Most pilots have heard of the Owens Valley. On top of the hill or in the bar, when stories of epic sites are being tossed around, someone will mention the Owens with its big air and long cross country flights. He'll also tell of booming thermals, hang gliders snapped to bits, and people bailing out of their harnesses in strong winds. These stories are all second hand because that person has never been there himself. In fact not too many people have, and so the Owens is talked about with a distant reverence. It has become a fabled place, like the place where your granddad trudged 10 miles through the snow uphill both ways; it makes a good story, but it doesn't seem quite real.

Alec Chattaway decided he wanted to find out for himself. He figured if the stories about great fall flying in the Owens were even half true, then what better place to spend an extended weekend at the end of September. A low-key email went out to the local mailing list, and before you know it there were about twenty-five people lined up and raring to go. Of course, this number dwindled to about twelve when all was said and done.

I saw the note and decided that this trip would be a great introduction to the Owens. There'd be experienced pilots who'd flown various launches there and plenty of people for easier retrieves. So I caravaned out with Alec on Thursday. Alec had scared up a driver, Richard, through a loose connection of email affiliations. Richard didn't know any of the pilots but figured an all expenses paid weekend in the mountains driving other people's cars through the dirt couldn't be half bad.

We arrived at the Elms Motel Thursday night around 10. "Quiet, clean and reasonable," the sign said -- the hallmark of all fine lodging establishments. The next morning we were up and at the Kava Coffeehouse by nine to meet up with Shankar and Steve. The forecast winds aloft showed light and variable at 6 and 9 thousand, east at 11 knots at 12,000, and north at 22 knots at 18,000. The weather channel called for afternoon south winds from 10 to 20 mph. In the sky we could see a few high, wispy, layer clouds. Conditions looked flyable, so we decided a warm-up flight or two at Flynn's would be good before heading up to Paiute for the real flight of the day.

As a first time pilot at Owens, I didn't really know what to expect. I had had a dream about going there a few nights before in which a tiny creek wormed through a dry, rocky riverbed framed in the background by towering, jagged, bone-dry mountains. Turns out my dream wasn't too far off. As we drove toward Flynn's, the terrain struck me as barren, inhospitable, daunting. At the same time, the mountains seemed majestic, grandiose, otherworldly. I found myself using the word "moonscape" several times over the weekend. Later as I flew over the mountains from a better vantage point, the twisted red, yellow, and white rock formations reinforced my impression. Every ridge brought a new spectacle, and none of it seemed like anything I'd ever seen before.

Emily, my girlfriend, had passed on the trip and asked me over the phone what it was like. The best description I could come up with was: "hard-core". The roads up to launch require a car with 4WD low and a competent driver to navigate the ruts and rocks and avoid the drop-offs. The launches at Flynn's and Paiute are composed of sharp shale that could easily fray or cut a line. Small, thorny plants suffering under the sun tangle themselves in your lines out of spite. The landscape is desolate, and even in September the heat was substantial.

We paused in the Flynn's LZ to get a few flying tips from Shankar and for Steve to provide Richard an exhaustive session on how to use the gps for retrieves -- time well-spent if we wanted to make it back to the cozy Elms motel that night. Then we continued up the rocky road to Flynn's launch, about a fifteen minute trip.

The wind was cycling in from the southwest at a moderate 2 - 6 mph, and the few high layer clouds were still present but insubstantial. Out came the wings and off we all went for short flights of around 10 minutes. A few thermals were bubbling up but nothing big enough to stay aloft in. Immediately I noticed that the air was more fickle than most of the sites I had flown. The wing seemed to depressurize periodically even though the air wasn't very strong, so I tried to stay on top of things and not get complacent. Throughout the trip, we kept mentioning how thankful we were not to be flying here in the middle of summer. The place was an oven at the end of September; I can't imagine July.

By the time we were all down and packed up, it was 12:30 and time to head over to Paiute. Driving up the rocky switchbacks and peering over the steep drop-offs, we marveled at how the road was ever built in the first place. After about 45 minutes we arrived at launch. The wind was still southwest but was stronger, cycling between 8 and 15. The launch at Paiute was similar to Flynn's but with a few bigger rocks mixed in with the shale and less space to lay out your wing.

Steve launched first and worked for a while to get up but finally made his way above launch and slowly got smaller and smaller. It looked like nothing was going to come easy today. Shankar headed off afterwards and slowly sank out of sight. Alec and I laid out in two spots about fifty feet apart. The wind didn't seem very strong, but when I pulled up I got lifted off and was flying backwards 5 to 10 feet off the ground. I expected the wing to gain some forward speed, but when I kept going backwards, and the hill started sloping away behind me, I grabbed the C's and killed the wing when I got close to the ground. Then of course I had to suffer through plucking my lines out of the prickly scrub bushes while sweltering under all my long underwear and fleece. At this point I caught a glimpse of Shankar above launch and felt some hope for the day.

I balled the wing up in my arms and walked back to launch. Alec was still there, sorting himself out. He launched promptly and I followed right after him. He headed south where we'd seen Steve go up. I headed right after him a few hundred yards behind. He started going up, and I watched him fly up and away while I kept sinking without so much as a wind gust. We were over the canyon to the south at this point, so I headed down along the north side of the canyon, hoping to find some thermals wicking off that side because of the south wind. I kept heading down the north side, only once pausing to make a few passes in a thermal that quickly petered out, all the while thinking, "Great, I'm going to be the one who sinks out at the Owens."

Launch is about 8000 feet, and the LZ is around 4500, and it wasn't until I nearly reached the flats that head toward the LZ that I found a thermal. I was at 6100 and climbed up in this thermal to over 11k. Meanwhile I had lost sight of the others, so I slowly meandered north over the mountains, mostly between 11k and 13k although one time reaching 14,300. I left the thermal at that height because I was nervous about hypoxia and also a little cold.

I continued working my way north from point to point and ridge to ridge, pausing for lift wherever I found it and marveling at the views. Every ridge brought with it new sights and new colors: jagged crags, jutting rocks, and erratic canyons, hewn by a geological struggle of titanic proportions and painted with a rusty palette. I was awed by the terrain and snapped lots of pictures whenever I got high enough to feel comfortable. Since I couldn't see anyone or hear them on the radio, I was in no hurry.

The Owens Valley is sandwiched between the Sierra Nevadas on the west and the White Mountains on the east. The Whites run north from Paiute for about 25 miles and then break to the east before circling back around in a U. Where the Whites headed east, I continued straight north over the flats. Since the wind was south, I didn't want to mess with any rotor caused by the Whites after they turned.

I picked out a nice looking LZ right next to highway 6 for an easy retrieve. From the air, all the terrain around there looks benign, and it's not until you get down near ground level that you can see the mess of foot and a half tall scrub that's anxious to trip you on your landing. Knowing this, I picked a spot that looked marble smooth. I reached it with plenty of height and made a few 360's to assure myself of the wind direction before landing softly at 5:26 pm.

I took my helmet off and relaxed for a moment. The flight had taken 2 hours and 26 minutes, and I was ready for a breather and happy to be down on the warm ground. I picked up my gps to determine coordinates for the retrieve, but it wasn't until later that I figured out the distance of my first cross country flight: 27.7 miles.

After calling Richard for a retrieve, I got a call from Shankar. Turned out he'd landed about a mile up the road from me for a distance of 28 and 1/4 miles. I took my time packing up and savored the warm colors of the desert at sunset before making my way to the road. Steve and Shankar pulled up while I was walking and Richard and Alec showed up just after. At the barbed wire fence near the road, Steve grabbed my bag for me and Shankar offered me a frozen banana. I was exhausted and really appreciated both little kindnesses.

The first day had been a good one with everyone going x-c. Now it was time to relax with some dinner and a cold beer (a frosty banana can only carry you so far).

Day two dawned with a clear sky and temperatures feeling a shade cooler (at least that's what we were optimistically telling each other). Back to Kava again to group up with everyone. Today we had a crew of 12: Shankar Narayanaswamy, Steve Young, Alec Chattaway, Martin Lades, Tom Moock, George Morford, Paulina Concha, Darren Guberman, Jumpin' Joe, Christina Raimondo, Tin Ilakovac, and myself. Again a few of us decided to hit Flynn's before Paiute, while the rest headed straight to Paiute.

We arrived at launch at Flynn's around 11:15 and found the winds cross from the north and strong, cycling up to 17. So we sat there and waited, more out of indecision than any conviction that it was going to get better. But as we dallied, the wind lessened and straightened out a bit. We managed to get in the air before noon and found some workable thermals. We boated around for a while in mellow morning thermals, and I managed to work my way up about fifteen hundred feet over launch and back to the ridges behind. Two others were landing at this point so I headed out toward the LZ to pack up for the trip to Paiute. In hindsight we should've stayed at Flynn's and just gotten up and flown from there, but no one thought of this at the time.

So we headed to Paiute. When we got there, none of the other group had launched yet. Cycles were fairly strong, up to about fifteen, and the wind was from the northwest. Soon after we arrived, Tom, Tin, Christina, and Darren lobbed themselves off the hill and despite valiant efforts slowly sank downward. But a few minutes later the group had worked themselves up above launch and started drifting to the south. A steady stream of gliders hit the air after that.

Most people ended up flying to the south and had good x-c flights of around 10 to 15 miles. Not me. I launched second to last and found decent lift right off launch, but it was small and turbulent, so I decided to look for something else. Well, something else was hard to find. I headed over the canyon to the south where some people had found lift and tried to work the north face hoping the wind would push the thermals up that side. I found enough lift to maintain but could never get more than about 1000 ft. over the ground. I tried all the peaks, points, ridges, bulges, and undulations I could make it too in my local area, but nothing offered me any sustained lift.

Finally after about an hour and a half between 6000 and 7500 feet, I got low and started heading out over the flats toward the LZ (which is pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of the valley floor -- in fact I still don't think I know where the LZ really is). While resigned to my fate, I was still desparately hoping to get up. At around 5800, about five hundred over the flats, I found a weak thermal that I fought to stay in. It drifted back toward the spine and once it reached the slope, startened strengthening.

All the other pilots had disappeared to the south long ago ('cept for Jumpin' Joe who had a nice hour-long flight over the flats and kept me company a bit). But as I struggled in my little thermal, I noticed two wings heading back from the south. One was Tin, and he was just a shade higher than I. He saw me in my little thermal and made a beeline for me. He came into the thermal a bit above me and together we worked it up and up to over 12,500. How nice to be away from the ground for once that day! He left at that point and continued about 15 miles to the north. I found out later that he had earlier gone south about 15 miles, turned around and came back, and then coninued on north. What a flight! Must've been that oxygen he had.

The other pilot who returned was Tom. Tom had also gone south about 15 miles and returned. Instead of continuing on to the north, he top-landed at Paiute to drive down the one car that remained at launch. We all bequeathed him many karma points at dinner.

I was exhausted from trying to get up for so long and decided to boat around in what had become a big, fat, non-stop thermal. My gps gave out about now, but I continued up for a while longer and had a nice view to the east over the Whites before heading directly out over the valley for some mellow air to end the day in.

The air was dead calm high over the valley, but thankfully got toastier as I slowly descended. I started thinking about my landing well above the valley floor. I'd had a few recent no-wind landings that I'd had to run out, and I wanted to make this one as hassle-free as possible. Since I couldn't get ground speed from my dead gps, I scouted for wind indicators. A dust plume in the distance indicated a very slow south drift. A few 360's made me think the wind was south as well, but it was hard to tell. Below me a couple atv's kicked up dust that actually drifted to the south, indicating a slight north wind. I found a nice dirt road amidst the scrub brush and finally committed to landing to the south.

Boy, was I coming in fast, I thought as I approached the ground. I think I flared hard, but I could see there was no hope for running this one out. My feet touched the ground together for an instant before I tumbled headlong into a bristly bush which nicely cushioned my stop. The dirt is actually loose and soft in the desert there and makes for a nice landing pad, especially if you can find a dry, crusty, thorny bush to aid your deceleration -- which isn't hard to find. I dusted myself off, marked the time for my 2h 21m flight, and started packing up.

The next day Ross Bishop joined us and we headed up to McGee's, an east facing launch, to try to cope with the southeast winds. The winds at launch were strong and cross and even Tom packed in his wing. I was half relieved to get a day off. Of course you always hope each day will offer some epic new flying adventure, but the past two days had been a terrific introduction to the Owens for me and I was thankful to leave with over five and a half hours of airtime and my first cross-country flight under my belt. And now, since we were leaving early, I could look forward to a daylight trip through the majestic scenery of Yosemite.

The trip was a blast, and I want to thank Alec for providing the spark and organizing many of the details, and Richard, our non-flying driver, who received his first introduction to the magic of paragliding and seemed to genuinely enjoy himself despite the incessant talk of crabbing, scratching, thermal triggers, lapse rates, and lenticulars.