listening once again for Mt. Baker’s beckoning call.

PS. When it does go well, it looks like this Baker Busters 2011



Monday, May 4, 2015

It's On

 Thermal Season is Officially “On” in the Fraser Valley.

 Paragliding pilots look forward to spring because that's when the increased sunlight begins to warm the earth and produce thermals- rising columns of air. We use these to soar higher than our launch height and once up,  we go XC, (cross country) which means anywhere other than down to the normal landing area. An XC flight could be five kilometers or 500 kilometers depending on the location and the pilot’s skill level.
   For me, this is the most challenging and rewarding type of flying. It's very exciting and beautiful to travel somewhere new using the wing and the wind. I've flown to Hope from Mt Woodside and from Bridal Falls a couple of times.
  A route that has become a classic is the Raymont Challenge named after the first pilot to accomplish this flight which is essentially a loop around the Fraser Valley starting at Mt Woodside and heading east to Bear Mtn, crossing the Fraser River to Mt. Ludwig on the Mt. Cheam side and then flying west to “tag” Elk Mtn and then re crossing the Fraser River to get back to Mt. Woodside. This route requires pretty good conditions and I’m lucky if I get to do it a few times a year. The flight takes between three and four hours to complete.
  We use GPS to help with decision making. For example, a GPS gives us our ground speed so we know how well we’re doing relative to the wind which can either help us or slow us down. GPS also gives us our altitude and this helps us to know when to leave a thermal and glide to another place on our route. Finally, the GPS provides a track of our entire flight which can be uploaded to a computer and then to programs like Google Earth so we can really see where we went.
  I upload my big flights to a website that collects flight data and keeps an ongoing record. I can compare my flights as well as the flights of other pilots. Leonardo (the website) even allows me to watch my entire flight on a map as an animation!
Here is the link to my last big flight from Saturday, May 2. On that flight, I actually completed considerabley more than the Raymont Challenge and was in the air for five hours, ten minutes.  Play around with the buttons and enjoy the ride.
Click Here to see it