The Road to Marfa (continued from page 5)

On our first full day following our group briefing, Terry Wools, always first to be ready to fly was chomping on the taxiway with Don Taylor close behind. In no more time than it took to launch Terry and Don, a large thunderstorm, which had been born in the mountains east of Marfa, made it known it was moving in our direction. The surface winds picked up carrying some dust and a few drops of rain. The reaction of the rest of us was to run for the hangar where we hurriedly shoved gliders and left room for Terry, Don, and Burt's towplane. By the time that job was done, Terry had announced his approach and runway, the storm was closer, but no heavy rain yet. Terry was on his downwind when the wind shifted 90 degrees to the West. Burt advised a landing on the other runway and Terry did an immediate 270 to the right rolling out on short final with a wall of dust and wind up to 38 kts in his face. He made a perfect landing and rolled right into the dust cloud. Bill Paris drove out to retrieve Terry to find him in the cockpit with spoilers deployed, ground flying Triple Tango. He remained that way for a half hour until they deemed it safe to tow the glider back to the hangar. Meanwhile Don Taylor had not appeared for a landing and his whereabouts were unknown for a while. Then, a phone call that he had landed at the McGuire ranch south of Marfa was received. Miriam Taylor had just hitched up the trailer and was leaving Marfa Municipal when Mrs. McGuire's co-pilot arrived with Don. Don said he had spotted the strip about 6 miles to the South, which is available for emergencies, and that he could neither get around nor through the storm. When he landed, the crew was just putting the Cessna-Jet in the hangar and had offered Don a ride back. The rest of us realized we were a bit tired from the trip and decided to sit the balance of the afternoon out.

Due to the moisture being pumped in from the Gulf of Mexico by hurricane "Bill", the next two days saw mid-afternoon overdevelopment with scattered thunderstorms that could be avoided. Both days saw good flights, but no one felt comfortable enough to try a distance task and altitudes were insufficient for a Gold Altitude gain of 3,000m. On Sunday I got a 2.6-hour flight spending my time playing in the low mountains to the east including the two for obvious reasons referred to as the "Dolly Partons," and running up north to Fort Davis. Burt's towplane a C-152/180 with climb prop and STOL kit did a respectable job, considering the 7,000 ft + density altitudes reached by launch time each day. Burt had advised us of the long take-off rolls necessary to become airborne. We also noticed that the ground effect was equally lessened on landing. On Monday, a release in lift soon turned to sink and I was shortly back on the ground. After a short wait, I took a relight and managed a 1.6-hour flight. On landing, I somehow snapped the temple off of my sunglasses and decided to put 8C in the hangar and make a run for Alpine, hoping to find an optometrist shop where I might get them repaired. We got there at just a few minutes to five, and after cruising the business district and failing to find one, bought another pair in a drug store. Marfa is such a small town, that none of these specialty businesses could survive there. Due to the far west location in the Central time zone and Daylight Savings time too, sunset was at about 9:00 PM while we were there. Gene and I decided it would be interesting to drive directly to Fort Davis and drive around the scenic loop thru the Davis Mountains. It was well worth doing, and turned out to be the only opportunity to do so. The scenery is impressive and wildlife abundant, we saw a large herd of Big Horn Sheep, some Mule Deer, and of course Pronghorn Antelope. By the time we had dinner in Fort Davis, it was after dark by the time we returned to Marfa.

The fourth day was the best I experienced with no overdevelopment and higher cloud bases. There appeared to be good lift under about one of every 10 CUs. My nemesis seems to be maximizing altitude, so I've been concentrating on my thermalling skills in order to get longer glides and higher speeds trading-off for thermalling more often in weaker thermals. I've a long way to go. It showed up this day as I struggled at the 10,000' level and heard the others telling of 12,500'. At one point I passed DT as I looked up to say hello. I went southeast with a goal to reach Cathedral Mountain, 6,816'. It looks like a church, complete with tower. I could not get there directly as I was too low, so I went further south to get to high ground sooner. That worked well, so I stayed over high ground and kept making progress over the shoulders of two other mountains,

(continued on page 7)