The Torrey Pines Gliderport is a city-owned private-use glider airport located in La Jolla, 11 nautical miles northwest of the central business district of City of San Diego, in San Diego County, California.

The Torrey Pines Gliderport is the most historic aviation site in North America, with nearly 100 years of flying history. It is Southern California’s premiere location for paragliding, hang gliding, remote control models and sailplanes.

The Torrey Pines Gliderport has played a pivotal role in the aviation industry of Southern California and the United States. Since the late 1920’s, sailplanes have been gracing the bluffs north of La Jolla. Many aviation pioneers had their first flights on the cliffs of Torrey Pines. On February 24, 1930, Charles Lindbergh had his maiden flight along the cliffs of Torrey Pines, soaring from Mt. Soledad to Del Mar and established the first gliding distance record. In 1936, Woody Brown launched and landed on top of the cliffs for the first “top landing” in Gliderport history. In the late 1930s, Hawley Bowlus, engineer and construction supervisor of the Spirit of St. Louis, began soaring the cliffs with his own sailplanes the Bowlus gliders.

To produce this video, I shot 572 frames using my Canon 6D and Sigma 15mm EX DG lens. The shutter speed and ISO were ramped using qDslrDashboard running on an Android tablet. I then used LRTimelapse to smooth out any flickering and compile the frames into a timelapse sequence.