Mansfield is a very convenient turnpoint with a nice runway, safe to land at if you run out of lift (as I witnessed myself last year, when I landed out here).

Back to the current flight: Since I did not fly much to the south before, I then opted to head to Beezley, a hill-top dirt strip someone built next to his house in the middle of the farmland between Ephrata and Wenatchee. That turnpoint is often used as an "add-on" on the final glide during contests at Ephrata, when one arrives too high at Ephrata, and then "bleeds" off the additional altitude by going still to Beezley and back, thereby tacking on the extra miles.

From Beezley I picked out Burch Mountain as my next destination, to make a course straight over the plateau. On the way from Beezley I crossed the southern part of Moses Coulee, here shown before it merges into the main canyon of the Columbia River.

I figured that once crossing Columbia, there might not be lift over the mountains, and that I'd have to move back. I was pleased to discover a nice strong thermal right over the radio tower on top of Burch Mountain. It was very narrow and turbulent, but gave me enough altitude to venture farther towards Chumstick Mountain (5800') and along the ridge leading to Lake Wenatchee, eventually turning away from the ridge at a place where the major transmission power lines cross it.

I headed out over the lower hills towards Plains, just on an off-chance that some thermals could be there. They weren't, and so I decided to at least tack on Blag Mountain (4700'). I figured that the area burnt in the last year's Fisher fire would kick off thermals, rather than the green, unburnt surroundings. And indeed, there was one good thermal on the northwest slope of Blag. This gave me a nice opportunity to scan the countryside below, admire the remote homes that barely escaped destruction, and scout the nice sandstone cliffs north of Blag.

Once topping the thermal I decided to head south, just west of Cashmere. In the foreground in the photo, find the Cashmere airport (another of our turnpoints... it is below and to the right of the red oval).

I crossed the valley to the right, to the nearest hill south of the Wenatchee River. There was nothing there so I veered off towards Twin Peaks, and found a thermal on its northwest flank. That one was just strong enough to get me over the ridge into the ski area and into Stemilt basin. I arrived there well below Jumpoff Ridge lookout. There a thermal lifted me again high enough to start a long practice final glide run into Pangborn.

I started calculating how far I could go away from Pangborn first before having to head back. I started the glide from 7800', from the Jumpoff lookout, and went for 12 miles towards Quincy. Just about to where Highway 28 turns east toward Trinidad, I figured I'd better turn back to Pangborn to arrive there at pattern altitude. When I turned near Trinidad, I was at 6100', with 13 miles to go. It soon became apparent that I was way too conservative, because I arrived over Pangborn with 3900' on altimeter. Pangborn is at 1245', so I had 2600 spare feet of altitude. I had enough height to get to the Pocket, the bowl on Badger ridge north of the airport where a road from East Wenatchee to Badger Mountain crests the ridge. Then I slowly meandered home for landing, admiring the undulating fields of the plateau below the Pocket and "our" ridge.

Dr. Jack Blipmap for this day.