



Miraculously, he survived the parachute landing without breaking any bones and fully recovered. As Whelan pointed out in his book, doctors determined that Edgar experienced a force of 20 negative Gs for 0.4 seconds in order to induce the damage to his eyes. While this event punctuated the power of rotor and raised awareness, it also gave scientists data to further explain the way waves function. They later determined that Edgar had experienced a rare kind of rotor where the wave dissipates all of its energy in one horrific oscillation.





Besides the risks of severe rotor encounters, any time a glider pilot ventures past 30,000 feet the danger increases dramatically. All you have to do is the simple math to arrive at the potential conclusions. At 35,000 feet the FAA figures the pilot has 30 to 45 seconds to react coherently without oxygen. At 45,000 feet the time of useful consciousness is more like five to 15 seconds. Assuming there is an oxygen failure and your glider has, say, a maximum descent rate of 2,000 feet per minute, you won't get anywhere near a safe altitude in time. That's where the bailout bottle or a backup oxygen system comes in handy, as long as you notice the failure immediately and can react before the narrow window slams shut. If that's not enough, at these altitudes the maximum speed at which the glider falls apart and the minimum speed at which it stops flying come together in the thin air, creating a narrow edge the glider pilots have to ride. They call it the coffin corner.





The forecast continues to look less conducive for wave development over the next couple of days, and I begin to realize that my initial contact with the wave might be all that I'll see. After chasing some hawks and other gliders around the valley, I pay a visit to High Country Soaring across the street from Soar Minden. Mike Bradford, a regular who sits in the office, owns a casino but realizes extreme wave soaring can be a gamble where the odds are in favor of the house. Once when he was at 38,800 feet he noticed his friend in the rear seat was unconscious because the oxygen mask was leaking around his beard and they were at the limits of the diluter demand oxygen system. They descended to 25,000 and his friend went into convulsions. At 14,000 he was semiconscious. After they landed the man was groggy for hours and Bradford said his friend now has slight memory problems. Given the risks and cold temperatures, Bradford only goes wave soaring once a year.





Yet the statistics bode well for wave pilots who care to wager. A review of NTSB accident reports back to 1983 showed no fatalities that were attributed to waves. Besides Edgar's famous in-flight breakup, there was one death during but not associated with the Sierra Wave Project and that was because of an oxygen problem. But there's another factor that Bradford brings up — the potential damage to expensive racing gliders. When wave pilots want to come down, they come down fast, and the gel coat finish cools at a faster rate than the fiberglass, eventually causing cracking. While Soar Minden and High Country Soaring have brought a degree of professionalism and added safety to the area by offering wave checkouts, they are also the ones who end up with the expensive repair bills from pilots who don't want to risk their own craft.





Outside High Country's hangar is a huge box, containing a Stemme glider fresh from the factory, owned by global adventurer Steve Fossett — another regular. Fossett himself plans to leave a mark in the world of soaring by going after the altitude record that currently stands at 49,009 feet, set by Robert Harris in 1986. To take things to the next level requires a quantum leap in technology and expense. An ambitious team with help from NASA is planning to build a glider capable of soaring to the far reaches of the stratosphere, possibly beyond 100,000 feet. The project was dreamed up by retired test pilot Einer Enevoldson after high-altitude research confirmed the existence of stratospheric waves. The project's goal is purely scientific; to figure out the complex atmosphere by making the turbulent transition from mountain to stratospheric waves, while Fossett's record attempt will remain a sidebar to the mission. Called Perlan , the 95-foot-wingspan glider is named after rare mother-of-pearl clouds. It will require spacesuits (the team has acquired five from the Air Force used in the SR-71 and U-2 programs), an autopilot to keep the glider on course in the thin air, and a drag chute to allow it to descend to a lower altitude so that it can regain control if it gets upset by turbulence. Fossett is putting up funding and will act as a pilot along with Enevoldson for the first phase. The team has modified an existing two-place Flugzeugbau 505M glider and will use it to study stratospheric waves over either New Zealand or Sweden. The glider has been outfitted with a 24-hour oxygen supply and a full array of avionics. The team hopes that by drumming up enough attention, it will ensure funding for Perlan.





For the past year, Fossett has been learning about mountain waves over the Sierra Nevada by flying with Carl Herold, known locally as "Mr. Wave." Herold probably has more wave cross-country time than any other pilot in the world and has been conducting wave camps for decades. A retired aerospace engineer, Herold once managed an average groundspeed of 190 knots in high winds while flying a glider from Mojave, California, to Minden. He also is no stranger to 40,000 feet and believes he has personally experienced stratospheric waves. Herold flies with a transponder in his Schempp-Hirth Nimbus 3D glider so that he can show up on radar and has no problem getting block altitude assignments from controllers when he's not in wave windows. Besides training Fossett, Herold is specializing in avionics and aircraft controls on the Perlan project. "Steve's not a daredevil. He really puts the faith in the people he's working with to fly safely," Herold says.





After five days of waiting and hoping, the wave doesn't come back. As I head from Reno to Las Vegas on an airliner, conforming to the seat in a puddle of disappointment, we cruise above 30,000 feet, precisely where I had wanted to be in a glider. The stories, the scientific discoveries that lay ahead, the brief meeting with the powerful wave intrigues me even more as I gaze out the window at the inhospitable environment. But as I look around at the other passengers I realize they have no idea that engineless craft have been even higher than this. As Herold, who occasionally uses mathematical terms to describe such things as cumulus clouds, puts it, "People don't know how much energy is up there."





My work here is not done. Minden, I shall see you again.





Originally appeared in AOPA Pilot magazine. Photos by Nate Ferguson.

In 1951 and 1952 a small group, including such soaring legends as Bob Symons and John Robinson, modified two Pratt-Read gliders and routinely exceeded 40,000 feet as part of the project. They literally gave meaning to the words applied science. The pilots flew in a frigid, unpressurized environment in meteorological conditions that were not fully understood. But in a follow-up popularly called the Jet Stream Project, where glider pilots studied the jet stream with the assistance of B-29 and B-47 bombers, Larry Edgar found out what rotor can do. On April 25, 1955, his glider quickly disintegrated around him at 17,000 feet as he tried to avoid a swelling roll cloud. Then things became quiet. All he heard was wind noise, and he felt as if he were suspended in space, but he couldn't see because of the G-forces, he wrote in Soaring magazine shortly after the experience. He pulled the ripcord and started to worry about being pulled back up. He had lost his helmet, boots, gloves, and oxygen mask, and the hose was broken off of his bailout oxygen bottle. As his vision slowly came back in one eye, he saw pieces of fabric and plywood from the Pratt-Read being carried up past him, disappearing in the roll cloud.