Sailors of the Shadowed Skies

The sailplane pilot lives in a unique, soundless world of clouded beauty and three-dimensional exhilaration. Once released from the lumbering towplane (see next page), there is only the man in his fragile machine, ready to catch the slightest lilt of a wave or lift of a thermal, soaring as high as a jet, as far as daylight allows. It is this joyful escape, this bright voyage on a deceptively pacific sea of cerulean blue, that brings sailplane pilots from all over the East to ride the waves of Sugarbush, Vt., scene of these pictures.

A Cub tows John Macone (left above), who finds a wave that takes him to 14,000 feet, where the canopy frosts and oxygen is necessary (above). When the lift goes, planes come barreling home. Soaring is not only escape. Its competitions are most exacting, as one discovers on the following pages.

With sunburst on its tail, zero eight Romeo glissades across sky.

SIX PHOTOS

CONSTANTINE MANOS