Crestline Soaring Society

Short Version:
Crestline. Launch. Climb. Strawberry. 7600. Smoke. Land.

Longer Version:
Similar to Saturday, but stronger base wind. Gusting to around 20 at Crestline. I launched a Sport 2 155 at 14:51, did a few passes over launch, and then was at 6350 at 14:58. Headed to the Interchange, climbed to 6800, then the next spine, got to 6900. Went to the spine out in front of Strawberry Peak, but the wind was blowing the cores apart. I kept getting lone circles of 100-200 up, and eventually dipped down below 6000 while working back west of the Cliffhanger. Decided to run out the spine on the east side of Waterman Canyon and see if I could catch a nice core that I could climb with for a long time while it drifted toward Strawberry. At 15:25 was at 5200 over Arrowhead Peak vicinity and 9 minutes later was at 7700 over Strawberry, thermalling with a Moyes topless. That thermal was 300-600 FPM for the most part; it weakened at about 7k and I really had to hunt to stay with the core, but then it picked up again - weak inversion?

After I actually circled Strawberry I headed west along the ridge, looking for a new goal. I was really noticing how the whistling of the pip pins and streamlined corner fittings sounded like sirens, and actually was scanning the highway below for an accident and actual sirens. I was past the Cliffhanger when I spotted the smoke from the small fire near the Mountain Disposal yard, about 3/4 mile east of launch. I pointed toward the LZ, straight across Waterman Canyon (I was still at about 7k), and once I'd cleared the east spine of Marshall I dove for the LZ, where the white X was out and a number of pilots were fighting their way down to land. I considered landing on Marshall to wait out the fire, which wasn't growing and was in an accessible spot, but didn't want to be stuck on Marshall if things went badly. I noticed that there was no traffic going up Hwy. 18.

So I got a 1:05 flight, got some altitude and made a goal. Many pilots had their flights cut quite short.

Crestline 9-3-06 - Google Earth view of fire location: An area that burns every couple of years.The fire was at the top of a steep ravine that has power lines running up it ( 34°13'56.84"N 117°17'55.37"W ). When I was living in Crestline, less than 1/2 mile from that spot, the ravine burned twice. The cause was the power lines getting overheated on a hot day (the rare need for A/C in Crestline) and igniting a pole or snapping and lighting the brush. That was probably the cause of today's fire. In fact, the Google Earth image of the area features a brown slash in that same area from a fire sometime before the snap was taken.

A spotter plane and some helicopters were active over the fire for a while, but the airspace was reopened around 17:00 and some groups of pilots got to get late-day flights in. Then there was a police helicopter circling low east of the LZ chasing target shooters. The Site Monitor did a great job coordinating with the chopper pilot on the aircraft radio.


Flight track image at:
http://www.kenvective.com/images/flights/