Getting a gold altitude flight at Gorham wave camp turns out to be 70% prep work, 10% skill, and 20% luck. Tyson gets credit for a lot of the prep work, and yet he let me fly our glider on the first Friday of wave camp, which happened to be the day this year with the luck.

Preparations

• Fly an orientation flight in the Gorham NH area with another experienced pilot — I did this last year. Tyson needed Friday to get an orientation David J in the Duo Discus.
• Oxygen system. The bottle especially gave Tyson trouble. He had to build a custom holder.
• Parachute
• Fore and aft ballast weight systems for me vs Tyson.
• Configure the glider computers with the local landmarks, and the special use airspace for wave camp that lets us go above 17,999′ in a 10nm circle around Mount Washington.
• Track the weather and realize we needed to be packed Thursday and plan to fly Friday even though Friday is nominally a low key setup day for the following week of flying.

Last year, when I got my orientation flight in the lower performance club Puchacz, we towed directly into the wave. That is a long tow. There are alternatives. You can tow to the upwind side of Mt Washington and soar ridge lift to get over the summit, then drift back into the wave. This strikes me as similar to how a white water kayaker backs into a wave. The common approach is to tow to the north end of the Moriah-Carter range. From there, you work your way south with a combination of thermals and ridge lift.

Given this was only going to be my second time flying in wave, I wasn’t sure if I could do any of the harder approaches. I asked one of the experienced pilots, Glen, what he thought. He said at my skill level, I should take the tow to Mt Moriah and work my way up. Glen was the tow pilot for the day. I asked him for more hints as we were approaching Mt Moriah. He said to stay on tow until I was certain I could climb over the higher North Carter peak to the south. When we crossed the western spur of Mt Moriah, the variometer said 800 feet per minute up. That’s ~400 fpm higher than a typical tow rate, so I pulled the release and went soaring.

This is where the luck factors in. There was 100-400 fpm of lift the entire Moriah-Carter ridge. I easily cruised south. Steve called down from higher up in the wave and told me he had found it in the valley near the auto road. So when I was abreast the auto road parking lot, I turned my back to the ridge and headed west into the valley. Air pressure waves go down after they go up. So I expected to find sink on my way to the wave. The question was, how much, and would I find the wave before I had to turn tail and retreat to the ridge. I lost 1,000′ and the farther west I went, the rougher the air got. Then suddenly the air was completely smooth and I was going up at 1,200 feet per minute. I’d caught the wave!

From there, it was absurdly easy to stay in the wave and climb and climb. The wave got weaker higher. So I put some effort into exploring where it might be stronger. There were two lenticular clouds marking the primary wave, and another two marking the secondary. I found the wave ahead of the farther south cloud had better lift.

I mentioned putting the special airspace into the glider computers. We had tested everything on the ground at home the night before. But now I couldn’t get it to come up. I was at 16,000′ and still climbing. It was also getting cold. So I put my jacket on, and worked my way through every menu in the display trying to figure out why it wouldn’t show the circle. I hadn’t studied the circle well enough to remember what landmarks delineated its edges. I wasn’t allowed above 17,999′ outside that circle. I was now at 17,000′. I pushed the nose forward on the glider to gain speed, and hopefully maintain altitude while I futzed with the computer.

At this point, I can’t totally say what happened. I definitely lost situational awareness from being focused on the computer. The glider sped up to over 100kts. I may have not been breathing my oxygen correctly and gotten hypoxia. I couldn’t figure out if I was at 18,500′ or 17,500′. The glider started pitching up and down rapidly enough that I hit my head on the canopy a few times. That made no sense given how smooth wave is. After a bit of feeling completely overwhelmed, I finally figured out I could pull the spoilers to slow down and descend. Somewhere around 13,000′, and after having drifted halfway back to the secondary wave, I finally regained situational awareness. I found the pulse oxymeter in the side pouch. It said 97% oxygen. The roller coaster pitching up and down, I realized, had just been me over-controlling the glider while it was flying fast. Descending further while over the Wild River Wilderness didn’t seem like a good idea, so I retracted the spoilers and glided upwind into the primary wave again. I even figured out how to display the 10nm wave window on the glide computer. But I was rattled enough that I didn’t feel like climbing again. Part of me wanted nothing more than to get back on solid ground.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to end what had started as an amazing flight on a sour note. Now at 14,000′, I had altitude to go somewhere and do something. To the north, I spotted another lenticular cloud over Berlin. I found wave behind Crescent Ridge, even though it didn’t have a cloud to mark it. Over the Berlin airport proper, I found 500fpm of sink, so I didn’t stay. Instead I flew between the rotor cloud and the lenticular cloud marking the wave to the west. I climbed in front of the lenticular up to almost 11,000′. Then I headed towards Whitefield. I didn’t see any clues in the clouds. Part of the way I had enough lift to maintain altitude. But then I got into a large region of 500fpm of sink. The strong winds were also making progress slow. I gave up before I got to Whitefield and headed back to Gorham. Only a 37nm cross country triangle, but still fun to go explore.

Despite not climbing as high as the wave could have taken me, I had easily achieved the FAI gold altitude requirement — 3,000m or 9842 feet. One more achievement done! Other experienced folks climbed over 5,000m that day, which meets the next badge requirement — diamond. However, clearly I need some more experience before I get there. Maybe next year I’ll get lucky again.

After I landed, Tyson and David took their turn flying. Conditions had changed enough that they took a different path up into the wave. Their height was limited by the sun setting.

Photos

GPS Track

Emilie’s weglide log