Soaring over the Scablands

[chris]

Just watched the PBS Nova program "Mystery of the Megaflood".
Fascinating program, and the landscape left behind in Eastern
Washington state is beautiful and somewhat bizarre. Is it easy or safe
to fly cross country over the "scabland" features? Are these sights
reachable from Ephrata?

See the interactive map with links to pictures:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/megaflood/scablands.html

Chris

[Eric Greenwell]

chris wrote:
> Just watched the PBS Nova program "Mystery of the Megaflood".
> Fascinating program, and the landscape left behind in Eastern
> Washington state is beautiful and somewhat bizarre. Is it easy or safe
> to fly cross country over the "scabland" features?

It is easy and safe! Don't be frightened by the word "scabland", which
makes it sound like large areas of rough rock; in fact, Eastern
Washington is primarily farmland, with flat to rolling countryside.
There are plenty of municipal airports and private strips. The farm land
includes plenty of fallow fields a mile square, covered with soft earth.
"You don't get hurt in the dirt" is our motto, as a safe field is
available from even low heights. The dry conditions ensure plenty of
dust devils to guide you, and provide cloudbases between 7000'-10,000' agl.

Are these sights
> reachable from Ephrata?

Yes! In fact, the whole of Eastern Washington (often referred to as the
Columbia Basin) is reachable from Ephrata. For a hint of what can be
done, look at the club statistics on the OLC (Online Competition - North
America) under the Seattle Glider Council, currently #3 in the
standings, and take a look at some of the flights.

Come join us next year!

--
Change "netto" to "net" to email me directly

Eric Greenwell
Washington State
USA

[Bryan]

The 1989 movie Always by Spielberg was shot in the Columbia basin, mostly in
the mountain areas. Although I wouldn't recommend Always as a good movie,
it features some great old airplanes and many scenes were shot at or near
the Ephrata airport. For what it's worth, I also think that the Doolittle
Raiders did some training at Ephrata.



Bryan