"Mike" wrote:

If you can wait until the weather settles down (say June) I'd highly
recommend Ridge Soaring in Pennsylvania. They have a couple of "full
immersion" courses and will tailor them to your needs/ability. Tom's
reputation is unsurpassed and the other instructors are also of the
highest caliber.

I don't like to make negative comments, but Ridge Soaring is
the only place I've ever flown where the instructor did not
know the tow signals. He thought "rock the wings" was the
signal for the towplane to "slow down." We had to go find
the SSA poster to convince him otherwise. Perhaps I found
the one thing he didn't know well, or the one bad apple
instructor, but ...

The other thing that bothered me was that he was selected to
give me a ridge checkout, but he'd just been hired and had
only made one other ridge flight. He didn't know the area,
didn't know how to fly ridges and the one piece of wisdom he
seemed to be able to impart from his own checkout flight was
that he'd been told that if you got below ridge height you
should land. I know you have to start somewhere, but I
didn't think he was a good choice to give a ridge checkout
and I was not instilled with great confidence from this
experience.

It's a fantastic place to do some ridge flying, but I'd lean
towards somewhere else for training, or at least get a
recommendation from someone who knows the specific
instructor you will be flying with. Marfa, Minden and
Caracole Soaring all have good reps, and my experience with
the latter two has been excellent (never been to Marfa).