Sugar Hill Survival
matt w
I flew Sugar Hill in Lakeview on Thursday (July 5th) and I am extremely lucky to be able to write this report about it. When we arrived at Sugar Hill around 11 am strong cycles were already coming up launch. The lulls in the cycles were 0 mph and the peaks were strong, I don't remember anybody measuring them, but I put them at 15 mph and perhaps even 20 mph at times. My first impression was that the conditions were far to strong for me to even consider launching. Other pilots were feeling things out as well. As I sat on launch and monitored the cycles I realized they were well defined, started out predictably, and you could hear the rustling in the trees that preceded the peaks of the cycles long before they arrived. I eventually came to the conclusion that I'd be able to time my launch and get off safely and so long as everyone else was going to give it a try I might as well too, and if I didn't like it after launching I could always just go out and land. I ended up being the last PG pilot to launch at about 12:45 PM.
My flight was short and brutal. I launched, climbed above the ridge in a thermal, but was starting to drift behind the ridge, so I started to push back out. During this push I hit massive sink and after several seconds of sinking I could feel that I was on the edge of thermal and was poised, waiting for the beep beep of my vario, and then it hit me and it was a boomer. I looked up at my glider and I didn't recognize it at all. It just appeared to be in a heap above my head. Tom Nosack, who was flying in the area said that the thermal "accordion folded" my glider. Before this happened I already knew I was low, but I waited for my glider to restart to see if there was any chance of recovery. My glider restarted unevenly and I found myself very quickly in a spiral dive, at which point I threw my reserve without hesitation. I felt my shoulder straps go tight and I knew the reserve had opened and shortly thereafter I found myself perched in the top of a spruce tree. I radioed that I was ok and was in a tree. Nathan (Nate) Johnston, a good friend and CPC member who was getting prepared to launch radioed that he was on his way to help. Many thanks to Nate for sacrificing his flight and time to free me and my glider from the tree.
From the time I found I myself miraculously unharmed atop the spruce tree I knew I was lucky and that I had dodged a bullet. I was low to the terrain when I took the whack that left my glider balled up above my head. I knew I was in the zone of 100-200 ft above the ground where everything needs to go perfectly and reserves don't always open. In my case everything went right and mine did open.
As the day drew on I got a chance to talk to more people who had seen parts of my episode and try to figure out exactly what happened, how high I was, was there anything I could have done differently, etc. Tom Nosack was flying near me and had witnessed the event from start to finish. His story seemed to support basically what I had seen first person. It wasn't until I was driving home that I recalled I had bought a new flight instrument while at the Rat Race, the Flymaster Nav, which being a vario + gps would have recorded my flight path for the entire incident. When I got home I downloaded the track and viewed it in Google Earth. From the GPS track and the numbers provided by GPSDump I can quantify what massive sink I was in, how monstrous the thermal was and how low I was during this episode. The numbers confirm that I am indeed a very lucky man. In fact, the only thing that goes through my head when I think about what happened is how fortunate I really am.
Attached is an annotated picture of my flight path during this event. Point A is where I entered the glider-destroying thermal. Point B is where I was rocketed to by the thermal one second later. And Point C is the top of the spruce tree where my flight ended. In the photo I've labeled heights in relation to point C which I've set as 0 ft. Prior to point A I was sinking at an average of 8 m/s (1,500 fpm) for several seconds (with recorded sink rates as high as 10 m/s). At point A I entered the thermal which lofted me 75 ft (23m) to Point (B) in a single second. That 23 m/s climb rate equates to 4,500 fpm. At point A, when I entered the thermal I was only 95 ft (29m) above the spruce tree where I landed, a second later I was thrust to 170 ft (52m) above the tree. I estimate that I probably threw my reserve slightly below point (A) where you can see I was in a pretty tight spiral dive, which slowly starts to "unwind" as I approach point C. The unwinding I believe to happen after the reserve opened. My estimate is that I threw the reserve at about 100 ft above tree level. The curious thing I find while analyzing this track is that my sink rate was never excessive, even while in a tight spiral. The numbers I see in GPSDump show 2-3 m/s or 400-600fpm. My best guess is that the thermal that nearly destroyed me, in fact, saved me by slowing my descent rate dramatically as I was diving in rising air. At any rate, I'll attach a kml file if any wants to analyze the track any further. I still have the track on my GPS and can send it to anyone in any format GPSDump will spit it out in if you want to analyze it further.
No incident report would be complete without pointing out some valuable lessons. It's debatable if much could be done to avoid or recover from such a substantial hit at such a low altitude. If I were higher, say 500 ft + burying the brakes to hold the glider in a full stall when I saw it bunched up above my head would given me control over how it would re-inflate, but in this case, the last time I had seen the ground it was a mere 95 ft below me, which was not nearly enough altitude to consider that as a course of action. For me, the lesson is much simpler. I knew when I arrived on launch that the conditions were too strong for me. I saw other people flying and convinced myself that I'd be able to launch and land if I felt I was in over my head. I learned the hard way, that you can't always just go and land. There have been days where I elected not to fly and others have. Deep down I knew I had made the right decision, but I would second guess myself after seeing others have good flights and sometimes think that well, maybe I should have at least tried. Those thoughts played into my decision to fly that day. I know now that there is going to be someday in the future when I am not going to fly and others most likely will, they may even have the flights of their lives, but I'm not going to regret my decision. Last Thursday people had great flights at Sugar Hill and I fortunately walked away from a situation that could have gone drastically different.
Steve Roti
Steve Forslund
that. Good job tossing!
Bigger is not always better when it comes to lapse rates. From the CAPE
it looks like they weren't calling for Tstorms? 0-15 0-20 mid-day
usually will have me driving retrieves not launching a paraglider. The
other option launching early is fine but you need to do it with the idea
of staying up a long time as I don't want to land mid-day in the desert.
Chelan has the added benefit of the river which usually makes it easier
to get down and land if you decide you don't like the air. I know cold
beer and a cheeseburger has also drawn me in to land at the football
field in Mansfield more then once when I wasn't enjoying the air.
SF
matt w
Steve Forslund
me! Of course you can not always believe short peaks and small movement
on the GPS but even so it sounds ugly.
sf
matt w
Oleg Sotnik
How's the wing and the rest of your gear?
matt w
Steve Roti
matt w
Steed family
Mike
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2012 20:44:21 -0700
From: matche...@gmail.com
To: cp...@googlegroups.com
Subject: CPC: Sugar Hill Survival