Archive for the BASE jumping Category
900 Feet Up With Nowhere to Go but Down
14. March 2008 by Tridad.
He had learned this extreme form of tightrope walking from a homeless man who wrote books on quantum physics. But that was years ago, while goofing around on a flexible piece of nylon webbing tied close to the ground between a tree and the bumper of a Chevy van.
This was something else entirely for Dean Potter, one of the world’s best climbers, barefoot in the dying sun last Friday, walking between ledges of a U-shaped rim above Hell Roaring Canyon, a 400-foot sheer sandstone wall on his right, a 900-foot drop to a dry riverbed on his left. No leash tethered him to the rope. Nothing attached him to earth but the grip of his size-14 feet and the confident belief that, if needed, his parachute would open quickly and cleanly and not slam him into the canyon wall.
At 6 feet 5 inches and 180 pounds, wirily strong, Potter dressed in jeans and blue T-shirt emblazoned with a hawk. He wore a wide headband over unruly hair, gaining the appearance of a less gaunt and reckless Keith Richards as Alpine daredevil. As Potter stepped onto the 180-foot rope — a strand of iridescent blue against desiccated canyon shades of brick and tan and coppery green — he was believed to be the first person to combine the adventure sports of highlining and BASE-jumping.
He was also taking another stride toward his longing for avian flight, not as a birdman in a nylon wing suit or squirrel suit, which he had tried, but as a soloist who could jump off a cliff in a way that he did not yet understand, with a strength and concentration that he did not yet possess, and simply fly. Trance music pulsed from speakers on the canyon ledge with knowing lyrics: “Sometimes I think my dreams are wild.”
Highlining was a high-wire version of slacklining, an extreme cousin of tightrope walking in which no pole was used for balance and the rope was elastic, allowing for various tricks involving walking, sitting, lying down, flipping, even spinning hula hoops. BASE-jumping was an acronym used to describe parachuting from objects like buildings, towers, bridges and cliffs.
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“BASE jumping…most dangerous sport in the world”
11. March 2008 by Tridad.
as reported by MountEverest.net
Base jumping is probably the most dangerous sport in the world, determined medical doctor and mountaineer Erik Monasterio at ExWeb last year. Specializing in Forensic Psychiatry the doc said that a comprehensive data base of base jumping fatalities reveals that 175 jumpers have died since the sport began (approximately 30 years ago).
“The surprising finding is that only 123 of those deaths were directly related to base jumping, the other deaths were related to other accidents, drug overdoses and suicides,” said Monasterio.
The first BASE jump from Cerro Torre!
So where’s ExWeb’s favorite base jumper Valery Rozov now? Mountain.ru reports that Valery is neither hanging from a beam nor has vanished in Nirvana land. He is in Patagonia - ready to jump Cerro Torre - for the second time!
In 2004 Valery made a new route on Amin Brakk’s (5850m) west face in Pakistan, considered the most technically complex wall in the world - and then jumped down. In 2006, Rozov made the first BASE-jump from the Alps’ Grandes Jorasses, following a climb on one of the face’s hardest routes: The Croz Spur.
February 24 last year the Russian X-gamer base jumped off the 1400-m face of Torres del Paine in Patagonia.
And this week a message arrived from the climbers that Valery had jumped Cerro on Monday, 9 am local time. The point of jump was located a bit below the “Compressor” route traverse. The flight lasted 1 minute and 20 seconds with an altitude difference of about 1450 meters.
Valery said he opened a bit higher than planned, was caught by a gust and flew and and down for 15 minutes in the last 200 meters before finally and fortunately hitting ground.
Due to bad weather and falling ice the team didn’t reach the summit and will therefore make a second attempt during a forecasted weather window March 3-5, to see if conditions have improved and whether it would be possible to jump from the top.
“Otherwise, the previous point will become the only possible to make a jump on this route,” they report.
Jeb Corliss and BASE jumping
7. March 2008 by Tridad.
Straight from the AP Newswire……NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City councilman is introducing a bill to ban people from jumping off buildings and bridges.
The daredevil practice is called BASE jumping. BASE stands for building, antenna, span and earth, the main objects from which people jump.
Two years ago BASE jumper Jeb Corliss was stopped by police while trying to leap from an Empire State Building observation deck. His lawyer says there’s no law in New York state against jumping off a building.
Councilman Peter Vallone (vuh-LONE’) Jr. says BASE jumping is dangerous for people on the ground. He says next week he’ll introduce legislation making it an A misdemeanor to use a parachute to jump from a structure higher than 25 feet.Vallone’s bill would subject a BASE jumper to up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.
Here’s Jeb recently on the Colbert Report talking about his next planned feat…