Feature > Working Rigs
Hanging It All Out
Just How do You Think Those Gliders Get up There, Anyway?
story and photos by Debbie Murphy
Garland Rhodes: the Hang Glider Guy
Garland’s cool. He grew up in the Owens Valley and to talk to him you get the impression he was raised in an ever-expanding bubble of awe and adrenaline. He’s got a laid-back attitude in repose, but everything he does he does with abandon. He’s lived his life as if somebody was writing a book about it.
Garland took to hang gliding like a bird to flying. There’s an explanation. As a kid, he had the normal, “I’m falling” nightmares. He’d wake up in a cold sweat and decided to see if he could keep the dream going past that jerking-awake point. Eventually, his falling nightmares turned into flying dreams.
Garland Rhodes and Irv Moore putting the high-tech padding between the glider and the custom rack of the 1-ton Chevy 4x4.
“Some people have an affinity to flight,” Garland says. “You see it in kids a lot. Whatever they do, skiing or biking, they always want to see how much air they can catch.”
When hang gliding caught on 25 or so years ago, Garland was ready to fly and just happened to live in an area ideally suited to the sport. With its unique geography, Owens is legendary for its thermals that can keep gliders aloft forever.
The road up Gunter Canyon heads east out of Chalfant Valley, north of Bishop, and up into the Whites. Like most of the 4x4 trails, the road was access to now abandoned mining operations. Climbing up Gunter Canyon the combination of the grade and the loose road surface makes having low gearing a good thing.
Garland was an admitted gliding bum during the heyday of the sport in the valley, ferrying equipment up the steep trails of the Whites and Sierra ranges, from Horseshoe Meadows above Lone Pine to Montgomery Pass north of Bishop, making enough money to fuel his habit.
The vehicles he used wouldn’t qualify as show trucks. The one thing his shuttle vehicles had in common were good, old-fashioned low gears. They ranged from a flatbed pickup to a Jeep Wagoneer, whatever was handy.
More climbing up Gunter Canyon. Sherry Moore decides to walk part of the way, she's scouting mountain bike routes.
One of his trips was chronicled in the book, In Search of World Records by George Worthington, an early gliding pioneer. On the way to a glide site, Garland had to tackle part of the grade in reverse, a method Worthington initially may have figured was some sort of strange local custom.
Unloading and setting up the hang glider, a cross between a very large kite and a Lego toy.
“I’d dented the gas tank,” Garland explains, “If the gas was down to a quarter tank or so and the grade is really steep, and the gas wouldn’t make it to the fuel pump unless I took the grade in reverse.”
Early valley gliders weren’t too picky about what they took up the mountains, the only criteria being that the vehicle would make it there. The biggest problem was finding non-gliding drivers to take the trucks back down the hill to pick up the fliers and their equipment at the end of the flight. “We’d just tell the down-hill drivers to keep it in low gear and stay on the road,” he laughs.
Today, Garland is taking Irv Moore up Gunter Canyon, east of Chalfant Valley, to get his first taste of the sport. It’s summer, which precludes the conventional training area at Eureka Dunes near Death Valley where the temperatures hit 120 on a regular basis. With a sloping, 1500-foot elevation and a soft landing, the dunes are the ideal training wheels for novice gliders in the winter.
Garland “discovered” the launch spot up Gunter while on a Forest Service fire detail. He and the crew were walking out of the Whites after dealing with a lightning fire. It didn’t take long for the 8,000-foot elevation to gain premium hang gliding status. “During competitions, it wasn’t unusual to see a hundred gliders in the air,” Garland remembers.
We’re at the launch site. Irv and Garland size up the altitude, about 8,000 feet altitude, 4,000 feet above the valley floor.
These days, his vehicle is a 1990 1-ton Chevy 4x4 that doubles as a solid tow vehicle. The Chevy has the stock 454 engine and a rebuilt Turbo 400 transmission with 4.10 gears. While his days of driving backwards are behind him with this relatively modern rig, he’s modified the Chevy for even better off-road performance.
An ARB Air Locker is mounted on the front differential for two reasons: First, ARB originally didn’t have a locker for the rearend (but it will by fall of 2004). Second, the extra traction on the front end made good sense for loose footing on the steeps. Adjustable Rancho shocks and BFGoodrich all-terrain tires help the Chevy perform its double duty without too much of a sacrifice for either towing or mountain climbing.
Sherry wondering if Irv’s life insurance is paid up.
Garland also takes a few more precautions now than he did in the early days of gliding. Back then a couple flat tires, dead batteries or running out of gas were minor glitches.
“The heat and the climb are tough on trucks,” points out Moore, a heavy equipment mechanic for the water and power company. Making our way on the steep drive on the old mining road that winds up Gunter Canyon, we all glance at the heat gauge. The Chevy is prepared with an auxiliary radiator cooler and a SuperCooler for the transmission. It also has a winch, and an arsenal of tow straps resting in its cradle in the bed, ready to slip onto the trailer hitch or front receiver if the Chevy ends up in trouble.
Coming back down the mountain.
The launch area is easy to spot, with a couple of makeshift windsocks. Garland has brought both a training and high-performance glider, opting to strap Moore into the super-duper model, since he’s not going to actually launch him off the mountain, but instead give him a feel for the sport, and see if the bug has really bit him. It’s like watching a Lego toy being assembled.
Moore’s wife, Sherry asks Garland why he doesn’t fly any more. “I lost my passion,” he says. Why? “Broke my neck,” is the blunt answer we weren’t really expecting. It seems that on a flight near Lee Vining above Mono Lake, Garland’s glider slammed him headfirst back into the mountain. He managed to drag himself back to his Jeep and start back down the road, until the Jeep ran out of gas.
Obviously, he was found, taken to the hospital and survived. After a year’s recuperation, he went back to the Eureka Dunes only to repeat the same mis-maneuver, knocking himself silly. “After that, there was a hesitation,” Garland admits. “You can’t fly nervous, you have to commit.” So, now he takes people like the Moores up the hill or to the Dunes and introduces them to the art of flying.
A little desert art. Not sure what this was before it met its unhappy end, possibly an early 50’s Ford or Mercury. Could have been one of the gliders’ vehicles driven down the hill by someone who didn’t follow the instructions, “Put it in low gear and stay on the road!” An autopsy would probably indicate the bullet holes were post mortem.
Moore gets swathed in a bulky, brown cocoon-thing that attaches him to the glider. He looks like an awkward wasp with the lower part of the harness flapping behind his legs. Once a glider is air borne, his legs zip into that section; then magically reappear for the landing. But that’s for Moore’s next lesson. As Garland goes through the take-off techniques and explains how the glider is maneuvered, Moore looks like this may not have been his brightest idea. Then a breeze drifts up the canyon and ruffles the glider, lighting up Moore’s face, giving him the first hint of what flight could feel like. The bug bit.
As Moore is unzipped and he and Garland take the glider apart and pack it back on the truck racks, Garland explains how some gliders learn from books and others just do it. “A few go above and beyond,” he says. “They have the ability to see what others can’t.” Looking out across the valley to the Sierras, cloaked in a faint smoke haze from a forest fire 200 miles north, its easy to understand the passion of flight-or at least the desire to go wheelin’ where you can lift off.
Author’s Note
When the editor of Off-Road Adventures asked me to do a series on people who use four-wheel drive vehicles as part of their jobs, I got a little apprehensive. Not for lack of material, because I live in 4x4 heaven, a long, narrow valley framed by the Sierras to the west and the White/Inyo range to the east. Southern Californians make the six-hour drive up here to explore old mining roads and discover lush, mountain meadows at the end of steep truck trails. So not having enough places for wheelin’ isn’t the issue.
But the locals have a little different take on four-wheeling-it’s a means to an end. In addition, the jobs and lifestyle up here bear little resemblance to those in Southern California. I knew the editor was in for a bit of a surprise, but an interesting one. I’m not sure you’d find guys who collect firewood on commercial permits in the Los Angeles yellow pages, or hunting guides or prospectors or hang-gliding shuttles.
Most of the people featured in this series don’t make their entire income in the cab of a 4x4. People here pretty much do what they have to in order to stay and pursue their passion. That’s more of what this series is about-passion at the end of a steep truck trail.