Enchanted by flights of blue mountain banshees in the film “Avatar”? Hang gliding gets you close to that experience in the real world.
In the northwest corner of Georgia at Lookout Mountain Flight Park, you can fly tandem year-round with a certified pro or earn your wings in a few lessons — and, whether you prefer to fly or watch, lodge on the airfield surrounding by beautiful mountains.
Dan Zink, an advanced instructor, describes accommodations now offered at the secluded 110-acre landing zone: spacious loft apartments with full kitchens, cabins sleeping four, and the bunkhouse with privacy curtains and shared restrooms. There are also creekside tent sites and recreational vehicle spaces with full hookups. Prices: $69 to $139 for cabins and lofts, $20 for the bunkhouse, and $5 for camping.
Lookout Mountain has “everything you need” to try or learn hang gliding, says Paul Cain, a Virginia Beach resident who lodges and flies there with his wife, Elana. “This allows you to progress much faster, as you can schedule a session on the training hills in the morning and follow that with two to three aerotows in the evening,” Cain says. “You can study and take your tests in the clubhouse and when that is all over, rest around the pool.”
Opened in 1978, the flight park offers foot and aerotow launches. Many visitors start with a tandem flight. That experience begins with a video showing how pilots shift their bodies to steer and pull and push a horizontal bar to control speed. Then you’re hooked by harness into the glider beside the pilot.
After the aerotow plane lifts the glider to 2,000 feet, it releases the glider, leaving pilot and passenger aloft in total silence. Soaring with the air currents, the trees below look like broccoli florets and people resemble specks.
“I was flying all the time anyway, so I figured I’d make it my living,” explains pilot Rex Lisle, who has flown 25 years, averaging 1,000 flights a year. Sometimes reaching 10,000 feet on solo flights, he has soared near flocks of birds. “They’re curious, too,” he laughs. “Sometimes it seems they’re thinking ‘What’s wrong with you, man? You’re not flying right!’”
No matter. Sky-high sunsets, Cain observes, are phenomenal.
