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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
