Góra Szybowników, Bydgoszcz

Gliders' Mountain, also called Bald Mountain, Black Mountain or Black Mountain - an upland spur type hill in the Fordon Slope in Bydgoszcz, Fordon district.

The hill rises 54 m above the level of Fordon and 66 m above the Vistula. It forms the corner hill of the Fordon Slope and the southeast corner of the ¦wiecka Upland. The Gliders' Mountain is located on the border of three mesoregions: the ¦wiecka Upland to the north, the Fordoñska Valley to the east, and the Toruñska Valley to the south.

It is the south-western edge of the so-called "Fordon's Gate" through which the Vistula flows towards the Baltic Sea.

Due to its location, the hill is a vantage point. Below you can see individual housing estates of the Fordon district of Bydgoszcz. The Noteć-Warty valley is visible from the south, and the Lower Vistula Valley in its narrow Fordon Gorge section is visible from the east.

During the Prussian occupation, this place was called Wilhelm Hill to commemorate the visit of Emperor Wilhelm I Hohenzollern to Bydgoszcz and Fordon in 1872. The current name of the hill refers to the existing in the years 1933-1963 Fordon Gliding School. From the hill adepts of the school made glider flights, while on the upland there were hangars and a grassy airfield. During its existence, the school trained 5.8 thousand pilots, of which 4.2 thousand in the postwar period, and its graduate was, among others, the Commander of the Air Force Brigadier General Jan Frey-Bielecki. In the interwar years a record-breaking, in terms of length, sailing flight from the hill was carried out by a glider instructor, Kalinowski, who at the start from rubber ropes glided in the air for one hour and 36 minutes, while in July 1945, during the First Central Gliding Instructors' Course, the height of 1000 metres was exceeded twice in a thermal sailing flight along the Fordonian slope.

On 5 April 2002, at the foot of the mountain, a monument to Icarus was unveiled in memory of Fordon Airport. The monument was created on the initiative of Franciszek Go³ata, and designed by Tadeusz Nowak from the Bydgoszcz Aviation Seniors Club. The construction of the building was supported financially by the Foundation of the Association of Polish Aviators in London and Glasgow as well as by the graduates of the School of Aviation NCOs for Minors who live there. A memento of the past is also preserved on the hillside, dating from the interwar period, a stone sign of three seagulls in a circle, marking the gliding school. In 2015, the Fordon Estate Council, as part of its "civic budget" program, restored the sign and built a boardwalk to the top.

There are two hiking trails crossing the Glider Hill: the Jeremi Przybora trail and the Rev. Zygmunt Trybowski trail.

The mountain along with the entire Fordon slope is part of the Chełmiński and Nadwiślański Landscape Parks.

Views from the Glider Hill on the residential area "New Fordon"