Pope Valley CA DZ pictures?

[377 22]

I STILL miss this DZ.

Does anyone have some Pope Valley Parachute Ranch pictures they can post? Maybe reality will make me less nostalgic.

Pope Valley has become the perfect DZ in my mind with the passage of time. Just like the nice looking girls you didn't marry. They all become 10s as you age.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[darkwing 5]

Me too! Pope Valley was a regular winter getaway for jumpers from Idaho. I knew Curt Curtis reasonably well, but didn't know Tim Saltonstall well. I first met Elek Puskas there, and had some long, fruitful discussions about canopy design. But mostly, it was, as y ou say, the perfect DZ. I still haven't had a better experience anywhere. It broke my heart when they shut it down.

A few months ago I looked for it on Google Earth, and the airstrip is still there, although I don't know what, if any, aviation activity is there.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[howardwhite 6]

Well, for starters, a couple of ads.
On my only visit there (1976), I stayed at Curt Curtis's house in the woods on the hill to the west of the airport. Like you, I remember it as a really magical place.

HW

[zoobrothertom 5]

Looks like it was pretty nice place. Also, sounds like heaven for being the late '70s.

____________________________________
I'm back in the USA!!

[Usetawuz 1]

I gotta agree. Pope Valley seemed the "Perfect Place, the Perfect DZ".

_________________________________________
The older I get, the better I was!

[Jumperintheair 0]

Taken fromhttp://www.ilovenapa.com/paulfranson_article.php?articleId=82

Quote

Returning south past the Pope Valley Store, you reach Pope Canyon Road. Turn left. The Eagle & the Rose Winery looms on the right. A surprisingly large facility, it was the first modern production facility in Pope Valley and is popular for processing the flood of grapes coming from local grapes. It is open to visitors by appointment.

Its owner, 80-year-old Norm Alumbaugh, also owns the airport and closed restaurant next to the winery. He would like to reopen it, but the county won’t permit it.

The airport was once the world’s largest parachute training facility during World War II. In a building there, Alumbaugh is developing a business jet he hopes will challenge Lear and its brethren.

[Tidlof 0]

Quote

I gotta agree. Pope Valley seemed the "Perfect Place, the Perfect DZ".

I was only there for a weekend (New Year's I think) right before they closed. Emmett and I got on some 8 or 10 ways with the Unity guys. My log book entry was something like "the best damn dives we'd ever been on". Well designed with highly experienced people; it was magic. Bill Dause just sat in his little shack collecting money. I think the "Sunset over Pope" final days happened a few weeks later.

Disclaimer: I wouldn't remember this if I hadn't shown Cheryl Creson aka Cheryl-bob (my current boss and former Pope Valley jumper) those logbook pages just a year or 2 ago.

P.S. Cheryl-bob and her old man Jimmy-jack are doing well, scuba diving a lot and probably haven't changed much since then.

Ted
D6691 SCR 3975 SCS 2242 NSCR 698
On the road to wrack and ruin…………
but making damn good time.

[skr 1]

> I STILL miss this DZ.

Me too.


> Maybe reality will make me less nostalgic.

> Pope Valley has become the perfect DZ in my mind with the passage of time.

Oh, I think it really was perfect,
you're not making that up from
selective memory.

The Gulch was perfect in a pure
sort of way. There was no reason
to go over there 5 light years from
the nearest anything except for the
most fantastic skydiving I'd ever
experienced and the people doing it.

Pope Valley had that plus everything
else.

Oceanside in the early sixties had
that feeling of special too, that feeling
of family and community and special
times.

Those are the three dropzones that
really stood out for me.

Skr

[3331 137]

Isn't there an annual get together for the 1970's Northern California jumpers organized by Ann Curtis?

I got my WSCR at Pope Valley, always been proud of that.

I Jumped with the guys who invented Skydiving.

[377 22]

Damn, looks like Pope Valley really WAS jumper paradise. It isn't just an old memory exaggerated and enhanced by the passage of time.

How lucky we all were to have experienced DZ heaven on Earth.

I hope someone posts some good color PV DZ pix. I'd like to try to make a t shirt. I still have a $5 Pope Valley jump ticket that could be part of the design.

377

2018 marks half a century as a skydiver. Trained by the late Perry Stevens D-51 in 1968.

[beenthere 0]

Two out of three ain't bad, color from Pope Valley. The matchbook cover was the "T" design.

[snowmman 3]

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/News_Articles/2008/galinskyseeingisbelieving.aspx

Caught this article. Was interesting to ponder my own thoughts.

snips:

The research was done by Adam Galinsky, the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in collaboration with lead author Jennifer Whitson, an assistant professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Through a series of six experiments, the researchers showed that individuals who lacked control were more likely to see images that did not exist, perceive conspiracies, and develop superstitions.


According to Whitson, that psychological need is for control, and the ability to minimize uncertainty and predict beneficial courses of action. In situations where one has little control, the researchers proposed that an individual may believe that mysterious, unseen mechanisms are secretly at work. To test their theory, the researchers created a number of situations characterized by lack of control and then measured whether people saw a variety of illusory patterns.

For example, in one experiment individuals were asked to look at “snowy” pictures. Half of the pictures were grainy patterns of random dots, while the other half also contained images like a chair, a boat, or the planet Saturn, that were faintly visible against the grainy background. While all people correctly identified 95 percent of the hidden images, the group of people who had felt their control had been eroded in a previous part of the experiment also “saw” images in 43 percent of the pictures that were just random scatterings of dots.

“People see false patterns in all types of data, imagining trends in stock markets, seeing faces in static, and detecting conspiracies between acquaintances. This suggests that lacking control leads to a visceral need for order – even imaginary order,” said Whitson.
...

Restoring a Sense of Control
To test whether individuals with diminished power can restore control and realign their perceptions, the researchers asked participants to rate how strongly they believed in certain values (like aesthetic beauty or valuing scientific theory and research). They then asked participants to write about situations in which they were helpless or lacked control. To restore feelings of control afterwards, some participants were asked to elaborate on the values they had rated as important. As a comparison, other participants were asked to elaborate on the value they held in lowest esteem.

The results were clear: participants who didn’t have an opportunity to regain feelings of control were more likely to perceive visual images that didn’t exist and to perceive conspiracies in innocent situations, while participants who regained feelings of control by focusing on important personal values were no different from people who never lost their feelings of self-control in the first place.

"It's exciting - restoring people's sense of control normalized their perceptions and behavior," said Galinsky.

[howardwhite 6]

Will some Green person please move this to the DB Cooper thread, where it belongs and was apparently intended to be.

HW

[darkwing 5]

Anyone remember the old Mirror Image 8-way team film of their training jumps there? It was great film, by Rande deLuca I think. I'd love that to get to DVD. Lots of good Pope Valley feel to it. It would be a shame to let that film, and many others of the era) rot away.

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[beenthere 0]

There were two films, one called "Mirror Image 77" which ended with an up-down in-out produced by BJ and Rande. The film was premiered the night before the 77 Nationals. The second, "Rainbow Magic" from 1979 was filmed by Rande DeLuca and Phil Pastuhov also produced by BJ.

Here are two frames from a poor quality VHS copy of the film "Rainbow Magic".

[zoobrothertom 5]

Didn't Mirror Image provide the cover of a Journey album where they put the band member's faces on the jumpers? I'm really not sure if it was Mirror Image but it was a cool cover.

____________________________________
I'm back in the USA!!

[beenthere 0]

Not Mirror Image, but Becky Livingstone, who lived in Pope Valley was one of the jumpers on the album.

[PeteS 0]

That album cover was shot at the Yolo DZ, that George Morar owned. Early eighties as I remember, and the jump crew was Altitude shop employees'. Steve Perry's head was put into Beckys' position.

[jdobleman 0]

As I recall, Jerry Fox and John van D'Erve were also models on that shot.

madjohn

[flyhi 24]

Quote

Steve Perry's head was put into Beckys' position.

Never heard it called a "position" before.

Attached is the only Journey album cover I could find that had discernable people on it. Would that be it, or is there another one floating around out there?

Shit happens. And it usually happens because of physics.

[rmarshall234 14]

Judy and I stopped by there a few years back to see how things have changed. It was remarkably the same. The buildings -as I remember them- were still there and the runway intact but overgrown with weeds. I'll see if I can dig up a few pics from the trip and post them later tonight.

[rmarshall234 14]

I suck at posting pictures so I hope this works. Might have to cut and paste.

Pics of the buildings at Pope and one of the runway (just past the road). These were taken in January of 04. Sorry they aren't any better...but should bring back some old memories nontheless. It really was amazing how little things had changed in ~ 25 years.

[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4252/popevalley2nh5.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/7043/popevalley3yf6.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7036/popevalley1rh8.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9529/popevalley4az8.jpg[/IMG]

[darkwing 5]

Clicky....

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4252/popevalley2nh5.jpg

http://img385.imageshack.us/img385/7043/popevalley3yf6.jpg

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7036/popevalley1rh8.jpg

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9529/popevalley4az8.jpg

ps - Whatever happened to Curt Curtis?

Jeff

-- Jeff
My Skydiving History

[howardwhite 6]

Quote

ps - Whatever happened to Curt Curtis?

Curt is alive and well, living in New York City and, in his laid-back way, running his sports management company (as well as playing a lot of golf.)
He is actively involved as a Trustee and treasurer of the National Skydiving Museum. If you're going to be at PIA in Reno next February, you might see him -- there will be a Museum committee meeting there.

HW

[jumpwally 0]

Who ran the place?, what happened to it ? and when did it close ?

smile, be nice, enjoy life
FB # - 1083