Giving Everyone a Big Lift : There’s Plenty of Entertainment at Torrey Flight Park, but the Limit’s the Sky

At first glance, the bluff overlooking a small stretch of coast behind the Torrey Pines golf course is nothing more than a barren field.

But from this particular bluff you can:

--Scurry down the long hot trail and onto the beach with your surfboard, and paddle into some of the best surf on the coast.

--Scurry down without a board, scuttle your clothes and bask in the buff beneath the bluff. Black’s Beach remains one of the few beaches in Southern California where nude sunbathing is practiced.

--Remain atop the cliff, at its precarious edge, and watch the surfers surf, the nudists nude, or the sun melt into the sea at dusk.

Or, lacking enthusiasm for any of the above, you can take a flying leap. Literally.

Flying is the chief form of recreation on this bluff. And it has been for decades.

Flying is what has made this particular area really famous.

Charles A. Lindbergh and other famous pilots have flown here, and the National Soaring Council only two months ago designated this area a historical site.

“It’s a one-of-a-kind place,” said Brad Hall, president of the Torrey Pines Hang Gliding Assn. “You’ve got a coastal ridge within a city limit, which is really rare. Most (hang-glider) flying is done in the mountains, where you have to drive many miles and have someone with a car to pick you up after you land. At Torrey you can set up, fly, land, and then go home. The convenience is unparalleled.”

Torrey Flight Park, an ocean front promontory treated to steady westerlies and thermal updrafts from the hot dirt and sand below, indeed is considered one of the world’s premier flying sites.

It is also one of the busiest. The airspace is often as packed as the Pacific is vast.

Still, anyone can fly at Torrey Flight Park, providing he or she is properly licensed.

Full-scale gliders, properly called sailplanes, fly daily for three months out of each year. Radio-controlled airplanes buzz for hours at a time over the sea and cliffs.

The humble whistle is a necessary flight instrument for hang-glider and para-glider pilots. They jump from the cliff with whistles in their mouths, blowing constantly to warn the radio-control pilots as they float through their airspace and into their own, which includes that of the coastal ridge extending a mile or so north and south.

Even so, things happen quickly in crowds. One hang-glider pilot claims to have been hit by radio-controlled planes--which can have wingspans measuring more than 10 feet and fly at speeds in excess of 100 m.p.h.--47 times. “They have collisions all the time,” said Bill Bennett, owner of the concession at Torrey Flight Park. “But like sailboats and motor boats, they all have to share the same water.”

Each group has its own set of rules, set by the city, which has the unpopular responsibility of trying to make everyone happy.

“Years ago, the Torrey Pines Soaring Council (made up of members of the various users) was organized,” said John Hudkins, district manager for the San Diego Parks and Recreation’s Coastal Division. “The city takes things under advisement and makes the rules. But when you have all these organizations in limited flight space, you’re going to have some problems.”

Fortunately, most of those do not involve serious incidents or accidents, but rather conflicts between the various user groups and the concessionaire. “There is a lot of political BS,” said Scott Thomas, 27, a para-glider from Alpine, Calif. “I’m the guy who wants to come out with a shirt--to make a couple bucks on a T-Shirt that says, ‘Shut Up and Fly.’ ”

But fly they do.

Sailplanes rule the skies when their operation is set up from February through April of each year. They are the crowd favorites, their pilots the senior fliers. Sailplanes have soared silently and gracefully above the La Jolla coast since 1928.

They rumble down a crude dirt ramp that propels them off the cliff, where the westerlies keep them afloat for hours, above the crowded golf course and the lushly landscaped hillsides, out over the crashing surf and sun-drenched beach, landscaped as it often is with glistening bodies.

And radio control pilots have been flying their craft here for more than 20 years. For anyone who owns one of these planes, this is the place to go. “People come here on vacation from Europe, and they bring their planes with them,” said Phil Golgoff, 73, a Pacific Beach resident who has been flying at Torrey for 12 years. “Torrey Pines is known all over the world. It’s a terrific spot. Very, very seldom are the conditions such that you can’t fly.”

Hang-glider Hall, 42, was among the first to fly it his way at Torrey Park. He remembers jumping off the cliff 16 years ago, when there was nothing more than a small shack on the bluff, which provided shelter from the rain and nothing else.

There were no rules, no restrooms and no trailers offering hot food and postcards. There was no concession manager acting “as king and boss,” according to Hall.

And there were no para-gliders.

Para-gliding, long-popular in Europe, is relatively new to the United States.

Pilots of this craft, a sort of parachute shaped into a glider, discovered Torrey Flight Park only three years ago, shortly after the sport was introduced to the United States.

Since, they have taken the park by storm, and figure to dominate the airspace above the radio-controlled airplanes in the very near future, if they don’t already.

Hang-gliders, although still considered the true daredevils of flight, are--you should excuse the expression--a dying breed. Very few are getting into the sport, citing increasing cost and hassle. The average age of the hang-glider is 43. “If you look around you’ll see a lot of gray hair among us,” Hall agreed.

But para-glider numbers at Torrey Flight Park have increased from about five to 50 or 60 in only three years, according to Marcus Salvemini, 43, an instructor and flight director at the park.

“It’s probably the premier spot in the United States,” said Roger Greenway, 54, president of the Torrey Pines Fliers Club and site director for the Torrey Pines Para-Gliders Assn. “For all intents and purposes, you have a wind somewhere between 240 and 280 degrees, coming in and that will give you lift off of that cliff.”

For $75, Salvemini will introduce anyone to the sport, which is considerably safer than hang-gliding, on a tandem flight.

Snugly harnessed beneath the glider, the “passenger” trots with Salvemini to the end of the 300-foot cliff, where a puff of wind fills the glider and sends it, airborne.

Salvemini whistles and guides the glider through the radio-controllers’ airspace, then suddenly the glider is in silent flight, the flyers getting a bird’s-eye view of the surfers, the sunbathers, those spying on the sunbathers, the weathered cliffs themselves. And of the bustling promontory known as Torrey Flight Park.