Ridge Soaring!

Submitted by Jason on Tue, 03/23/2010 - 05:08

Ridge Running from Bo Lorentzen on Vimeo.

When I first heard about flying gliders I thought it sounded boring: no engine, slow-flying airplanes taking very short flights. Luckily, I got the opportunity to try it anyway. I found it to be anything but boring. Even the clunkiest gliders (like my beloved SGS 2-33) don't feel slow when you're in them. The challenge of planning to make it back to the runway and get your landing right the first (and only) time is a thrill. The best part though is finding some type of lifting action that can keep your plane in the air for more than a couple tenths. This video got my heart racing! It shows a truly exciting type of lift-riding called ridge soaring.

In this video, there is probably 15-25 kt of wind coming from the right side of the screen. The ridge below the glider acts like a ramp and forces that wind to blow mostly upward. If you place a glider in that rising air, you can ride down that ridge for miles...with no engine. Some pilots do this for literally hundreds of miles. The lift is strongest closer to the ridge and as you can see from this video it can be quite strong. (The airspeed indicator has wrapped all the way around the dial and back over to the 3 o'clock position...probably in the 90-100 kt range for this airplane.) It takes a lot of concentration and some planning, but if done properly it's perfectly safe. I'll tell you, the view in this video is the closest thing I've seen outside government work to flying a jet low-level through the mountains. That's pretty impressive for an airplane that burns zero gallons per hour of fuel.

If you'd like to see some more ridge soaring, you might check out the most popular glider flying movie off all time: The Thomas Crown Affair. The director took a lot of artistic license building up to and winding down from the central moment in the movie, but this key scene is pretty cool.

If this looks fun, you should definitely check out your local soaring operation. The SSA has a pretty cool map that shows most of the soaring operations in the US. Adding a glider rating to your private or commercial SEL ticket is relatively simple. The FARs require as few as 10 flights for a private glider add-on. You can expect to pay $50-75 per training flight, plus membership fees since many glider operations are structured as clubs. Things get a little cheaper after you finish your check ride and can spend hours in the air on your own or with friends.

If you're looking specifically to try ridge soaring, Chilhowee Gliderport in Tennessee is very well known. Learning to fly there means you could be ridge soaring from day 1...apparently even in the winter when most thermal soaring locations are closed for the season. Sounds like fun to me!