The Sequatchie Valley of East Tennessee is an area that offers impressive scenery and unusually interesting opportunities for soaring pilots. The chief attraction is the area’s ridges, especially the one known as the Walden Ridge that forms the eastern edge of our valley. But this is also an excellent place for thermal soaring – indeed, first- rate thermal days outnumber great ridge days.
Ridge soaring is inherently dangerous – with experience, care and judgement, risk can be lowered but not eliminated. The Sequatchie Valley is not for beginners, gliding here may present conditions in which even skilled pilots cannot safely fly.
All soaring pilots at Marion County Airport need to understand the importance of courtesy and consistent good behavior. We use this county airport a couple of weeks a year. If we fail to fly safely and treat regular users well, we are likely to lose the privilege of flying here. In simple terms, one pilot’s careless or thoughtless behavior could jeopardize the chances of many to fly here in future.
This point is so important that we must make the rule that glider pilots attend this camp on the promise of good behavior, and can be asked to leave if in the judgment of event organizers their behavior creates problems. Those who study these pages and heed the advice they contain should have no problem avoiding this difficulty.
Note that the document SequatchieBrief2020 has an accompanying kmz file: Sequatchie.kmz. This is a file displayed by GoogleEarth that shows all the points of interest mentioned herein.
