I’m going nuts trying to find in my early flight log books a hang gliding trip to Lake Pepin. I can’t find it. The Sky Dog will remember!
Lake Pepin is a wide stretch in the Mississippi River below Red Wing Minnesota.
It lays claim to the birthplace of water skiing.
On the east side of the river is the State of Wisconsin.
My wife Terry, and I along with friend Don Ray, hooked onto our boat and headed for Lake Pepin during a long Holiday weekend to do some boat towing in front of the 300’ to 350’ high cliffs that ran along both sides of the river. There was about a mile distance between the Minnesota and Wisconsin shorelines.
The lake was glassy calm so instead of trying to soar up on the rim somewhere we decided to do some pop starts from the trailer court point near the marina in front of the city of Lake City, MN.
This was early day towing before the center of mass bridles so we were using 2,025 lb breaking strength 3/8” polypro rope. No weak links, and a stainless steel control frame from Bill Moyes. This would be our first encounter with the Sky Line Sky Dogs from Duluth, MN.
Several of the “Dogs” had driven down expecting the forecast to be right for the Lake City, MN foot launch. With our towing operation we really didn’t care much which way the wind would blow since the river made a couple of turns like one line of a swastika or closer to that shape than to a “Z” shape. We had most any direction covered. The “Dogs” found the wind to be over the back at launch so they were headed for a bar in Lake City to have a safety meeting. (Ahem!)
I’m trying to remember which of the Dogs were there. For sure Dan O’Hara, Larry Majchrzak ( I say it like My zhak which is probably wrong). It could have also been that Buck McMinn was there too. Maybe Dan remembers.
So the Dogs, normally not distracted when heading for a safety meeting at a bar, saw some crazy tow pilots exposing the sport to deadly insanity in full public view.
Nobody did this crazy towing since Boris Poppov nixed it after he had a crash trying it. Boris was the head honcho for HG it the state at the time.
The Dogs were probably going to cut our flying wires if necessary to save us from ourselves and not allow any nightly news to put hang gliding in an even worse light than the sport was currently enduring.
I was just ready to shake the glider to signal the pop start when the pack of dogs came howling at me wanting to know what we were doing. “Well----ah ----er --flying. It’s called a hang glider“, I said.
“We know what it is but how long have you been doing this?” Dan demanded.
I was trying to be polite yet not give up too much incriminating evidence since I was sure these guys must be the authority figures that had control of the goings on here. I was obviously committing some grievous offense to everyone and probably God too. The Dogs weren’t a bit shy about running their fingers over the stainless steel flying wires inspecting everything probably for air worthiness. The capital letters “FAA” were creeping into my mind and I was thinking next I would have to produce I.D.
If I told this guy how long I’d been doing this would I be fined by the hour or the day? I was trying to be very careful of what I said that might come back to haunt me.
I said, “Do you mean how long today? Or how long since my first flight?
Before I could answer one of the other Dogs demanded what this control frame was made of. “Stainless steel.” I told them which stunned them all into wide eyed silence. After telling them that we three each had several hundred flights and after it came out that we lived only 50 miles from them they wondered why they hadn’t know about us.
Once the Dogs determined through grilling us that we just might have this towing figured out they wanted to see us fly. Before I did my pop start Dan told me that even though the wind wasn’t on the surface of the lake we should be over soaring the Wisconsin side since the wind would be good enough over there above the tree line on the cliff.
That turned out to be some of the best information that we had all weekend.
I did our first interstate tow flight and when I got over to Maiden Rock on the Wisconsin side the air was so smooth soaring only 50 feet above the tree line it was unbelievable.
It was just as though God had a rope tied to the king post and was swinging me back and forth on the long ridge. Four hundred feet below the boat sat motionless on the glassy surface of the lake. This was my first ridge soaring flight and the reason that we made many more trips to Lake Pepin in the years after that.
Maiden Rock was the turning point at the end of the ridge and each time I turned over Maiden Rock (Every single time) I would look down at the rocks at the base of the cliff and recall the Indian history of an Indian maiden that the rock was named for. Rather than be forced into a marriage to a brave that she didn’t love, A marriage that would keep her from the brave that she loved, she did her funeral dance on the rock as the Indian village below pleaded with her not to jump. She had made up her mind though and at the end of her dance of death she jumped.
Looking at the rocks at the base of the cliff below me summoned a bit of the fear of falling that most all of us deal with. There is risk in hang gliding and every turn over the rock (Every single time.) I would think about her plunge to death.
by skydog » Fri Jan 18, 2013 12:33 pm 
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FOCUS!!! Fly the glider...worth every penny!! 
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