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Wow, It Is Lonely Out Here: A Utah Outlanding Story
By Ray Williams
July 23, 2004 was a Friday of great promise for my long flight endeavors. Flying my 21 meter Caproni A21, I planned a 1000 K task from Ely, Nevada to Kanab, Utah to Tonopah, NV and back to Ely. Weather reports were for scattered thunderstorms and cloud bases to 16-17,000'. At first, the weather and cloudbases matched the forecast. But after turning Kanab, there was a considerable amount of overdevelopment. Soon, I needed to proceed more northerly to avoid the rain squalls and overdeveloped areas. My luck ran out when the great lift location I was working began to drip very rapidly. The other good lift areas also turned into rain squalls.
With my altitude rapidly disappearing I searched for the most suitable places to land. The only signs of civilization were one dirt road and two farm houses. It was obvious this was a remote part of Utah. There was an attractive meadow area that would have been a good place to land, but there were no roads by it. So I elected to make my landing on the dirt road, which was almost into the wind. Oh boy! The wind was now registering 35 knots on my GPS, and I saw that the road was bounded by a fence on the east.
I quickly decided to land parallel to the road, on a flat area covered by sage brush. I held off the touch down as long as possible, landing about 100 feet from the fence with a very short 100' roll out. I expected to find some major damage on the glider. However, the brush was low, and the only obvious harm was some scratches, some loosening of the rivets on the gear doors, and a superficial crack in the fiberglass molding on the vertical stabilizer.
Just before landing, I had tried to contact other pilots, but with no success. Now on the ground, my cell phone disclosed no service! I marked my coordinates on the map with great care. I was at least 100 miles south of Ely, and since the road was dirt it would have little traffic. There was no settlement in sight.
I had landed about 32 miles north of Modena, Utah in the Hamlin Valley. Modena is located almost directly west of Cedar City, and just east of the Nevada/Utah border. According to the website http://nationalhistorictrails.com/results/modenautah.htm, Modena "was once a booming railroad and mining town with a population of nearly 3,500. . . . Modena lost its luster of yesteryear and has dwindled to a community of about 50 people now. Although many gold and silver mining claims are still being
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