Chris Garcia
Friday, 10/11/2019

EJ to VOR then OTB to Happy Canyon

Reference: [Chris IGC Text Data File], Google Earth [Chirs KMZ File] & [Logan KMZ File]
Ayvri [Animation of Chris Only] or [Animation of Chris & Logan]  plus Article by [Logan Walters]

Chris's Recollection:

Looking at the forecast in the morning I was thinking that Fig was a possibility or at least somewhere in the backcountry.  I never had the intention of going over the back on this day.

Being the fourth one off EJ, I could clearly see that there was a lot of East and I did not want to push up wind with that much East, mainly because I don’t like it.  After coming out of the Canyon from EJ at launch height, I got on top of Cathedral and found a nice climb to 4300.  Logan was at La Cumbre and eventually he and I met up at West Bowl and continued to the VOR together.  After patiently climbing there he stayed with a broken thermal and then left to go OTB.  As we were working our way up the spine I had a feeling it was only a matter of time before one of us left to make the move.  I wanted a bit more altitude and after catching the next piece of lift I got to 47/4800ish and followed Logan over to Sage.  Logan checked San Ynez Airport, which was west at 3mph.

After getting on Sage we continued W bound.  Logan asked if I wanted to go deep and I replied no.  Little did I know I would be the one to lead us on the deep line initially having lost Logan in altitude above me.  Logan then came on the radio with a laugh “I thought you didn’t want to go deep”, but it seemed like the right move to make.  I was on a very iffy line and went North to an area that looked like a good potential for converging valley flows and boy did I find some lift.  I got a little over 7K there and at the time my eyes were set on doing the reverse of my April flight from Fig, well, fly the day, not your desire.  Logan later explained he thought we were on an East/West convergence and that we should have pushed further to the N, to maybe connect to the Pine line and take the Eddy all the way around.  Who knows if that would have worked but based on what was on paper it makes sense and would have been super rad, but more committing.  I am willing to be at this point in the game.

The glides between climbs after my 7k top out were total shit, 2:1, 3:1, on bar and what seemed like a headwind in all directions.  I kept finding climbs and working my way out to the front to be near a paved road (after getting pretty low in the backcountry, I was ready for some civilization).  Granted, as I remembered from my previous flight that way, there are plenty of places to land and dirt roads that lead you out.  So it really isn’t that deep, but sure does feel like it.  Logan was able to keep pushing to McKinley and stayed on the back line as I crawled my way to the front.

I did manage to get another few climbs that got me to 6k and one out front in the main valley that took me to 5k but the W valley flow was kicked in pretty good and I was not making much progress.  Logan radioed in from the back line that he was having a hard time pushing W past Happy Canyon, probably why he came to the conclusion we should have pushed North again.

It was a really fun and special day.  Max climb 4.1 m/s and max sink was 4.4m/s.  Logan got a wind speed reading of 31km/hr and I was in the mid 20’s at one point on my instrument.  It was hard to tell what the wind was doing at times.  I thought pushing N was the wrong call because I felt a headwind there when I was at top of lift.

Both times I have been back there it brings me memories of Woodrat, which really has prepared me for flying this area.  Reason being that when you are inland in the middle of the day you are dealing with micro and macro weather systems.  Assuming that big mountains will be drawing lots of air up the valleys, I was trying to find valleys that were flowing around a large mass of land and converging behind it, thinking that triggers would be protected back there and that the winds coming together would create some nice lift.  Thinking about the big picture was hard when I couldn’t really seem to understand what was happening in the different canyons/valleys I was flying over.  Even though I was well above them at times.

Thanks Logan for the extra motivation to go OTB and Heckman for the retrieve.  Another piece of the puzzle.  I landed at Happy Canyon And Aliso road intersection.

Chris Garcia

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