Back to Blackhawk :  Cross Country / Vol Voyage

A Cross Country flight by Matthew Carter (E-mail) on Saturday, August 11, 2001.

Well, with the traffic and rest stop, my predictions of 1 hour to the bottom of Blackhawk proved a bit on the low side. Sorry guys !! 2 hours plus drive just to the bottom of the hill and then the fun was only just beginning. Thanks to the 8 game PG pilots who sportingly maintained composure during the long and winding 2-wheel-drive slog up many 4X4 trails. Eventually up at the top, we met up with Jocky Sanderson's XC course students.

It was looking great, cycling in clean and hard, with epic clouds going off above the San Bernardino's. Blackhawk offers some spectacular views over the Lucerne Valley. We were getting pretty shaded by the development, so we left it up to Jerome to sniff out the core in the shade. A small wave of pilots tossed off the hill in hot pursuit as soon as he started coring, and we worked weak lift to 1000 over, as Jerome and myself crossed the Canyon above the 18, and found good lift on the opposite side in the sunshine. Great climb out to over 15 000 near cloudbase, we were later to both get to 15 300 MSL. Fantastic views, needless to say.

Jerome headed out NW to the Lucerne Valley, while I followed the initially good drift East, with the foothills close to Marshall on an easy glide. But East seemed the way to go, and I was thinking Wrightwood until I hit the strong SW flow 30 km out from launch, NW of Lake Arrowhead above the Pinnacles. Flushed almost straight back to Lucerne in the hard W, a 25 km leg scuttling downwind, trying to get back up into the upper easterly. Doh ! By now my flight plan resembled an almost complete circle. Not good for getting the distance. I had the bizarre experience of passing Jerome, both of us going opposite directions on our respective XC flights ! He pushed west and landed along the 18 at Granite Mountain. Clouds were showing East, but it was shearing hard west lower down. Not exactly a recipe for distance. So I decided to split the difference and bash North. Clouds were saying go to Ludlow, but my feet were saying stay on the paved roads. My feet won, and I pushed over into the Stoddard Valley and landed 7 miles South of Downtown Barstow on Highway 247. Straight-line distance from launch, 53.5 km's or 33 miles on the GPS, accomplished in record slow time.