On a sunny afternoon in mid-August, Dean Potter stepped onto a tongue of rock just below the summit of Switzerland’s Eiger and jumped off. At first he plunged toward a ledge 600 feet below, then air gathered in his wingsuit, his forward trajectory kicked in, and he began to fly.
Speeding three feet ahead for every one he dropped, Potter, 37, watched as ice slopes gave way to talus, then to fields, then cabins, then houses, restaurants, and eventually a town, which he veered away from to avoid the power lines. By the time he pulled his chute and drifted to earth, Potter had spent two minutes and 50 seconds in flight. It was the longest BASE jump ever, covering some 9,000 vertical feet and nearly four miles.
B.A.S.E. jumping, also sometimes written as BASE jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects. “B.A.S.E.” is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennas, spans (bridge), and earth (cliff).
During the early eighties, nearly all BASE jumps were made using standard skydiving equipment, including two parachutes (main and reserve), and deployment components. Later on, specialized equipment and techniques were developed that were designed specifically for the unique needs of BASE jumping.
Some of the more historic and outstanding base jumps include:
- In 1912, Frederick Law jumped from the Statue of Liberty
- In 1912, Franz Reichelt, tailor, jumped from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower testing his invention, the coat parachute. He died. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy.
- In 1913, Štefan Banič jumped from a building in order to demonstrate his new parachute to the U. S. Patent Office and military
- In 1913, a Russian student Vladimir Ossovski (Владимир Оссовский), from the Saint-Petersburg Conservatory, jumped from the 53-meter high bridge over the river Seine in Rouen (France), using the parachute RK-1, invented a year before that by Gleb Kotelnikov (1872-1944). Ossovski planned jumping from the Eiffel Tower too, but the mayor of Paris didn’t allow that.
- In 1965, Erich Felbermayer jumped from Cima piccola di Lavaredo, in Italia.
- In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert jumped from the cliff “El Capitan” in Yosemite Valley
- On 9 November 1975, the first person to parachute off the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, was Bill Eustace, a member of the tower’s construction crew. He was fired.
- In 1975, Owen J. Quinn, a jobless man, parachuted from the south tower of the World Trade Center to publicize the plight of the unemployed.
- In 1976 Rick Sylvester skied off Canada’s Mount Asgard for the opening sequence of the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me, giving the wider world its first look at BASE jumping.
- In 1990 Russell Powell (British) BASE 230 illegally jumped from the Whispering Gallery inside St Pauls Cathedral London. It was the lowest indoor BASE Jump in the world.
- In May 2008, Hervé Le Gallou and an unnamed British man, dressed as engineers, illegally infiltrated Burj Khalifa, the tallest man-made structure in the world (around 650m at the time), and jumped off a balcony situated a couple of floors below the 160th floor.
- In 2009, three women, a Venezuelan Ana Isabel Dao 28 years old, a New Zealander Livia Dickie 29 years old and a Norwegian Anniken Binz 32 years old base jumped from the highest waterfall in the world with a height of 979 metres (3,210 ft) and a clear drop of 807 metres (2,650 ft) Angel Falls located in the Gran Sabana region of Bolivar State in Venezuela. Ana Isabel Dao was the first Venezuelan woman to jump off Angels Falls
- On 8th January 2010, Nasr Al Niyadi and Omar Al Hegelan, from the Emirates Aviation Society, broke the world record for the highest building BASE jump after they leapt from a crane suspended platform attached to Burj Khalifa’s 160th floor at 672 metres (2,200 ft).
While very exciting and adventurous, BASE jumping is a highly dangerous sport that can easily injure and kill participants. Think long and hard before making a BASE jump. We do not recommend BASE jumping to anybody. You, and you alone, are responsible for your safety.
Base Jumping (Wikipedia)
Blinc – Everything You Wanted To Know About Base Jumping
Asylum Designs – First Jump Course
Wingsuit Base Jumping on YouTube
Base 66: A Story of Fear, Fun, and Freefall
Adrenaline Rush (IMAX) (2 – Disc WMVHD Edition)
60 Minutes – The Birdmen (October 11, 2009)
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