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(Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell) Flying with the Best Paragliders flock to Woodrat Mountain to learn tricks of the trade from expert pilots By Bill kettler Mail Tribune Getting into the Rat Race isn't easy anymore. Fewer than 50 pilots signed up back in 2003 when Mike Haley organized a paragliding competition and named it after Woodrat Mountain, Southern Oregon's premier launch site for motorless aircraft. This year, all 130 pilot slots were filled on the first day of registration, and there's a waiting list of two dozen people eager to take the place of anyone who fails to show up when it starts Tuesday. Word spread quickly that Haley, a veteran pilot from West Linn, was offering something different in the world of paragliding. Veteran competition pilots would mentor those who had little competition experience, sharing the tricks they had acquired after years of flying a contraption that's essentially a highly steerable parachute. "It's a way to show people how to have more fun with a sport they already love," said Haley, who has flown since the mid-70s. "The first- and second-time competitors are paired with top pilot mentors," said Paul Murdoch, a Jacksonville pilot. "They coach you through the whole thing. The 'little guys' just love it." Advertisement Most recreational fliers are content to fly a few minutes and land in a cow pasture at the base of Woodrat Mountain. Competition pilots fly for hours and cover 20 miles or more, visiting specific points along the way. "In a competition, the major difference is someone's telling you where to go and where to land," said Dave Wheeler, a competition pilot from Washington state who will be flying in the Rat Race. "It's quite different from what most recreational pilots fly. It can be a huge leap of faith to take that long glide from the launch" and set out on a competition course. The Rat Race, now in its fourth year, will follow this weekend's Starthistle Fly-in, when more than 300 pilots are expected to gather at Woodrat to fly, share stories and renew old friendships. The race begins Tuesday and continues through Saturday. Pilots will fly a different course each day, determined by weather conditions and prevailing winds. "We might end up flying to Applegate Dam if there's a north wind," Wheeler said. "If it's a light wind day, we might go to Grants Pass and back. What's more regular is a westerly day. Then we fly to Jacksonville and down the ridge to the southeast." Each course includes a list of "tasks," places that pilots must fly over and log on the GPS units they all carry. To reach each site, pilots must find columns of rising air "thermals", or they will sink like the parachutes they are. Competition pilots have learned to read the weather, wind and geography to know where the thermals are, and how to use them to their best advantage. "You have to make decisions about where to go to get the next lift," Wheeler said, "or decide if you're high enough to skip it" and head to the next site on the course. The low mountains around Woodrat typically provide abundant sources of steadily rising air without much of the turbulence that occurs in other prime flying areas, said CJ Sturtevant, a Seattle pilot who edits Hang Gliding & Paragliding magazine. "There's different micro-meteorology from valley to valley," Sturtevant said. The varied geography also makes for visually interesting flying, even though the actual distances covered may be relatively small. "You feel like you're going somewhere," she said. "Woodrat is this really interesting combination of very friendly thermals and lots of cross-country opportunities," said Murdoch, the Jacksonville pilot. "We can go 270 degrees without running into air traffic. Only around Medford do we run into air traffic." "There are good lift sources and good landing areas," said Bruce Comstock, an Ashland pilot. "That makes it possible for really good pilots to fly 40 miles. For less experienced pilots, it's a good, safe place to fly and an incredibly beautiful place to fly." Experienced pilots meet with their "mentees" in the morning before each flight, telling them what to look out for and what to pay attention to. Every evening they meet again to talk about what went right and what went wrong, and an experienced pilot gives a program about some aspect of competition flying, such as how to program a Global Positioning System GPS. Daily winners are determined by a complicated scoring formula that rewards the fastest pilots. "It doesn't really hurt the competition pilots to pass out their tricks and tips," Wheeler said, "because the experienced pilots fly so much faster." The races themselves play out rather like sailboat races. All the pilots launch and fly in a "gaggle" over Woodrat, circling in a column of rising air. When the starting gun fires, everyone sets out for the first "waypoint" on the course. "You might not fly directly to the first waypoint," Murdoch said. "You're looking for thermals." "It's pretty much a thinking game," said Wheeler, the Washington pilot. "You're always looking at the terrain, thinking about where a thermal would come off. When you're close to the terrain, you're looking for flows up the side of a hill. When you're higher, thermals come up both sides of the hill." The mentoring arrangement is already showing results, Murdoch said. "One guy who was mentored last year should make the national team this year. That just wouldn't have happened under the old regime." Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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