Mingus Mountain

Cross Country hang gliding flight is a sport of "men" and although I think that is ridiculous, I do find some truth in that idiotic thought. Miles flown from launch, the farther you fly? The better you are? Yes, I can see through that rose colored shield but it just isn't the price I pay for admition into manhood. You see, I learned a very valuable lesson quite some years ago, to fly my own flights and I take that lesson to heart in my every day life...



There is a lot to the sport of hang gliding. It can be as wonderful or as terrifying as you want it to be. I learned as a surfer should, at the beach, barefoot and giggling at how fun it is to push out into the wind and float off the sand for a few seconds.

And I got board with the beach, as I should.

There were longer and longer glides but those were farther from the fun at the sand and quite different in nature.



I started reading about cross country flight in the early 80's. Stories written in Hang Gliding magazine and the Thermal Flyer, the little club newsletter that I got in the mail while I was living in Hawaii. Flights of hundreds of miles distance and miles high, epic stories of true human endeavor.

The Owens Valley was the mecca of cross country flight but our own Mingus Mountain was once the leader in that game too. I would lie in my bunk dreaming of turning in thermals that I hadn't even experienced yet but I knew I would countlessly twist soon.



I returned home with my glider and had to learn to fly all over again.

There was no beach, just a big mountain and the surf there was on a much different scale. Soon I was flying with the pilots I had been reading about. I had been introduced by these very pilots to hang gliding years ago when I was just a young boy on a bicycle venturing farther from home. Now I was a man venturing farther from known...

Quickly all of what I learned was turned around and around. The smooth lift of the sand was replaced by "bump tollerance" and edges I couldn't see but knew where there. The grinding tubes were lifted up on end and now, my glass glider (surfboard) was replaced by a sail only to dip a wing and pivot on it for circles on end. Really for me it was a much different game but still one in the same.



I learned where to fly and more importantly, when to land.

Over the years, flying my flights, many of my friends died flying theirs.

I couldn't stand it and I stopped flying.

Mingus was completely out of my everyday thought.

At times, I would re-visit launch and the pilots would change yet the gaggle was the same. Many times I would walk up to a pilot and ask them "how do you fly those things?" just to see how they would react. I wanted to understand, what they saw, who they where and why they were flying.

Again, for everyone it is different.

My life has changed and I am flying again but on a much different scale.

I'm about to make my first flight at Mingus. I'm really looking forward to it, it's only a few days away...

[September 3, 2006]







The above images are my first flight at Mingus in 10 years.

Below is a story that I wrote about a cross country flight at Mingus in the mid-nineties.

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My ears were the enemy. The sun was shinning brightly out in the valley, but thousands of feet above, behind my sail was a boiling mass of the young Cu-nim. I could not see it in my immediate vision, it wasn't a factor now. I knew that I would be well away from the mountain before it became dangerous to me. But looking out at the valley, even though it looked like a bright sunny day, my instinct told me there was trouble. My instinct turned out to be my hearing. The sound of the wind was that of a horror movie. Whistling, a quiet rush of swirling hissing, the sound of the tall pines all around us on top of the mountain masif being pushed by the strong convection. Yes, it was my ears that gave it that emotion.

I was waiting to launch. Kneeling on the ground, holding on to the control frame, waiting until the time was right. Looking back, there was no real right time. The wind blew straight in to launch, just go before a big gust comes and ride it up. So I picked up my wing and that is just what I did. I spiraled up a big column of rising air, trying to stay within it's confines in order to stay upright. My circles were uninterrupted. A vertical flight path to the black cloud anchored above Mingus mountain. The radio was my connection to the ground. I am way too nervous to fly today, but this is what I know, so I go like I do every time.

The cloud above is now the cloud below. I had flown over the backside of the mountain ridge to the big flat Prescott Valley. The wind was being deflected up the face of the anchored cloud creating the ride that I was taking along the side of the cloud. Everything was the cloud now, towering, just a few yards to my right as I aimed toward the area of Chino Wash. The other pilots, many of them my friends, had launched just after I had. They climbed in the same column that I did and were only a few hundred yards away, yet the distance was surreal. I could hear their chatter on the radio, talking to their chase. They were there yet I could not see them below and behind the base of the cloud.

Bob, Hans and Jim, there were few pilots in the world better than these three. All had many hundred plus mile flights every season for many years. The three of them were flying as a team, a cross country team, each communicating to each other through their radios. They knew the strong conditions that Arizona mountain flights contained, and yet I could detect a strain in Jim and Bob's voice, Hans was as rock steady as ever. I was out in front, I let them know that the cloud was as long as the mountain was and it also had tremendous vertical development. Thanks alot came the reply, didn't know which one was talking to me, it didn't matter, they all flew as a team.

For a few years now I had been trying to concentrate on making a long flight. Now a long flight to me is one that is farther than twenty five miles. I had done a few flights of this distance and was ready to put one a little further out. I knew that all I had to do was follow these guys and the possibility of me making a really long flight was close at hand. The season was grinding down but there was still time for me to make it, with Bob, Hans and Jim behind me and on course, I felt elated. The big black wall of cloud just a few yards away began to eat away my hopes.

The radio:
(Bob to Hans) Hans, the cloud suck is strong, I am going over to the edge.

(Hans to Bob) Yeah Bob, me too, I am a few hundred yards farther back, I may not make it.

(Jim to Hans) I am behind you and I am entering the cloud. I have the bar stuffed and I am still going up at seven hundred feet per minute. Starting to lose sight of the ground, Damn it!

(Hans to Jim) Don't know if I am going to make it to the edge Jim, I am in the base of the cloud, keep your heading. I am whiting out.

I am only seven or eight miles away from where I took off but over seven thousand feet higher than the top of Mingus which is near eight thousand where we take off at it's peak. During the track of my flight, I made about twenty five continuous circles to near the base of the cloud then speed to fly in a straight line, climbing the rest of the way to where I am at now.

To my left is a long glide to a unknown dirt road. Many miles from the road that my chase is on. I don't know if I can direct my driver to this road to pick me up. It is just too much for me to try to land out in the heat down below. The sweat from launch had soaked into my tee shirt and jeans. Underneath my coat and harness, I had become cold and clammy, it was near the freezing point at my altitude of fifteen thousand feet.

The cloud is massive and seemingly impenetratable. I could only imagine what it would be like to be sucked into the ink, not knowing up or down, left, right, any direction, only the darkness of the cloud that has enveloped you creating a very small room full of wind, again very surreal. The radio conversations between the three pilots was scaring me. Scaring me to the point of wanting to land. I am sure that I am somewhat hypoxic, and being nervous and in a hypoxic state, flying near a massive black cloud was not my idea of fun. It was then that I found out that I was truly wrong about just following those guys getting my long flight. I was now flying my own flight going as far as my own skill level allowed me to go. I must fly my own flight, this is my lesson today.

Off the end of the mountain chain the cloud did not exist. It needed the bump of the mountain to trigger the surface to let go of its blanket of sun warmed air. Flying away from the mountain cloud I began to sink slowly, then faster. Then the sound of my sink alarm started. The sink alarm was set by me in the comforts of my living room. I set it's trip point at seven hundred feet per minute down. Anything more than this and it stayed on. The sink alarm was now on and staying on. I sped up to zoom out of the sink that I was in.

Down to about nine thousand feet now, only a few thousand over the flat Chino Valley Wash my driver had caught up with me during my sinking glide away from the mountain. I had switched channels on the radio so that I might be a bit more relaxed not listening to those three and their advanced flying tactics. My driver signaled that a dust devil was forming in the corral that was to the left. Yeah, I see it now, but I am about a mile away and sinking like a stone thrown in a pond.

My thoughts are only of the ground. So I circle down in the sinking air away from the lift of the dust devil. This is a big mistake in a cross country pilots life and I am committing it in full consciousness, fully cognizant that I am about to blow out the flame of my flight. A smoke bomb is in my glove box, over the radio I ask my driver to throw it out. I watch like a hawk while the driver reaches in the truck through the open window and retrieves the smoke bomb. Pulling the pin and dropping it a few yards from the truck, I see that it is a very light westerly wind, completely against the wind at altitude.

Out come my feet from the aerodynamic harness, and down in ground effect bleed off speed, flare the wing. Silence. No radio, no vario, no whistling wind, I am safe again. The tension is gone, no more horror movie wind and cloud, no more strained voices of world class pilots. My flight is twenty five miles from launch. Another long flight for me I am thinking to myself, now that I fly my own flights.

I can't remember how far Jim, Hans and Bob flew that day. It doesn't matter to me. I no longer compare my performance to others. Maybe at twenty five miles my flight was actually farther. It is my mind that I want to make happy, today I am a soaring pilot with introspection, the number of miles does not matter to me. My safety is paramount to my success. If I fly as far as my mind will take me safely, then I have made a long flight. The numbers will come with my tenure.