Glider pilots upset that one of the world's best takeoff spots is closed
The Sun – San Bernardino County (newspaper)
By Jennifer M. Dobbs, Correspondent, 4-6-2004
A perfect day for Dexa Wolf includes blue skies, a good breeze, and a bicycle.
Wolf's passion is paragliding, a sport she has been indulging twice a week for more than 14 years. Her favorite spot to glide is Marshall Peak, elevation 4,000 feet, about 3 miles off Highway 18 in the San Bernardino Mountains.
“I could leave my bike at the bottom of the hill, drive up to the peak, fly for a couple of hours and then ride my bike back to my vehicle. That is my perfect day off work,” Wolf said.
That was until the Old Fire burned through the area in October, closing the site and limiting access for hang gliding and paragliding in the area to a sister site in Crestline.
Wolf has now been using the Crestline launch site at elevation 5,200 feet. “Many times it is too windy up there and I can't paraglide. There are days when I choose not to fly at all.”
Closure of Marshall Peak, accesses by forest service road 2N40, has been a disappointment to the more than 200 pilots visiting annually and the 220 members of the Crestline Soaring Society, a non-profit organization and a chapter of the United States Hang Gliding Association, according to president Rob McKenzie, the longest-running member of the club.
“Marshall Peak is world-famous,” he said, adding that combined with the Crestline launch site and the Andy Jackson Airpark landing site below, it is one of the most desirable hang gliding and paragliding sites in the world.”
Owen Morse has been flying for 10 years, five of them at Marshall Peak.
“In my opinion, it is the best flying site in the country, if not the world. The conditions are so docile and it is a less intimidating launch site. I have had some of the best flights of my career there, and I have flown many different sites around the country,” he said.
Morse said the wind and the clouds at Crestline have posed problems for him.
“There is a lesser percentage of soarable days up there. It is sad.”
Within days of the fire, McKenzie said, the forest service informed the club that Marshall Peak would likely be closed at least until March.
“We were told the area was stripped of its vegetation, including the chaparral that was a natural barrier from people driving across the open hillsides which also leaves tracks where vegetation won't grow back and creates additional roads that the forest service didn't intend there,” he said.
“Marshall Peak is within the fire closure area,” said Bob Wood, forest service district recreation officer in the Lytle Creek office, Front Country District. “We are trying to let it rest for a year or so, so that the vegetation there can recover.”
“The ground is fragile and the barriers along the road have been removed by the fire,” Wood said. “People get up there in their ATVs and four-wheel drive vehicles and cut ruts. Water runs down the ruts and makes ditches. Or one vehicle establishes a trail that shouldn't be there, and then others follow it.”
Wood said forest service personnel will re-evaluate the area after the spring growth comes in.
“For now, they can go in on foot or on horseback, but they can't take any vehicles in there,” he said. “It is an awkward situation, because the group really does no harm there. But it is public land, and if I let them in, I have to let everyone in.”
in 1982, the Soaring Society successfully secured a special-use permit from the forest service to regulate the Crestline launch site, allowing for expanded parking, portable toilets and ensuring special requirements for pilots including insurance, proper instruction, specific flight ratings and membership in the United States Hang Gliding Association and the Crestline Soaring Society.
McKenzie said the club tried to do the same at Marshall Peak in hopes of re-opening it.
“But since we weren't trying to expand parking or put in toilet facilities, we didn't really need a permit. Hang gliding and paragliding are already allowed there when the area is open to the public,” McKenzie said.
The club also offered to pay for a gate that isolates the most devastated end of the road, the west end of 2N40, and provide funds for the gate and to repair the east end of the road which would allow them access to the area. The club has maintained and repaired the road in the past when necessary.
“They offered to fix the road,” said Wood, “and I told them they would be welcome to adopt the road just like they adopt a highway, but that wouldn't really serve them because I still couldn't let them in that closed area.”
McKenzie, who has been flying since 1974 and runs a flight school with wife Dianne, said the club is willing to work with the forest service in any way it can to open the site.
“We've got the man and woman power and the money to help,” he said. “If they want us to work, whatever it is, we want to help.”
McKenzie said he feels th presence of the club on Marshall Peak is helpful to the forest service. In the past, he said, pilots have located stolen cars and witnessed arson.
“Off-road vehicles are still going up there,” he said. “If we were up there we would be a deterrent to that, too.”
Some pilots are not willing to wait for the gate to open, including paraglider Mark Leahy of Los Feliz. He makes the 500-foot, 1.5 mile hike along 2N40 carrying more than 40 pounds of equipment to launch off Marshall Peak.
“The hike is a bit of work. I don't do it as often as if I were driving in,” Leahy said. “But Marshall is one of the best places to fly.”
He takes the hike, he said, because paragliding off Crestline is not desirable.
“It is a thriving community flying out of Marshall,: he said. “If it stays closed for long, I am afraid pilots will drift away.”
McKenzie, who has logged more than 17,000 flights in his career and been nationally recognized for safety through the US Hang Gliding Association, shares Leahy's fear.
“Our worst fear is that they will keep it closed indefinitely,” he said.
“The forest closure order right now is for one year,” said Allison Stewart of the Mountain Top District office. “That is because one year is usually what it takes for fire rehabilitation to be most effective. But depending on conditions this spring and summer, maybe Mother Nature will accommodate us and we can open up sooner.”
Wood said he feels the club's pain. “I would like to be able to give them a key to the gate and say to use it, but that would cause problems.”
The Crestline Soaring Society began in the mid-'70s as the San Bernardino Hang Gliding association. It has received congressional recognition for its work in the community, including its annual toy drive which provides more than $1,000 in toys through the local firefighters Spark of Love program.