Logan, Utah Mountain XC Camp Report

Logan,

What a delight. The writings of others are spot on. Logan is a challenging environment and one needs to prepare accordingly. But what return for the effort! Magnificent flying.

I want to touch on a major component of the event, the people. The group was small, a bit more on the geriatric side of life (with exceptions ;-) and all were deeply interested in learning. Though I am local and have flown at both Nephi and Logan events multiple times, my preference is Logan. Why? Unlike the competitive edge at most SSA events, at this camp those pressures were conspicuously absent. The camaraderie and mutual involvement of people helping one another succeed was the principal goal. Interaction amongst attendees was superb and enhanced by the small group size. Kim, Cindy, Ron and Bruno superbly organized and directed the event and are to be commended for their effort. I’ll be making plans to return in the future.

Dan Thirkill
PY

Hi all ... a few more thoughts:

1. I know from talking to Ron and Bruno that they don't intend to run another (semi)formal camp at Logan ... but possibly we could self-organize a less formal get-together? I'd be willing to coordinate if there's interest .... and will post something up in next year's late winter to see if there's any interest unless somebody else does so. (if anybody else does, let me know)

It's WAAAY more fun, and also safer, to be flying with others there.

2. if there aren't many gliders at Logan you may be able to get tie-down close to the take-off line, but for the OLC we all tied down at the end of an abandoned runway (very good place for safety and quiet) ... you need to have a good functional tow-out bar and wing-wheel. I went west for my summer adventure with a home-brew wing wheel that made me the butt of humor at moments -- it worked and survived just barely well enough to get through the summer ... and 2.0 will get made this winter.

3. You absolutely must have oxygen. A bad story here -- I turned my old steel cylinder over to Praxair at Logan a month before the OLC for hydrostat, they lost it and then tried to flim-flam me that it had failed hydrostat. I demanded a statement of test results from the company that does the hydrostats down in SLC, and after a delay got back a weird document (that I have) stating it had been "destroyed at the request of vendor" (Praxair).

After that, I had to scramble ... and I got help from Mike Bamberg, without which I might have lost more days ... Thanks, Mike!

4. If you come to Logan consider carefully what sailplane you are flying, and how you'll fly it. I brought a Discus: standard class, known for good handling. Watching Bruno (flying a ASW-27) and Sandy Coleman (ASG-29) fly was instructive ... very different styles/practices of climbing the ridge .... for good reason. Seek advice from somebody expert who flies something like yours, there. The more wing you have ... the more cautious you need to be.

Even though I spend a lot of time in the back seat of two-seaters, I would not recommend bringing a two-seater as your first experience at Logan, unless you can fill that other seat with a local expert comfortable in that seat ... even more so with any of the 20+ meter motor-sailplanes.

5. I do want to mention several things I learned from flying there, that apply to flying to the west, particularly making triangles with only one leg on the ridge. These flights are perfectly practical, and flying to the west or north-west will take you over lots of nice landable terrain, with much more typical "western desert" soaring conditions. On good days Gold and Diamond flights are easy, and on really good days I think a shot at FAI speed records is possible.

Aside from the Logan ridge the other "big feature" of the area is that almost always there is a convergence line that runs E-W north of Logan (usually slightly SW - NE) ... very conveniently about where the Logan ridge starts to drop off. It's this convergence that makes the big jump to the Salt River range much more achievable than one might think (more literally makes the idea of getting home much more achievable), and this line also usually goes west.

When this line is working well to the west screaming-fast triangles are possible -- two of the three legs could be flown at near red-line without much turning, cloud bases are high enough that the last leg could be final glide or nearly so.

Thursday and Friday of the OLC I made two attempts to get gold distance and diamond goal, flying triangles to the west, on "not so great" days at Logan ... still much better days than all but the rarest days that we get in the east (and those only happen in a narrow window in spring, before the trees are fully leafed out, after a cold-front comes through).

On both of these days the convergence line to the west was weak, and the buoyancy/shear not great. On the Thursday flight I declared Deep Creek Peak as the west turnpoint. When I turned west onto the visible cloud street I found that it was chopped up into uselessness, and rapidly being pushed south, and I was flying into a stiffer west wind at altitude than I expected. I made three successive southward tries to get onto lines, got out as far west as Malad City on the third try, and abandoned the goal attempt ... but I flew south and took a good look at the southern end of the Logan ridge .... and this did set me up for Friday's try #2.

On Friday the weather forecast was worse, a forecast of high winds aloft, and Ron & Bruno provided a "just play on the ridge" task for the OLC, but I was determined to at least make a try for these badge flights, knowing that realistically it was my last shot this year ... and after talking to Tim Taylor and based on what I had seen I declared Allen-Tigart AP (north of the ridge), Malad City AP, and then Powder Mt (south end of the usable ridge).

This was a flatter triangle, and to make 300 km meant using Powder Mt as the south turn point ... and I want to provide some commentary on this, because this worked ... but there's the issue that the last 15 miles or so south on the ridge to Powder Mt have no landing sites in the valley below.

If you look at my flight (it's up on OLC) you'll see that I went north on the ridge like gangbusters, got high, glided out to Allen-Tigert and then back to a low rampart of the Logan ridge ...

It's a common saying at Logan that "8000 ft here is like 2000 ft anywhere else" ... so true. When the valley inversion is reasonably strong there's no lift down low anywhere EXCEPT on the sun/wind fed faces of even relatively low ridges. This whole flight was actually made possible by three things:

* turning from Allen-Tigert I could get back to the low ramparts/extension of the ridge, and was able to (anxiously) climb out and back up onto it.

* The convergence line west was too sheared up to provide any useful climbs, but it greatly aided the glide west into the wind, making Malad City feasible, but more importantly I could do just about the same thing again, getting to the foothills of Oxford Peak just to the south.

Both of those turnpoint climb-outs were reasonably extreme -- never would have considered them if I had not had the experience of the earlier days.

From there I turned back downwind, getting back onto the main ridge rather than going directly toward Powder Mt ... and I want to emphasize that decision, even though I had Powder Mt easily made from the altitude I had off the Oxford/Gunsight chain.

The reason I went back to the main ridge is that I thought it was critical to go down the ridge to Powder Mt, in order to have a safe flight into that unlandable terrain, and some surety of being able to get back north from Powder Mt., late in the day.

There are lots of ridges that people fly in the USA that dribble off into the unlandable -- I've flown at several, and there's a technique involved .... you fly down carefully exploring how you will get back -- there are complications in this, if anyone wants to talk to me about it I could explain more -- but the key thing is that once you are down on the lower parts of the ridge with unlandable terrain at the foot, the ONLY way back will be to climb on the return, so you need to study the terrain below as you go down, and particularly to study very carefully where sink behind buttresses will be ... and make a judgement to turn back and abandon the goal if you don't like what you see.

These technical judgements are greatly aided by ridge-flying experience anywhere. Without it I would not recommend doing as I did, on that day.

As it turned out I made Powder Mt without trouble and had no real anxieties on the way back north, but it would have been stupid to glide in from the west just assuming that I could get north on the lower ridge down there at the end of the day.

Talking to Tim Taylor, there are good routes that just go north of Allen-Tigert (aka Soda Springs) ... jumping that gap to a chain of peaks ahead. That gap isn't anywhere near as formidable as the jump to the Salt River range ... and those routes offer Gold distance (at least) out-and-returns. In retrospect I probably should have chosen that rather than the flight I declared and made, but I didn't want to take the chance of landing that far away on what was the last day for me ... Annie was flying into SLC the next day and I needed to pack up and go and get her.

On Monday, September 9, 2019 at 9:59:31 AM UTC-7, wrote:
Hi all ... a few more thoughts:

1. I know from talking to Ron and Bruno that they don't intend to run another (semi)formal camp at Logan ... but possibly we could self-organize a less formal get-together? I'd be willing to coordinate if there's interest .... and will post something up in next year's late winter to see if there's any interest unless somebody else does so. (if anybody else does, let me know)

It's WAAAY more fun, and also safer, to be flying with others there.

2. if there aren't many gliders at Logan you may be able to get tie-down close to the take-off line, but for the OLC we all tied down at the end of an abandoned runway (very good place for safety and quiet) ... you need to have a good functional tow-out bar and wing-wheel. I went west for my summer adventure with a home-brew wing wheel that made me the butt of humor at moments -- it worked and survived just barely well enough to get through the summer ... and 2.0 will get made this winter.

3. You absolutely must have oxygen. A bad story here -- I turned my old steel cylinder over to Praxair at Logan a month before the OLC for hydrostat, they lost it and then tried to flim-flam me that it had failed hydrostat. I demanded a statement of test results from the company that does the hydrostats down in SLC, and after a delay got back a weird document (that I have) stating it had been "destroyed at the request of vendor" (Praxair).

After that, I had to scramble ... and I got help from Mike Bamberg, without which I might have lost more days ... Thanks, Mike!

4. If you come to Logan consider carefully what sailplane you are flying, and how you'll fly it. I brought a Discus: standard class, known for good handling. Watching Bruno (flying a ASW-27) and Sandy Coleman (ASG-29) fly was instructive ... very different styles/practices of climbing the ridge .... for good reason. Seek advice from somebody expert who flies something like yours, there. The more wing you have ... the more cautious you need to be.

Even though I spend a lot of time in the back seat of two-seaters, I would not recommend bringing a two-seater as your first experience at Logan, unless you can fill that other seat with a local expert comfortable in that seat ... even more so with any of the 20+ meter motor-sailplanes.

5. I do want to mention several things I learned from flying there, that apply to flying to the west, particularly making triangles with only one leg on the ridge. These flights are perfectly practical, and flying to the west or north-west will take you over lots of nice landable terrain, with much more typical "western desert" soaring conditions. On good days Gold and Diamond flights are easy, and on really good days I think a shot at FAI speed records is possible.

Aside from the Logan ridge the other "big feature" of the area is that almost always there is a convergence line that runs E-W north of Logan (usually slightly SW - NE) ... very conveniently about where the Logan ridge starts to drop off. It's this convergence that makes the big jump to the Salt River range much more achievable than one might think (more literally makes the idea of getting home much more achievable), and this line also usually goes west.

When this line is working well to the west screaming-fast triangles are possible -- two of the three legs could be flown at near red-line without much turning, cloud bases are high enough that the last leg could be final glide or nearly so.

Thursday and Friday of the OLC I made two attempts to get gold distance and diamond goal, flying triangles to the west, on "not so great" days at Logan ... still much better days than all but the rarest days that we get in the east (and those only happen in a narrow window in spring, before the trees are fully leafed out, after a cold-front comes through).

On both of these days the convergence line to the west was weak, and the buoyancy/shear not great. On the Thursday flight I declared Deep Creek Peak as the west turnpoint. When I turned west onto the visible cloud street I found that it was chopped up into uselessness, and rapidly being pushed south, and I was flying into a stiffer west wind at altitude than I expected.. I made three successive southward tries to get onto lines, got out as far west as Malad City on the third try, and abandoned the goal attempt ... but I flew south and took a good look at the southern end of the Logan ridge ... and this did set me up for Friday's try #2.

On Friday the weather forecast was worse, a forecast of high winds aloft, and Ron & Bruno provided a "just play on the ridge" task for the OLC, but I was determined to at least make a try for these badge flights, knowing that realistically it was my last shot this year ... and after talking to Tim Taylor and based on what I had seen I declared Allen-Tigart AP (north of the ridge), Malad City AP, and then Powder Mt (south end of the usable ridge).

This was a flatter triangle, and to make 300 km meant using Powder Mt as the south turn point ... and I want to provide some commentary on this, because this worked ... but there's the issue that the last 15 miles or so south on the ridge to Powder Mt have no landing sites in the valley below.

If you look at my flight (it's up on OLC) you'll see that I went north on the ridge like gangbusters, got high, glided out to Allen-Tigert and then back to a low rampart of the Logan ridge ...

It's a common saying at Logan that "8000 ft here is like 2000 ft anywhere else" ... so true. When the valley inversion is reasonably strong there's no lift down low anywhere EXCEPT on the sun/wind fed faces of even relatively low ridges. This whole flight was actually made possible by three things:

* turning from Allen-Tigert I could get back to the low ramparts/extension of the ridge, and was able to (anxiously) climb out and back up onto it.

* The convergence line west was too sheared up to provide any useful climbs, but it greatly aided the glide west into the wind, making Malad City feasible, but more importantly I could do just about the same thing again, getting to the foothills of Oxford Peak just to the south.

Both of those turnpoint climb-outs were reasonably extreme -- never would have considered them if I had not had the experience of the earlier days.

From there I turned back downwind, getting back onto the main ridge rather than going directly toward Powder Mt ... and I want to emphasize that decision, even though I had Powder Mt easily made from the altitude I had off the Oxford/Gunsight chain.

The reason I went back to the main ridge is that I thought it was critical to go down the ridge to Powder Mt, in order to have a safe flight into that unlandable terrain, and some surety of being able to get back north from Powder Mt., late in the day.

There are lots of ridges that people fly in the USA that dribble off into the unlandable -- I've flown at several, and there's a technique involved .... you fly down carefully exploring how you will get back -- there are complications in this, if anyone wants to talk to me about it I could explain more -- but the key thing is that once you are down on the lower parts of the ridge with unlandable terrain at the foot, the ONLY way back will be to climb on the return, so you need to study the terrain below as you go down, and particularly to study very carefully where sink behind buttresses will be ... and make a judgement to turn back and abandon the goal if you don't like what you see.

These technical judgements are greatly aided by ridge-flying experience anywhere. Without it I would not recommend doing as I did, on that day.

As it turned out I made Powder Mt without trouble and had no real anxieties on the way back north, but it would have been stupid to glide in from the west just assuming that I could get north on the lower ridge down there at the end of the day.

Talking to Tim Taylor, there are good routes that just go north of Allen-Tigert (aka Soda Springs) ... jumping that gap to a chain of peaks ahead. That gap isn't anywhere near as formidable as the jump to the Salt River range ... and those routes offer Gold distance (at least) out-and-returns. In retrospect I probably should have chosen that rather than the flight I declared and made, but I didn't want to take the chance of landing that far away on what was the last day for me ... Annie was flying into SLC the next day and I needed to pack up and go and get her.

Your point on O2 is right on - those of us who have been flying out West for years take it for granted, but people coming from the east may be ill prepared. The 12,500 ft limit (forget about the 30 min 14k exception) only puts you 6kft over most valley floors. This may seem huge compared to flying back east, but it isn't (getting below 12k is time to shift gears; below 10k and you are survival mode). Get the proper gear and have it hydrotested (if necessary) BEFORE heading west. Mountain High is, by far, the preferred vendor. And having a backup regulator is a good idea.

Tom