A Day of Plenty for the Prophets of Gust
(photo courtesty Adriaan Hepburn)

June 2000. What were we to do when gales were lashing the Cape?  Dreams of smooth 'valley release' flights made me champ at the bit all week.  Champ, chomp, stamp, stomp .. sploosh in the winter puddles.  And then 'the day' arrived.

When we arrived at Sir Lowry's Pass at 10, we saw a congregation of the Prophets of Gust already assembled in the carpark, with wide grins on their faces.  This usually means that it is flyable already, and the congregation is just waiting for it to get even better.  Father Tom Eves had already declared the day open by performing our standard levitation trick.  Already the spectators were lining up (whispers of 'how high can they go' and 'where the engine').  And the day just got better and better.  Soon we were cruising around in light thermals, limited to the ridge close beside takeoff.  At about 11 I explored in a light headwind towards Gordon's Bay for a few kilometres, but never got above ridge height and decided to return.

Friar Adrian and Father Phil were busy leading an eager group of 11 initiates down the ridge to Hanskop.  The lift was good, and required only the odd turn or two on the lifting ridges to maintain ridge-top height. Hanskop, and the towering Moordenaars were spectacular.  The heavy recent rains had covered the cliffs with waterfalls, which sparkled to spray as we ghosted past.  A soft cloud was draped over the peaks at 1250m asl, and most pilots gained this altitude by soaring the north-west face of the ridges before pushing forwards on the ambitious into-wind glide around 'the spine' of Langklip-piek.  And it was sooooo smooth.  My hearty congratulations to all the first-timers at this special flying playground.  I know you'll all be back.

The glide around Langklip is often the end of a flight past Hanskop. Because the spine juts out into the valley so far, the wind which was soarable up to that point now falls over the spine, descending on the gliders trying to round it.  Add to this the fact that you're flying into wind, which reduces your glide, and that the slope you are passing is completely shaded all day, (and wet, and unlikely to dry out until September) and what do you get? SINK.  None of the paragliders made it around the spine to continue.  The hanggliders did make it around.  Aw, no fair.

At some point in the dismal glide, the lead pilot realised there was a long walk looming, so he abandoned the brave assault.  Only to discover that everyone else had already turned and were scuttling for the meagre lift at the base of the Moordenaars cliffs.  I watched from cloudbase as some exceptional piloting was displayed by the down-and-outers.  Philip collected some grass in his airbag - now that's scratching.  Hilary Barlow put up a tenacious fight against the gravity goblins, but in the end succumbed to a field below the ridge.  But when she returned to the pass with a quick retrieve, her face bore a grin, not a grimace.  It was her first flight to Hanskop - she was stoked.  As were we all.  The trip back was just one, long, uninterupted glide, high above the forests, and that view over the back and over the ocean that just confirms that you are closer to heaven at cloudbase.

Well, that should be enough for any altitude-starved apprentice in the Order of the Gust.

The weather had other ideas.  I couldn't really believe it, but conditions actually got BETTER.  Most pilots were, by now, 'shagged out' (with a similar goofy expression to the originating phenomenon of that phrase). Hang gliders were cruising the ridge as regular as trains.  Herbmaster Julian Herbstein strapped another nubile into his tandem, and joined Father Phil for ANOTHER 'trip to Hanskop'.

We left Hilary dangling in the sky, to go for lunch.  When we returned, she was still there, happy as a butterfly, (having flown to Hanskop again and made it back).  Ettiene Wilsnagh, Karen Geenen and a few others tackled the challenging into-wind flight to Gordon's Bay.  Johan Smal pulled off a tree-tackling landing on his hangglider after a very ambitious glide past Hanskop.  I watched his approach, and I've got to say there must have been a white-knuckled grip on that bar for a long time - trees, trees, trees, more trees.  Combined with a downward-sloping ground and very little wind, it was good to see him moving around after grinding to a halt in a brushy clearing.

The sundowner flight had to be done, and I found conditions that can only be described as perfect.  The lower launch site had been transformed from Sir Lowry's Gnarly Pass into something akin to Kleinkrantz training dune.  I have never flown in such ridiculously smooth, bouyant, thick air.  It was possible to do lazy wingovers across the grass of the launch site, and hang above the wall, without even getting a bump from turbulence.  In conditions like that, the trip to Hanskop just had to be attempted.

And it was then that I truly understood the pleasure which Richard Grant must have experienced when he told us of his vario 'beeping like a metronome, stuck at 0.4m/s'.  All the way to Hanskop (7km), I kid you not, the vario beeped monotonously.  I did not turn once.  I stuck my freezing hands in my pockets.  I laughed a lot.  And by the time I was at Hanskop, I cruised in at 1000m asl.  I was in heaven.  I think even my shadow was smiling.

Gliding back, I passed Julian doing his 'cream on the cake' tandem sundowner.  Imagine your first experience of paragliding being a glassy-smooth glide to Hanskop, and then a glide out at 1000m with the full moon rising over the dark forests to the east, and the sun dissolving in a haze of gold through the clouds to the west.