Nice flying but a terrible day

I’m not quite sure how to write this. I had a pretty good flight, but witnessed something terrible which somehow makes my day not that important.

The task committee called an 87 km task, pretty short by recent standards. Start around Cerpel at 12:45pm, back to launch, then to San Augustine, out to Santa Maria, along the ridge to Aguila, to within 4 km of Cualte (on the south side of the lake), and finally goal at the Lake LZ.

We all got ourselves established on Crazy after some initial scratching around, and then tagged Cerpel for the start. Then it was back to launch. There were 2 distinct groups at this point…those who tagged Cerpel and then flew back to Crazy to get back to launch that way, and those of us who tagged Cerpel and then flew directly back to launch. We got back to launch before the other larger group, but in the end it was the whole armada on the rim between the Penon and launch.

We needed to get high for the over-the-back run to San Augustine, so pilots were flying along the ridge behind the Penon trying to connect to the clouds there; rather than fly out front of Penon (which takes longer). I will admit I was one of them. It’s a long glide out to any LZ’s when you do this, and you’re directly in the lee of the Penon. But there were about 100 pilots in front of me doing the same thing, and we were all being lemmings. It was a stupid place for us to fly.

Directly behind Penon there is a V-shaped notch with a shear cliff. I saw a pilot flying a light blue Omega in the V-notch (like a small canyon) trying to thermal out of there. All of a sudden I saw him get a collapse, which turned into a cravatte on his right side. I could see him desperately trying to keep a straight heading while trying to fix the cravatte. He’d fly straight for a few seconds, and then it would start to wind up. He managed to stop the winding-up 2 times, but the 3^rd time he couldn’t control it, and it locked into a spiral. Oh shit.

As he started winding up I was saying to myself “throw your reserve”, but he never did. At full wind-up speed he crashed into the cliff in the V-notch in a cloud of dust. I saw the cravatte pop out as this happened. But it was too late, and he spiraled into the cliff again at full speed, the glider caught on something, and he slid down the cliff face.

I was right over him as this happened so I was unable to see the pilot number on the underside of his glider. I could see him laying at the bottom of the cliff, not moving, no sound coming from him. Another Omega glider and myself started circling over him, shouting at him to try and get a response. But after seeing the speed and violence with which he smashed into the cliff, I was pretty sure I had just seen a pilot die.

I tried desperately to top-land on the top of the cliff (there is a small spot where you could technically put a paraglider down), but it was very turbulent and I was suffering collapses of my own. And I was trying to relay information on the radio to the rescue team (GPS co-ordinates, crashed glider ID, etc), avoid the other Omega pilot, and try to see signs of movement from the pilot. I kept trying and trying to get low enough to land but kept zooming up in the strong thermals. Finally I decided it was too dangerous for me to try to land on that cliff top; I didn’t want to crash myself and require my own rescue.

At one point I thought I heard the pilot screaming and I was so relieved, since it meant he was still alive. But I only heard the one scream and I’m not sure anymore if it was the crashed pilot, or the other Omega pilot screaming instead.

After giving all the information I was able on the glider, where it was, etc., the organization told me an Air Marshall was in the vicinity and it was OK for me to leave and continue my flight. So I thermalled out of that hellhole spot and back into clean air, where I could keep my own paraglider assembled and back up to the safety of cloudbase.

By this time most of the field was ahead of me towards San Augustine. I flew there under cloudbase, mostly in a daze, and tagged it. In fact most of my flight was in the same state; I can remember certain exciting parts, like the upwind glide to Maguey in 20 km headwinds and almost landing several times, the upwind slog to Santa Maria, ridge running to Aguila and getting low so many times I can’t keep count, and back to Espina.

At Espina I was able to thermal up and then only had to get to within 4 km of the last TP and then the home glide to the lake LZ. But I was by myself at this point, so decided to head to Maguey to try to top up, jump to Serro Gordo, top up again, and then upwind slog to Cualte. It didn’t quite work out at that way. It was very windy at Serro Gordo and not able to get up on it, so I bailed over the back and glided to within 6 km of the last TP, landing in a nice big field west of Iglesia. There were 2 other pilots with me, so the retrieve came right away and got us. I had flown 75 km. Tracklog is here.

Back at HQ I received the bad news that the pilot I had seen crash had died, either on-site, or during the helicopter ride to the hospital. I’m not sure if his name has been made public yet outside of the competition, but out of respect for his family I’ll not put it here.

Tomorrow is the mandated rest day anyways, and there was a slate of offered activities for the pilots. I’m not sure now what will happen tomorrow, or in subsequent days. There are lots of red eyes around HQ, and I will admit that watching the whole accident happen and not being able to land and offer some kind of assistance or comfort to the crashed pilot until the rescue crew could arrive is eating me up.

We were all doing a stupid thing when this happened. I’ve never flown that route from launch to the Wall, and common sense would dictate that doing so is not smart, with you flying directly in the lee of the Penon and all the potential problems associated with it. But when you see pilots in front of you doing it, and it’s a competition, and you are trying to keep up, the part of your brain that is yelling at you “this is wrong!” is very hard to pay attention to. You think you can get away with it, and most times you will. But this time we paid the price for our folly with a pilots’ life. It’s not a good feeling to know that had we been smart and flown the safe route, this probably wouldn’t have happened.