Glider planes and Mt. Williamson

Hiking up 8,000 foot Mt. Williamson last weekend, I was startled when suddenly the high peak quiet and solitude was disturbed by a loud whoosh overhead, as a glider zipped over my head. After watching the thing for 10 minutes at various distances, I still had not determined whether it was a massive remote control plane or a tiny manned plane. I had just about determined it was remote control after seeing it do an upside down loop and shoot uncomfortably close to the mountain's rocky slopes, but suddenly it came much closer to me, and I could see the cockpit and the person inside.

Up on top of the peak, were three men who had come for the express purpose of seeing their friend fly. Loud and rowdy, they shouted insults at their pilot friend, as if he could actually hear them. One man, a pot-bellied, grizzled man who appeared to be in his fifties, actually dropped his pants and "mooned" the pilot as he shot over our heads.

The way it works, they told me is a glider is towed up into the sky behind a small plane and then released. Following the currents, the glider pilot, who likely will have very little flight experience, hopes to ride upward currents and keep sky bound. How they find their way back down the mountain to the landing strip over in the Antelope Valley is beyond me.

As for the hike, it is one of my favorites in the San Gabriels. It runs about 5 miles, 1,700 feet of altitude gain, a strenuous, but short hike. On top you straddle both sides of the range, able to peer back into the smoggy layer covering Los Angeles, and out into the flat desert of the Antelope Valley. You hang above the Devil's Punchbowl, a gorgeous sandstone formation where two fault lines collided, well worth checking out more closely. You can hike down to there from Mt. Williamson, but it is a long haul that leaves you on the wrong side of the mountain range with no transport back.

Here is a photo looking north into the Antelope Valley. Devil's Punchbowl is the canyon in the lower right corner of the picture.

Great day up there. I walked along the ridge line to some of the other nearby peaks... I lay on my back on one of them looking at ravens who were dive bombing the ridge the same way the plane was. One of them came fast and low enough to make the same "whoosh" sound as the plane.

More on hiking Mt. Williamson here.