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Flying in the Southern Alps is amazing. The soaring is amazing, the scenery is amazing. But it is not without risk.
We have been getting better, but ever few years we have a serious accident. These are normally collision with terrain. The pilots involved are generally not experienced in flying in the mountains.
There are plenty of experienced mountain pilots who have flown in the Southern Alps for thousands of hours without problems. The risks can be managed. It largely comes down to the basics. Good basic handling skills and flying within your personal margins.
There are some new skills to learn. Learning to judge clearance from terrain is critical. Learning to fly without a nice clear horizon.
There are features of the Southern Alps that make the risks different to other mountain areas. The Southern Alps are young mountains caused by uplift from the collision of the Pacific and Australasian plates. This makes the mountains very steep as there hasn't been time to wear the mountains down.
Most of the areas we fly have been heavily glaciated and when the glaciers retreated they have left flat rocky valley floors. These wide, flat valley floors give us landing options that you don't get in V shaped valleys.
We are always close to the ocean. The South Island is mostly 150 to 250km from the Tasman Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The prevailing wind is westerly and the Southern Alps are very close to the west coast. A lot of moisture is dropped on the western side of the Alps. Often there is a lot of cloud on the western side of the Alps.
This is really not negotiable. If you hit the hill you are likely to die.
You need clearance ahead of the glider and below the glider. The path of the glider must be clear. An allowance for sinking air must be made.
How much clearance is enough? If you don't hit the ground, that was enough. But in reality you'll want a healthy safety margin.
This safety margin will vary depending on your skill and your personal acceptable risk level, the glider, and the conditions.
Often pilots who are not experienced in flying in the area have difficulty judging distance from the terrain as there are few clues as to scale. Many hills and mountain are bare with not trees or structures. The best scale on these features are often tracks. There are a lot of tracks over the hills and mountains. These are generally four wheel drive tracks that were established in the days of Land Rover and similar vehicles. They are often narrower than the modern four wheel drive behemoths are comfortable on.
At all times you must know where your escape route is and that you have a clear run out your escape route. Your escape route should take you to another soaring option, and must have a landing option.
At all times you must know where your landing options are, that you can reach them, and that you can land on them.
Using the GPS database is fine, but you must know where the landout is, that it is clear, and that you can land on it. Best to visually inspect it before using it. Whenever I fly to a new area I eyeball the landout I'm planning on using. Most are farm strips, so they may have stock or equipment on them. Many are not used often and may be overgrown. Some are overtaken by changing land use and disappear.
Most of the remote strips are narrow, with rocks and scrub on the sides, often barely wide enough for 15 meters. There are likely to be long, 500 to 800 meters long. The surface might not look very nice.
If you find a landout from the database is unsuitable, pass that information back so that the database can be updated.
If you're expecting to use a proper airfield, know the radio frequencies required and the runways and procedures. You can find this in the AIP.
When there are other gliders flying in the same area, consider that if you're landing they may also need to land. Try to leave room for the next glider and clear the runway once you have landed. Often we only have one useable landout in a valley, so if you block the runway the next glider will be put in a bad situation.
Remember that when all else fails the rocks get smaller as you get further from the head of the valley. Some valleys have shingle flats by the rivers. Fly as far down the valley as possible and land on a shingle flat. The retrieve will be difficult, but you're unlikely to hurt yourself.
In the mountains, stuff happens. You had better be the one driving what stuff happens. If you're not the stuff that happens will not all be good.
You need to know where you're going and what is coming up next. A soaring plan based on the weather forecast and what you can see. What you know of the terrain ahead and how that will affect the soaring. Your knowledge of the escape routes and landout options.
Expect your plan to fail and have an alternate ready to go. This plan must include a landing option.
The closer to the terrain you are, the less margin you have.
Speed control is really pitch attitude control. If the glider is in the correct pitch attitude, the speed will follow. Judging the attitude with no clear flat horizon is a skill that can take a while to develop.
Keeping the glider trimmed helps. That makes judging the amount of pressure you are putting on the stick easier and more useful. Feeling what you are doing to the glider is important. You get better feel holding the stick lightly with your fingers and using the small finger muscles. Holding a firm grip on the stick with your hand and using your big arm muscles may be necessary in turbulence, but it doesn't give delicate feedback.
Look for other horizontal references that can be used. Cloudbase is a possibility. The far side of a large valley may have a well defined horizontal edge.
In a constant speed constant angle of bank turn, the scenery will flow past the nose of the glider horizontally. If the scenery flow is angling up it is because the nose is dropping, and if the scenery flow is angling down it is because the nose is rising.
The sound of the glider is a good speed indicator. The volume and pitch of the wind noise will change with speed. If the sound stays the same, the speed is constant.
The speed you want depends on the glider, the conditions, and the pilot. I use the target thermalling speed of the glider, plus five knots if close to terrain, plus five knots if conditions are turbulent.
If the glider is skidding into a turn it is more likely to drop the inside wing if it gets close to stalling. When the glider is slipping in a turn it is less likely to drop a wing.
Skidding in a turn is when the nose is yawing into the turn. The yaw string will be inside the turn. This can be caused by holding rudder into the turn, or by adverse yaw dragging the nose down into the turn when using aileron out of turn to stop the glider overbanking into the turn.
Slipping in a turn is when the nose is yawing out of the turn. The yaw string will be outside the turn. This can be caused by adverse yaw when rolling into a turn, or not using enough rudder.
When turning we use top rudder. Deliberately carrying a little slip in the turn makes it less likely to drop a wing.
Close to terrain you need to be able to predict where the glider is going. A constant angle of bank, constant speed turn will be circular. You can predict where it is going.
Always know where the terrain is. The good news is that terrain tends to be very large, and move very slowly. So it is easy to keep track of.
The terrain tends to concentrate the soaring energy, which means that where you want to fly is where the other gliders want to fly. You are likely to be running lines of energy, so a head to head is more likely. Use all the available means to keep track of other gliders.
A good visual lookout, concentrating on those energy lines. Remember, the terrain is not going anywhere. Look out for moving hazards, don't look at the terrain. You should be able to keep track of the terrain in your peripheral vision. If you look down there is a tendency to drop the nose. Bad news in a turn.
Have a Flarm. Flarm is not perfect, but it is what we have and it does help.
When running big energy lines, use the radio to give position reports. Location is changing rapidly so even a good, accurate position report will be outdated quickly. Do the best you can on position, but altitude is very important. Vertical separation is easier to achieve.
It can be useful to use bearing and distance to home for the position report. Most glider computers can give bearing and distance to a point easily.
Other aircraft fly in the mountains. Know their normal routes and procedures. Know the radio frequency other traffic is likely to be using so you can contact them.
When you are flying cross country in the mountains you can become very isolated very quickly. Cross a mountain range and get low in the next valley and you may find your radio no longer connects to anyone else. Land and you will find no cellphone coverage. A simple landout has now turned into a situation that is much more serious. A night out without shelter. Time to set off the PLB and start a search and rescue.
In the Southern Alps the best solution to this is a satellite based tracking system such as the Spot or InReach trackers.
In the flat lands you can get good coverage with cellphone based tracking systems or using Flarm and the Open Glider Network tracking. These systems are short range and not useful once you've got a mountain in the way.
Whatever the flight following technology used, there has to be some-one following the flight and able to take the appropriate action in a timely manner.
Know the local weather. Check the forecast before planning your flight.
The big things to look for are cloud and wind. Cloudbase down on the tops is going to be a problem. Wind is more complicated.
Wind speed and direction can inform you about which ridges may be usable, but if there is enough wind for the ridges to work there is enough wind for the wave to work. The wave can interfere with the ridge lift.
If there is an inversion, pay attention to the altitude of the inversion. On a wave day the laminar flow will be above the inversion so you can expect the usable wave to start at or above the inversion. When there is less wind and it is unstable down low and there is a strong inversion around the level of the tops, the thermals will stop rising when they reach the inversion. That energy still has to go somewhere, so you can expect horizontal gusting at the thermal tops as the rising air can't go up so it pushes out instead. This can be very dangerous.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Cloud is common and we often fly above cloud. Do not get caught above cloud. Do not drift back into cloud. In the mountains the clouds often contain rocks. Always maintain good cloud clearance.
Plan A: don't let this happen.
Plan B: descend.
Plan A is the best option. It's the one I use and recommend. Plan B is problematic. Descending through cloud means flying without visual reference for a while. If the cloud layer is 2,000ft thick, and you're descending with full spoilers at around 1,000ft/min, you can look forward to two minutes in cloud. Common wisdom suggests that most pilots will lose orientation in cloud in 10 - 15 seconds.
If you have speed limiting dive brakes, congratulations, you get to pull full brake and wait for clear air or a loud bang. Most gliders do not have speed limiting brakes and will need to do something else.
A technique that has been suggested is the benign spiral, where you pull full spoilers, lower the undercarriage for extra drag, trim the glider for a moderate speed, and leave the stick alone while the glider descends in a stable spiral. This may work with some gliders, you'll need to try it with yours. It may work in calm air, but if you're descending through rotor cloud it isn't likely to be calm.
Fly on instruments. This may work if you have blind flying instruments in the glider. And they work. And you are trained and competent and current in instrument flying. Good luck with that.
Often people talk about the wave shifting and cloud suddenly forming around the glider, trapping them in cloud. This may well happen, but it is much more likely that what is actually happenning is that the strong wind in the wave, often 50 knots or more, is drifting the glider downwind. Most pilots when first encountering wave underestimate the amount of drift. They are not used to flying in 50 knots of wind.
So, when above cloudbase in wave, Plan A is to stay upwind of the cloud well clear of the cloud and with the nose a long way upwind. In strong winds you will need to fly fast to make any progress. Remember your VNE will reduce with altitude. Refer to your gliders flight manual for guidance.
Plan B here is the same as for getting caught above cloud. You are in deep trouble. Good luck.
Flying gliders cross country is stressful and demanding. As a pilot you must be performing well in order to make good decisions. Your body must be performing well so that your brain can perform well. A cross country flight is likely to be many hours long and you need to be performing well for the entire flight. Most accidents happen at the end of the flight.
Mountain flying human factors are pretty much the same as any cross country flying, so we're just hitting the main points. There are plenty of in depth resources available.
Something else to be aware of: most of these human factors causing degraded performance are worse when you're older. And by 'older' I mean over 40. Remember how your eyes lose flexability when you hit 40? Arms aren't long enough to read a book without reading glasses? Same thing happens with the rest of your body.
You must stay hydrated. Take an adequate supply of water, and drink it.
From a study titled "Cognitive Performance and Dehydration" a sentence from the conclusion: "Evidence suggests the tasks that require attention, immediate memory, and psycho-motor skills, as well as assessment of the subjective state, are the most negatively affected."
If you drink enough to be properly hydrated, you will need to pee. Make sure you have a way to pee.
For longer flights you may need to carry some food. Be careful with food choices. Avoid food that is a choking hazard. Avoid food that is sugary and can cause a sugar rush and crash.
Being well rested is essential.
Hyperthermia is the body overheating. This is likely if you are all geared up for high altitude flight and get stuck down low.
Hypothermia is the body being unable to maintain the core temperature. This is likely if you're dressed for summer thermalling and get into the wave.
Hypoxia is a lack of oxygen. This can become apparent from surprisingly low levels. The rules say you should have supplementary oxygen if over 10,000ft and must use it above 12,000ft. I generally put on the oxygen as soon as I'm above cloudbase.
Briefing prepared by Phil Plane.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License