Snips...

IMC is serious stuff...with or without the proper instrumentation and
training.

IMC is just part of the picture.

1.I'm starting to think that IMC training, currency, and installed
instrumentation is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for me to fly
in wave (especially wet wave).

But there're other factors:

2.Ability to recover from upset induced by turbulence and/or IMC
disorientation. (aka Upset Recovery Training)

3.A glider that is less likely to shed it's wings with the spoilers open
and a negative load factor.

4.Readiness to bail out and acceptance of the increased probability of a
bail-out in cold, high altitude and turbulent air. Training and confidence
in parachuting ability.

5.Ability and instrumentation to descend through IMC without colliding with
terrain.

6.Preparedness and willingness to land out well downwind of the departure
airport and possibly land in the trees.

All of these factors are relevant in non-wave soaring as well, but the
probabilities are less favorable in wave.

Again...right you are!

Maybe I was lucky, or, I'm more cowardly than many (I prefer to think of it as
having an active imagination!), but the very first gliding book I found in the
library after learning of the sport from my first after-collich-officemate was
Joe Lincoln's "Soaring for Diamonds." In my cowardly ignorance, his tales of
his cu-nim-IMC attempts to snag his altitude diamond, thoroughly intimidated
me. One of my next soaring books was 'Old Dog' Wolters's "Once Upon a Thermal"
(in which a pilot dies in "your wave").

Both are great books.

The only time I've felt "entirely comfortable" looking for 18k wave was in a
large-deflection-landing-flap-equipped ship with two entirely independent O2
systems. That said, most of my time in Colorado's essentially/mostly dry
waves, has been in a (similarly-flap-equipped) ship with but one (pressure
demand) O2 system, and - though I once (maybe twice) went above FL30 level in
it - I soon decided FL25 was plenty high enough under the circumstances, and
when Denver ARTCC began to require "IFR-like" radio contact in the wave
window, had no serious regrets self-limiting myself thereafter to below
18,000' feet.

So put me in the category who believes: "Flight to altitudes where additional
life-support systems are physiologically *required* (as distinct from merely
"probably a Really Good Idea independent of FAA regulations"), is Serious
Stuff...even without the possibility of inadvertent IMC.

Bob W.