Uplifting

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DON B. AND RYAN B. STEVENSON a wobbly uplifting adventurer soars past fear

The cable looks thin and vulnerable as the stubby towplane revs up, then taxies down the runway. A couple of tentative jerks, a blur of Low Sonoran Desert shrubs, and the ground drops away. We're airborne. The towplane climbs west, then banks right toward a craggy foothill guarding the Sierra Estrella mountain range ("Star Mountains" in English). A few minutes later, pilot Jason Stephens releases the cable with a thunk and our Grob glider drifts to starboard.

Our goal is to soar the length of the

Estrellas, a 20-mile-long mountain range southwest of Phoenix. Despite their proximity to the city, the starkly rugged Estrellas remain largely overlooked and remote, as evidenced by occasional sightings of reclusive mountain sheep.

Jason sniffs out a thermal updraft, a rising column of hot air and works it, circling, to gain altitude. On good days, thermals quickly boot gliders up to 8,000 or 10,000 feet. Today is different. The weather is ideal, with temperatures in the mid-80s, but thermal activity is uneven. We circle often.

At 32, Jason has been flying gliders for 19 years. "I grew up in the back seat of a bush plane," he says, alluding to his boyhood in Alaska, where his father owned a construction company. In 1987, spurred by deflating oil prices, the Stephens family moved to the Phoenix area and purchased Estrella Sailport. His dad oversees the business, while Jason serves as a staff instructor for a clientele drawn mostly from England, Germany and Japan. "If you travel halfway around the world," Jason rationalizes, "you want to make sure you have good weather and lots of flying time.' Another thermal bumps the glider like a

You can purchase your own used G 103A (left and below), originally manufactured in Germany by Grob Aerospace, for $35,000 to $50,000, although newer designs currently sell in the $100,000 to $140,000 range.

The only sound is air rushing past the cockpit.

bass tugging on a line, and Jason follows the action, turning this way and that, the lurching joystick between my knees a nuanced choreography of control. We climb swiftly, then drop a little and climb again until we have gained enough altitude to swoop over a desert pass to the southern end of the Estrellas. It is cooler than I expected, thanks to a vent in the instrument panel. The only sound is air rushing past the cockpit. I glance up, and we are headed straight toward a massive rock outcropping. A friendly bump, the nose lifts and we soar up and over the ridge. To fly a glider is to read nature. Pilots constantly analyze clouds, sunlight, terrain and weather. Even birds play a role. Jason keeps an eye out for red-tailed hawks and turkey vultures to assist in locating thermals. They are the real experts. Sometimes they fly along with him. Although gliders depend on fickle thermals and updrafts to stay aloft, they can fly for hours under optimal conditions. Jason has flown to Tucson and back on several occasions, while other area pilots routinely make round-trip flights to the Grand Canyon, New Mexico and other locations. According to veteran Scottsdale competition pilot Paul Cordell, "Eight-hourplus flights in the summer are possible." Cordell says pilots flying along the Appalachian Ridge often fly for 14 hours and cover nearly 2,000 miles. Similar flights are made along the California coast. In 1986, Robert Harris set a world soaring altitude record over the Sierra Nevadas by piloting his sailplane to 49,009 feet. The temperature plummeted to 65 below and frost covered the canopy. He had to descend, using his backup oxygen system.

Jason recalls spiraling up to 17,600 feet. "It was 114 degrees on the ground," he says, "but it was freezing up there." The average summer thermal in the Phoenix area ranges from 12,000 to 14,000 feet. As we nose around, we are suddenly bumped upward as if by a giant hand. "Here's a big thermal," Jason says jubilantly. "The biggest yet. It's about time. We're climbing up at about 900 feet per minute. "There are so many variables in finding a thermal," he muses. "You never figure it all out. You play the odds and go to the places where it should be working and see what happens. Luck is a factor." Now comfortably high, we head northwest along the spine of the range. There is a forbidding quality to the Estrellas when seen from here. Massive and barren, they dominate the sweeping desert vistas like a brooding prehistoric beast. Composed of Precambrian rock, the oldest on Earth, there is no softness to them, only a ruthless beauty. To the north, a wide green riparian strip that is the Gila River winds west between the Estrellas and South Mountain. The riverbed betrays no glint of water. Farther north, Phoenix sprawls hazy and indistinct. Montezuma Peak-Jason's favorite,

Budding glider pilots like Brian Henry of Fairfield, Connecticut (left) come from all over the world to take advantage of Arizona's ideal sailplane conditions.

Location: 27 miles south of Phoenix.

Getting There: Take Interstate 10 south to Exit 164; follow State Route 347 south to the town of Maricopa and turn right onto State Route 238. Drive west 6.5 miles to the sailport entrance.

Travel Advisory: Only a weathered white sign indicates the dirt road entrance to the sailport. Additional Information: Estrella Sailport, (520) 568-2318; www.azsoaring.com.

because it produces huge thermals-rears up below us. At 4,308 feet, it is the second highest peak in the Estrellas. (The highest, at 4,500 feet, is unnamed.) A lonely weather station and tower, dwarfed by its host, hugs the jagged peak.

"Down there to your left is Rainbow Valley Airstrip," Jason says. "It's one of our alternate [emergency] strips. I've pulled a few gliders out of there over the years."

Glider pilots seldom land in the desert anymore. There are numerous alternate strips, and glider performance has improved. The Grob, for example, has a glide ratio of 37 to 1, meaning that for every mile of altitude, it can glide 37 miles. Cordell's plane, a Schempp-Hirth, has a glide ratio of 60 to 1, plus a Global Positioning System device that can be programmed with vital flight information.

Of course, nothing is a hundred percent. "I landed in a Texas field once during an air race," Jason says. "Within two minutes a lady drove up in a truck and handed me a beer."

As we soar across the Estrellas, I search for Quartz Peak, an outcropping of the snowy mineral found nowhere else in the range. But I miss it. Down there, too, obscured by flanks and shadows, is a mine, reputed by some fanciful history buffs to be of Spanish origin, with stone ruins and a 70-foot vertical shaft.

At the northern end of the Estrellas, Jason directs my gaze to a tiny oval in the distance. It is Phoenix International Raceway. It was there, I wistfully recall, that I once took a few laps with four-time Indy winner Rick Mears. As we headed into a turn at 120 mph, Mears chatted casually. Easy for him-he was driving.

Our return flight is nearly a straight shot. We are at 7,500 feet with altitude to spare and moving swiftly, as the bumping and amplified rush of air testify. We have been up a little more than an hour. Before landing, we make a wide arc over a huge auto recycling yard-"Good lift," Jason observes-and the soft green checkerboard of farmland skirting the town of Maricopa. It is a sight that awaits Jason every morning when he climbs into his RV4 kit plane at Chandler Municipal Airport and flies to work. The sailport is dead ahead, and Jason noses the Grob down for a flyby.

Air screaming, we streak low over the buildings and runways at 120 knots, then up, out and around for the approach. We float for only a moment before the runway rushes upward to greet us. Al