In the morning of Friday, June 3, 2005, I noticed that the weather forecast for the weekend was not very favorable for Sunday. If I wanted to get in two days of soaring, I'd have to start on Friday! I feverishly finished the most essential work chores, made important phone calls, and by noon Karly helped me put the wings on the glider.I could not round up any towpilots, finally John Roskos agreed to come and tow me. I got airborne at one thirty in the afternoon. John towed me to the ridge northeast of the airport, and himself still flew the length of the ridge to its southern point before returning to the field.

Lift was good and at ten to two I was at 7,000' over the Lookout. I forget if it was there or at the next thermal above the Badger Mountain that I decided to head for Moses Mountain.

Looking at Dr. Jack's blipmap of this morning, I noticed that lift would be good everywhere except in that area - so why did I go there? Challenge, I guess. In each case, plentiful clouds looked the best in that direction.

I made one long glide to north of Waterville, aiming for dust devils. I missed two before I found a good one. That fruitless circling cost me five minutes. The good thermal rewarded me with a climb to cloud base at 8,400'.

I proceeded with a 15 mile glide (at the 11 mile point I made one fruitless circle), and in just six circles climbed to cloud base again. Right above Columbia River, just north of the Nills Corner turnpoint, I made an "orientation stop" just to assess whether I should proceed with my plan.

Over Nills Corner. Columbia in the foreground, Moses Mtn on the right horizon. Still a long way to go.

This is after several times I had to convince myself not to chicken out at the last minute, especially since I had to go 100 miles to get here.

When you get closer, the mountain top does not seem to be so close to the cloud bases.

Actually, there was enough room to look down on it and snap a few pictures.

The other time I was here there was snow on the summit. It was on May 31, 2004. I recall that I got into the wave over Quincy on that same flight.

From the May 31, 2004 flight.

Looking at my IGC files, on June 3, 2005 I rounded the Moses Mountain top at 8,130' while on May 31, 2004 at 8,740'. According to the Street Atlas, the summit of the Mountain is at 6,774.

Looking down on Moses Mountain in May 2004.

Here you can see the snow better.

Back to the most recent flight. The cloud base in the vicinity of the Moses Mountain on June 3, 2005, was around 8,400'.

Below is a panorama of the countryside around Moses Mountain.

This is the view to the north.

View to the west, towards Omak.

And this is to the south, the direction I went after rounding the mountain. I did not take a picture to the east, it was too shaded there.

Glider pilot's paradise. Wonderful cummulus AND dust devils marking the best location of lift. View from roughly over Nills Corner to the southwest, with Mansfield about in the middle of the picture. On the left are Jameson and Grimes Lakes.

Looking straight south, towards Ephrata. Coulee City is on the left margin, with the blue of Banks Lake visible.

I did not go straight home. Mindful of maximizing scoring on OLC, I decided to go as far south as the clouds went, then zig back north, and only then head for home. It turned out that I went till over the Beezley Hills turnpoint near Ephrata, then headed directly north towards Mansfield. The cummulus clouds started congealing then into one massive cloud street. It ended, however, over Rimrock on the south side. I got a little nervous going all the way to Mansfield, and turned around near Jameson Lake.

At twenty to six I happened to rendez-vous with JN who unbeknowns-to-me was on his massive 760 km flight that day. When I launched and was over Badger Mountain, he had already flown 315 km of his flight! We were quite close to each other there also, but not in the same thermal as late in the afternoon.

I chickened out going all the way to Mansfield and back because the clouds appeared to me losing their intensity, also the dust devils below them started disappearing. Moreover, I saw long streamers of blowing dust across the Waterville and especially Badger plateaus, the route I had to take to get home. That's why I shortened the northerly leg. It was a good choice - even if somewhat conservative. The strong headwinds (22 knots gusting to 29 was Pangborn's report) did not materialize until I descended below 5,000'; and above them the wind was only around 10 knots. Ephrata itself had on 11 knots on the ground.

Thanks to my conservative departure from over Rimrock, I was able to glide directly west rather than immediately to Pangborn, and still be able to make it safely over the treacherous (in this headwind) lip of the Badger Ridge at the Pocket. (I had lodged in my mind happless Rudy Allemann's final glide during one contest years back, when the Pocket was the finish point. The wind intensified close to the ground so much that Rudy never made it over the Pocket to the safety of the Columbia River Canyon, and eventually Pangborn. Instead he crashed his glider in one of the gullies leading to the Pocket from the east.)

Back to my flight. Once over the valley and in steady ridge lift, I turned north and slope soared around Lookout all the way to the Badger Mountain Radio towers, thereby adding to my OLC mileage, as it turned out after the fact during the optimization of the flight. Landing was quite adventuresome. Even Emily warned me when I advised I was back of the strong winds on the ground around our home. I flew across the wind on my approach to the airport, and calibrated my airspeed indicator with the indications on the GPS (the GPS readout should then not be influenced by the wind - that much). That gave me a double information for at what speed I should approach on the final leg; I decided to fly at 80 kts indicated. From the corner of my eye I glanced at the GPS when I was down to about 50 feet; and it read 52 knots. I rolled out a little farther than usual, but had very good control of the glider during the round out and flare, no surprises.

The Moses Mountain challenge turned out to be a wonderful flight.