Having been 'summonsed' to a family weekend at my Folks weekend retreat in the Karkloof mountains, I seized the opportunity to do a flight I'd had in mind for a long time, that is from the Cato Ridge airfield to the Karkloof, being the escarpment mountains running between Pietermaritzburg and Greytown, a distance as the glider flies of 70+ kms. Coellette and the kids
were dispatched Friday evening with the arrangement that my brother stay at my place and we rise at 05h00 to be on the field and ready by 06h00, whereafter he would 'ride shotgun' with a radio, following the route by road. Having an 11th hour crises, he was unable to help me and my ‘Fly’ Powered Paraglider was hurriedly dismantled for transport in the small car as opposed his bakkie.

I left on schedule Saturday morning and had the rather eerie experience of assembling and preparing to fly with not a sole around at that time of the morning and having completed preparations I locked the car in the hanger and saw myself off with not just a little trepidation and a precautionary cell phone call to Len Alford, who was the only person I knew who would be up that time of day, just so that someone would be aware of my voluntary lunacy.

Well, there began what culminated in the most rewarding and exciting single flight I've yet undertaken, I climbed very slowly with gas conservation being my biggest concern, in spite of having filled the tank literally to overflowing and also having calculated with my Nav spreadsheet that I ought to arrive at the destination with about 1,8lt in hand. I carried a small measure of 2 stroke mix sufficient for 4lts of gas and some cash in case a big headwind foiled my planning. Leveling off at 200m above take off I headed North on course passing directly over Table Mountain at about 30m AGL. It was strange to perceptibly detect my attitude change from one of having been focused on the stage 1 target of Table Mountain, to the anxiety of looking over my shoulder and realising how far away the airfield was and it was receding further. The enormity of the Umgeni gorge didn't create anxiety, it made me shit myself, I'd never realised it to be so bloody big and so uninhabited, the net result was further climb to 300m ATO and perpetual vigilance in respect of suitable 'engine out' landing opportunities. If such occurred I would have been in some real serious trouble, it would have taken the remainder of the weekend to get out of there. You've got to come do this with me sometime it was awesome.

Something of a revelation came to me that was very exciting and has given new meaning to PPG for me and that is, all my powered and unpowered flying thus far has been for the sake of being in the air or to undertake an out and return task, now for the first time I was using a PPG as a means of getting from one location to another distant location - bloody marvelous I say. Attaining the far side (and it felt like 'The Far Side' at times) of the gorge, the rising terrain had me at about only 30m AGL and following a plantation road over established forest, emerging into sugar cane land and following the contours in perfectly still air but with intermittent light rain. What a buzz, I felt supremely confident and even invigorated by the rain. Having to do my navigation provided the odd sobering moment from the elation. I passed over many farms with the inevitable and very curious upward observation by all who spotted me and passing over the Pmb - Greytown road I began to worry a little about the weather closing in. The higher cloud was full cloud cover and very high, with the lower cloud being the source of the intermittent rain and of about 40% cover.

The most daunting part of the flight was on passing Albert Falls dam and realising the height gain required to ascend the escarpment to my final destination and an unavoidable route of some 20 minutes flying overhead a massive indigenous bush area. The bush was wall to wall and there was a bank of orographic cloud between myself and the mountains, I was on full trim and best climb toggle setting with 100% power to get up. As I approached the cloud I started calculating that I may just get over the bank and if I took the decision to go under it, it would cost me very valuable height gained. Satisfied that it was clearly a fairly narrow band of cloud, I pushed on up and into it popping out and back in several times until emerging fully mind blown on the other side and it all took only about 1min 30sec to go through. Now keeping a very worried watch on a seriously low fuel reserve, I climbed out the last 15minutes in sight of 'home' and looking forward to the arrival. On approach to the summit ridge I began experiencing some serious turbulence which I ascribed to the convergence of the anabatic flow and the interior NWester, more serious though and causing turbulence in the pit of my belly was my fuel situation, whilst flying for best conservation my fuel observation mirror was doing flick flacks with the intensity of my checking what was about a half a cupful left in the tank. It all got quite intense, what with trying to work out the wind direction and behavior in the swirling mess of the convergence, looking quite desperately for all and any possible landing spots and all this whilst in close proximity of the destination and in what was now rather rarified air that demanded almost full power to maintain level flight (or fight).

My intention was to buzz the cottage and then go and land on the flat and well grassed spillway of the big dam, well I never got to buzz the cottage because on finals to overfly the landing patch, I ran out of gas and landed. Would you believe, after a 1hr37min flight covering 70+kms, I landed clean out of gas on my intended landing zone. I can only ascribe the somewhat poor consumption to the heavy duty climb in rarified air because as you know, we've had durations of 2hrs+ on the same volume of fuel in the past. Nevertheless, I was one real happy camper, thrilled at the experience and with an immediate and insatiable desire to rush out and do more like it. I'm now inspired to get a couple of PPG’s together, load up some 2 stroke mix and a plan a trip passing predetermined filling stations on a full day ride.

Cheers for Now,

PS Len, this was a multiple send to several interested parties, just thought you may like to hear/read how it went and with thanks for the concerns you had for my well being, I suppose that's what clubs and buddies are for and it's great - thank you.