This article is about two incidents that could have turned out very badly. I write partly to share the lessons, partly for my own therapy. May you never find yourself in similar situations. -- Mike Steed

June 30, white room without a view, furnished with crags

We launch above Chamonix, opposite a beautiful view of Mont Blanc. Climbing out proves difficult, and those who succeed must endure small strong thermals punching up uncomfortably near the cliffs. By the time I finally get above the cliff Tina Pavelic has long since disappeared and the other two pilots nearby seem in no hurry to go anywhere. I'd rather find more civilized air, so head down-valley along the cliff to where the valley does a zigzag. There a cloud is parked about 1000 feet above the point at the zig, and that is my target. I find weak lift there and comfortable thermals, among some swallows feeding on the bugs. At 8700 feet I notice some gray wispy stuff nearby, so I do one more circle and head for Plaine Joux, topping out at 9000 feet as I depart. Mental note: cloud base above 9000 feet. Tina appears ahead of me and says Plaine Joux isn't working very well yet. We eventually land near launch to take a lunch break.

About 3 PM conditions are looking better and we launch. Again the climbs seem limited to under 6000 feet, but working along the side of the curved valley we get to an area where you can punch up the slope toward the cliffs. Above here some of the thermals get strong, with vario readings of 1000 to 1500 fpm, and averages up to 1000. Pete Reagan gets up too and we continue along the slope. I get above the cliff and see that most of the terrain slopes gently up from there and into the clouds so we won't be going very far in that direction. Continuing on around the curve the lift worsens and we turn back.

I decide to get high again to cross the valley and check out the ski area on a forested slope opposite. Approaching 8000 feet, I resolve to finish my last half-turn and take a GPS heading, just in case I catch the corner of the cloud above. Then FOOSH one second I am in clear air and the next in total whiteout, not even a patch of ground directly below. Finish the turn and take a GPS heading NOW! The compass display continues to slosh back and forth, partly due to turbulence and partly because my ability to stabilize the wing depends on visual cues. It takes too long to get a feel for holding a heading by instrument alone. I can barely read the display with my glasses on, but that looks like an "E". I struggle to hold the E in view, expecting to pop out of the cloud any moment.

Meanwhile Pete is below, wondering where I went. He scans above, thinking I must be hidden by his wing. He looks around and toward the cliffs. Eventually he gets on the radio and asks where I am. Once the turbulence gradually eases and my heading seems secure, I find my microphone and report my altitude (8400 and climbing) and visibility (none). Where is that clear air? Shouldn't I be coming out by now? I get to thinking, is "E" the right direction? I struggle to visualize the maps I've been studying and start thinking maybe I should be going W. But the map is upside down. Does the GPS indicate where I'm coming from, or where I'm going? I want desperately to believe I'm headed in the right direction, but this can't be right. The ground speed is double-digit, what, 20-something? I peek under my goggles and glasses to get a good look at the speed display -- it says 35 mph! Ka-riced!!! I'm headed downwind!

I pull off the goggles and glasses and turn sharply until the compass bar includes "W". The ground speed is a more comfortable 10 to 15 so I stay the course. Proceeding along, I notice an increasing discrepancy between the instrument readings and my senses. I'm totally certain I'm in a continuous right turn, but the display still says "W". Shut up senses! You can't be trusted! This goes on for endless minutes, then suddenly I appear high over the valley, very near where I left it about 6 minutes before. I head across the valley with water dripping down the lines, eventually meet up with Bruce Tracy, and we do a modest XC up a scenic valley. On the ground later I enjoy the view and begin to reflect on how lucky I am to be here to see it.

My correct heading out of the cloud should have been SSW. Looking at the GPS track later, I had flown a mile into the cloud, along and behind the cliff edge. This put me in a broad bowl, the rim of which ranges from 7870 to 8860 feet in elevation. The point where I turned 180 degrees was near the rim of the bowl, perhaps behind the 8360-foot rampart at the east end of the bowl.

A few thoughts: Sometimes, it is a good idea to challenge your assumptions mid-flight. A compass heading would have set me straight, either determined by myself earlier, or as-needed by someone else. But excess radio chatter would have distracted me further, so there is a fine line on how much advice to offer anyone in a similar situation. Don't assume cloud base always rises during the day. Cloud base does drop, sometimes in a matter of seconds, as more-humid air arrives. Don't mess with strong (or potentially strong) thermals near clouds; if you do, it's just a matter of time until you too get a tour of the white room. Do know your local geography and orientation if there is even a remote chance you'll have to navigate by compass. Oh, and make an appointment about those bifocals.

July 3, brutal air (reconstructed with help from witnesses and 15-second barograph readings)

We have seen few local pilots at Fiesch, at first because conditions were weak. This day we have heard some cautions about an approaching front, but don't hear the best advice until after the fact: don't fly up the valley today. The usual XC route from Fiesch follows a glacial valley to the NE. At the end of the valley the highway climbs abruptly to the tiny town of Gletsch, and then splits to climb either Grimsel pass (north) or Furka pass (east). John Olson and Pete stack up near Grimsel, waiting for Bruce to lead the way over Furka. No one wants to turn downwind over Grimsel since we know nothing about the route. (Good decision, we decide later.) Apparently Bruce sells his soul for a furkan thermal (his term), climbing over Furka despite increasing headwinds and sink. Pete and John are pinned near the glacier, and Pete has no choice but to land near Gletsch, an alternative he strongly advises against. John manages to penetrate out to the valley, arriving directly below me. Having abandoned the idea of crossing the pass, I imagine a leisurely descent and an easy ride back to Fiesch from the train station at the upper end of the valley. Dave Verbois and Leslie Freitag report that they found wind and turbulence above there earlier, and suggest we join them and Reed Gleason down-valley.

I spiral down almost to John's level, and we are flying parallel through extremely trashy air, arms occasionally flailing to keep the wing inflated. Then John gets abducted by a big gust and disappears up the wall of the valley at an astonishing rate. Most of that one misses me, so I take advantage of some tolerable air to spiral down to 450 feet AGL. Now I can see the grass moving and begin to figure out what is going on. Cold air is blasting down a side canyon a little down-valley from my position; Steve Roti and Tina are finding an alarming surplus of lift above there.  Occasionally some of the air spills over a ridge and drops down on the broad and unobstructed grassy center of the valley -- the area I am already committed to landing in. I see the gust coming, flattening grass in its path. I am flying into the wind at 340 feet AGL, less than 15 seconds from "landing."

The wing rocks behind me hard, jerking me up and back and then leaving me weightless.  The wing has disappeared from view -- I hope it will reappear but in fact it has wadded up like so much tissue paper. I should have pulled the brakes down to get the wing organized, but feeling low I instead keep the hands up with occasional deep pumps. I fall for what seems like a verrrry long time (5 seconds?), then the wing finally bangs open much closer to the ground.

But that isn't the end of the excitement. The wing has rotated more than 360 degrees and the lines are hopelessly twisted, the brakes inoperable. The wing continues to turn and seems in danger of spiraling more steeply. I look up to locate some rear lines on the outer side and pull them but it stalls and spins. What? Too much? As I rotate past the lines again I grab more gently this time, pulling only an inch or so just to prevent the turn from getting steeper. I think, "Please, don't hit sideways!" as I swing back and forth between sideways and backwards, while the wing is turning downwind. I hit hard going backwards, bounce into a rear somersault, and the wing abruptly falls on top of me.

Incredibly, I am unhurt. Attempting to pack my wing, I discover there are several main lines wrapped over the top of the wing near the center. How did that happen? Over a beer in town I see Reed's photo, and only then do I realize I'd been flying with the line-over! And there's more -- that evening, while attempting to straighten the lines, I discover that five main Kevlar lines have their sheaths melted to each other just above the risers, and the polyethylene stabilizer has broken at that same spot.

At this point, I should confess that I fly a DHV 2-3-rated wing, a slightly-modified one at that. A 1-2 wing would have been a bit slower to wad up, and might have recovered more gracefully. A skinnier wing is more likely to horseshoe, snake, and otherwise get messed up. But what about the line-over? It is hard to imagine how several central lines can get wrapped over the top of any wing, unless it happened while the lines were very slack. If the problem was slack lines, a 1-2 wing might not have fared any better.

I have thrown a reserve at a maneuvers clinic, and once in an actual emergency, but in this incident it never crossed my mind. I was so focused on flying the wing that all other alternatives were ignored. Certainly riding a reserve in gusty winds would have had some downsides, but probably would have been a step above leaving a crater in a grassy field. And had I realized the wing had a serious line-over during the last several seconds I might still have had time to toss the reserve. But for better or worse, I flew the wing to the ground. I got the wing designer on the phone, and visited the Swiss distributor the next day. They fixed me up while I enjoyed lunch -- don't expect the same service at your favorite third-world destination. I was back in the air the next morning, in time to enjoy lots of gentle air at Grindelwald.

In hindsight it's reasonable to ask whether these incidents could have been prevented. In white-room-without-a-view, I got too comfortable with the idea of climbing under a cloud. I should have maintained some horizontal spacing or climbed elsewhere entirely. In the brutal-air incident, the key decision was to fly cross-country into complex Alpine topography (three valley systems converge in the Furka Pass-Grimsel Pass area) on a day when a front was approaching and conditions were changing quickly. The weather never truly overdeveloped that day (could have been worse!), but we could have cut the cross-country flight short or postponed cross-country flying until another day. If you fly cross-country, remember that you too must eventually descend and conditions can change drastically as you change location, time of day, and altitude.