Soar Point

High above the Mojave Desert, a Cessna plane ascends to an altitude of 3,000 feet with a two-seater glider in tow.

As the glider catches an updraft, its pilot releases the tow rope and soars solo.

There is no engine--only the pilot’s skill in maneuvering the craft and interpreting weather conditions keeps the 850-pound, 28-foot-long glider aloft, often for as long as four hours.

“I enjoy the mental challenge of soaring,” said Cindy Brickner, co-owner of Caracole Soaring in California City, where people can learn to fly or simply go up for a ride.

“If I carefully study the weather and how the glider performs, then I get a direct return on that investment of energy,” she said.

Brickner first learned to soar, as the sport is known, as a high school student working during the summer of 1974 at a now-defunct flight training school in Valyermo, a community west of the Los Angeles-San Bernardino county line.

She said she became fascinated by the individual effort required for the sport.

“In most everything you do, your performance is graded or judged or filtered through another person,” she said. “But soaring doesn’t depend on anyone else but me. It requires 100% concentration and application.”

For the past eight years, Brickner and co-owner Marty Eiler have trained people of all ages and all levels of experience how to fly gliders, also called sailplanes.

At the flight school, students learn about aerodynamics, airspace regulations, weather systems and the performance and characteristics of the gliders they will fly, Brickner said.

Once they are airborne, student pilots are often surprised to discover that gliders are highly maneuverable, Brickner said.

“A glider ride can be peaceful and tranquil,” she said. “Or it can be full-out wild and make your hair stand on end.

“People often say that riding in a glider is a lot quieter than they thought,” Brickner said. “They are also surprised at the variation of the scenery and how the visibility is breathtaking.”