Col. Cragin Shelton, USAF-Ret., inches his hang glider close to the edge of the 1,100-foot-high cliff known as High Rock in Smithsburg, Md. Three fellow pilots help him keep the craft, buffeted by 15 mph winds, from being blown back into the woods or pulled forward off the rocky precipice. Finally, with his toes dangling over the cliff face, Shelton balances the glider and sets the wing to the proper “angle of attack.” Around him, the crew grips the flying wires of the glider while shouting out the pressure conditions. When the glider wings finally are level and the pilots on either side of him agree on the relative pressure, he yells “Clear!”, leaps off the cliff, and is rocketed upward thousands of feet by air currents deflected skyward by the rocky outcropping.

To some this might seem a daring feat. But to Shelton, it’s just part of a hobby, one he started participating in nearly 10 years ago.

“We were on a family vacation in Nags Head, N.C., in 1995,” recalls Shelton, “when my wife noticed one of the local activities was hang gliding. She turned to me and said ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to try hang gliding.’ I said, ‘You’ve always wanted to try what?’ ” A few days later, Shelton; his wife, Kay; and their two daughters were on the sand dunes taking a lesson from Kitty Hawk Kites, one of the largest hang gliding schools in the United States. While his family members enjoyed their brief flights on the dunes, it was Shelton who became hooked.

“The first time I got airborne it was just so damn cool,” he says. “It was the perfect mid-life crisis activity. I already had the little red sports car,” he explains. “And my wife assured me that [hang gliding] was less expensive and safer than getting a young, blonde floozy.” That summer he spent almost every weekend taking lessons with instructor John Middleton of Silver Wings Hang Gliding in Arlington, Va.

Learn to fly

Hang gliders are simple machines made of aluminum tubes, steel wires, and polyester fiber sailcloth. The pilot hangs in a cocoon-like harness from the center point, the keel, and controls the craft by weight shift. Pulling in and out on the control bar, or base tube, moderates speed. Side-to-side movement steers the craft. The aircraft folds down and packs into a bag about 18 feet long and one foot in diameter. Setup and breakdown take about 20 minutes.

With the traditional method of learning to fly a hang glider, the graduated-step method, a student learns to “ground handle” the glider by doing practice runs and launches on shallow slopes no higher than 30 feet. These first few attempts at launching often are rewarded with a few seconds of being airborne— followed by a hard landing on the ground. Landing a hang glider is one of the hardest parts to learn.

Once students manage to launch and land successfully from the “bunny slope,” they step up to higher slopes of 60 feet, 90 feet, and higher. At each step the student perfects the launching and landing techniques and learns to steer and control the speed and pitch of the glider. It generally takes about 60 to 80 flights over the course of a few months to complete the initial training to allow solo high-altitude flight. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, training can take more than a year.

Unfortunately, many students fail to complete their training due to the rigors of repeatedly carrying a 60-to-80-pound glider up a 100-foot hill. “On a hot day, it’s like working out on the [stair-climber] with a 60-pound backpack,” notes Shelton. “But in the fall or spring with wind it’s fun, because you can guide the glider back up the hill like a kite.”

Almost two years after Shelton took his first flights at Kitty Hawk Kites, he completed his training and took his first mountain flight in Breezewood, Pa. “I took a long time standing at launch getting up the nerve to go,” he says. “But once I was in the air it was great! I made a few passes back and forth along the mountain ridge and then headed out to land. The total time of the flight was only six minutes. But I was pumped!”

Since 1997, several new methods of training have been perfected to accelerate the learning process and relieve some of the backbreaking effort associated with the training hill. All involve some form of towing the glider aloft and having an instructor in the glider with the student in a specially designed harness. The two most popular methods of towing are truck towing and aerotowing. In truck towing, the glider is released from a truck on a payout winch as the truck accelerates along the ground (imagine running with a kite as you let out the line attached to it). In aerotowing, the glider is towed aloft behind an ultralight aircraft in the same manner as a sailplane is towed by a single-engine plane.

In both forms of towing, the instructor initially handles the launching and landing and allows the student to control the glider after releasing it from the tow line. With each additional tow, the student takes over more of the launching and landing control until the instructor feels the student is ready to fly solo. Because the glider usually is towed aloft to between 1,000 and 2,000 feet, the pilot learns how to judge altitudes for landing approaches beginning with the first tow. In areas that don’t have nearby mountains, towing is the only way to fly, and pilots usually don’t learn to foot launch. Towing also allows students to practice high-altitude maneuvers and landing approaches with the first flight.

“In an airplane, if the pilot misjudges the altitude for landing, he or she can simply push up the throttle, climb back into the sky, and try again. There are no second attempts at landing a hang glider,” says hang glider pilot and Air Force Reserve Col. Joe Gregor. But even with the advent of towing, flying hang gliders doesn’t come easy. “I’ve flown single-engine Cessnas, supersonic training jets, and large AWAC jets, and in many ways learning to fly a hang glider was more difficult than learning to fly these airframes,” says Gregor.

Aerotowing provides another great advantage. It allows disabled people who cannot foot-launch a hang glider to leave the confines of crutches and wheelchairs. Championship water skier and equestrian Michelle Cook of Kenosha, Wis., lost the use of her legs during a riding accident. She renewed her passion for the outdoors through aerotow hang gliding. “It was incredible,” Cook says of her first tandem flight. “All of a sudden, [I was] up in the sky, looking down on the world. There was no wheelchair anywhere around. And I was thrilled to death.”

By mounting large wheels on the glider for takeoff and landing, Cook and other disabled people are able to experience a new freedom. “Everything is what you choose to make of it,” says Cook, “and you can turn something around. I can’t walk, but I can fly.”

Pray to the sky gods

This sense of freedom is what hang gliding is all about—defying gravity with just your wits and the power of the natural elements. Glider pilots stay aloft by working updrafts known as thermals and ridge lift. Ridge lift is generated by wind deflected upward by a mountain ridge that provides a consistent area for glider pilots to soar. Thermals are pockets or columns of rising warm air, which generally form into cumulus clouds. Gliders circle in these thermals in the same fashion as hawks and other soaring birds. But there’s no guarantee. Some days it seems impossible to come down because of the abundance of updrafts. Other days, flights go straight from launch to landing in what’s called a “sled ride.”
 
Capt. Holly Korzilius, USMC, had the bad luck of having 51 sled rides before her first soaring flight. “I was thinking that all the other pilots exchanged some secret handshake with the sky gods before launch and that I would never learn that handshake,” says Korzilius.

But on flight 52 that changed: She found some slowly rising air. “I circled and circled and continued to go up to almost 2,500 feet! Alas, all good things come to an end. I managed to stay up for 38 minutes and came back to the landing area to be greeted by many smiling faces congratulating me on a great flight,” she says.

On an average “soarable” day, flights last from one to three hours. “You never know what you’ll get on any given day,” says Hugh McElrath, a retired Navy commander and cryptologist. “And this uncertainty makes it addictive. When it’s good there’s this great reward, and you want to do it again and again.”

McElrath, who also holds a private pilot’s license, notes even on the bad days hang gliding is a much purer experience than flying powered aircraft. “It’s like the difference between riding a bicycle and driving a car. It’s quiet, peaceful, and you’re not enclosed by any structure.”

Plan your journey

After finishing initial training, a pilot earns a novice rating. But the instruction doesn’t end there. Under the supervision of specially designated mentors appointed by the U.S. Hang Gliding Association, a novice pilot takes on increasingly demanding conditions and sites while focusing on safety. Initially, pilots fly close to the launch site (either the mountain or tow-park) and land at a designated field or landing zone. With increased experience, pilots are lured away from these familiar fields, chasing thermal updrafts, to embark on fantastic journeys.

“It’s the beauty of seeing new places with the challenge of trying to stay up while gravity is pulling you down,” says Cmdr. Mitch Shipley, USN-Ret. Shipley has flown more than 100 miles in a hang glider on several occasions. “If it’s a good day, you just go and worry about getting back later.” The world record stands at 438 miles.

“It’s a nice way to meet new people,” adds Lt. Col. John Dullahan, USA-Ret. “I once landed in a field owned by Mennonites. All the kids rushed up to me barefoot and in [overalls] and wanted to know all about flying.”

Generally, pilots work together to find and retrieve each other after flying cross-country. But this doesn’t always work out as planned.

“I flew from Pleasant Gap near my home in Central Pennsylvania to the Delaware border once by myself,” says Shipley. “With no one to come get me, I called my wife. She said she’d pick me up after she picked up our boy from the Boy Scouts that evening.” Needless to say, it was a long night for Shipley.

Pilots use two-way radios, cell phones, maps, and GPS units to stay in touch with each other and determine position. Cross-country flying requires the added discipline of understanding and adhering to general aviation flight regulations and avoiding restricted and prohibited airspace. As unlicensed aircraft, hang gliders must steer clear of commercial or military airports. Hang gliders also are prohibited from flying higher than 18,000 feet.

On the East Coast and in the South and Midwest, pilots rarely see altitudes of half this height. Most thermals top out at about 6,000 feet above ground level (AGL) and usually only rise to 2,000 to 4,000 feet AGL. However, out in the Rockies where the mountains rise to over 10,000 feet, it is not uncommon for pilots to come close to the maximum allowable altitude. And because of these high elevations, they must carry and breathe supplemental oxygen to avoid hypoxia (altitude sickness). And it can be cold.

But cold weather rarely is a deterrent to flying. Hang glider pilots are so enamored with their sport they fly in all conditions and seasons, even the dead of winter—all you need is a ski suit, goggles, and a good pair of gloves, and you’re ready to fly. In fact, according to some, winter can be one of the best times to learn the sport.

“With the cooler, denser air, launching and landing is far easier in the winter than during the dog days of summer,” says Richard Hays, a hang gliding instructor and owner of the Maryland School of Hang Gliding in Phoenix, Md. And with denser air, only light winds are needed to propel gliders to several thousand feet above mountain ridges in ridge lift. Flying over snow-capped mountains, snowy fields, or ice-encased trees, hang gliding pilots are treated to breath-taking views.

This ability to see spectacular landscapes in a unique way is the other main draw of hang gliding. “It gets you out to places and mountains that command beautiful views,” says Dullahan, who has flown throughout the United States and abroad.