xtremesport4u

Archive for the ‘base jumping’ Category

Wall climbing is one of the more extreme sports that we blog about but when that wall is a mile high and you only have a narrow window of opportunity in which to make that climb you can understand why we believe this to be one of the most extreme challenges that we have come across this year.

The Asgard project is top climber Leo Houlding’s ambitious expedition to make the first free ascent of Mt Asgard’s daunting north face – regarded as one of the most difficult big walls in the world.

Mt Asgard

Mt Asgard is part of the Baffin Mountains in Canada’s Nanavut Province and is one of the most spectacular peaks on Baffin Island. It contains two peaks, both flat-topped cylindrical rock towers, separated by a saddle. The northeast peak is slightly higher than the southwest peak. The northeast peak is a 1200-m vertical rock climb, and is one of the most difficult climbs on Baffin Island.

With great support from main sponsors Berghaus and Nokia,  Houlding set about putting a team together which would film their attempt on the summit.  To reach Mount Asgard, Houlding, with fellow top climbers Sean ‘Stanley’ Leary and Carlos Suarez, learn how to fly in a wing suit. The plan was to leave the scene of their conquest via a wing suit - a trick that had already been enacted when 007 BASEjumps off a cliff in the opening sequence of the 1976 Bond classic The Spy Who Loved Me, the scene was filmed from Asgard. Perhaps it did not quite work out like that; what is sure is that the film and rigging crew had to take on a gruelling 5 day trek carrying 30kg packs.

The You Tube video from  HospitalRecords shows Houlding and Suarez learning how to fly in a wing suit.

Let’s see how events did turn out in this next video from posingpodcasts as the guys went sky diving to make their arrival rather more extreme and altogether less burdensome  - all right for some!

It is an exciting and extreme adventure the outcome of which can be seen when the film première’s on November 20th at the Kendal Mountain Festival which runs from Nov 19th to 22nd at Kendal, the gateway to the Lake District in north west England.

This comes from their own website www.mountainfest.co.uk

Kendal is by far the largest and most varied event of its type in Europe and it’s the main social event for outdoor enthusiasts in the UK. At the heart of Kendal’s programme is the mountain film competition, attracting film premières from around the world. Over 50 films are screened (from 200+ entries) with ten coveted prizes up for grabs.

Together with the Art and Book Festivals, speciality Bike, Snowsports, Wild Water and Free-Flight nights, the Boardman Tasker literary award plus the Adventure Film Academy for aspiring filmmakers, make it one of the best mountain festivals in the world.

THE MANAGEMENT ARE SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT ALL TICKETS FOR THE PREMIERE ARE SOLD!

Not surprising – this is one we will have to get hold of…..watch this space. If you want to visit the project’s website it is

http://www.theasgardproject.com

Wingsuit flying is arguably the most dangerous feat in the sky diving world. Only a handful of people are good (or crazy) enough to do it. Hans Lange, a 44-year-old Norwegian, is one of the best. The other is, of course, Jeb Corliss.

Travelling at speeds in excess of 100 mph there is little margin for error, but wingsuit flying fits Corliss’ pysche perfectly. Having had a troubled childhood, Corliss acquired a pathological desire to confront fear. In 1997 he made his first BASEjump and since then has stepped off virtually every major outcrop and edifice on earth, including the Eiffel Tower and Malaysia’s Petronas Towers.

Things didn’t always go to plan. In 1999, he was blown into an African waterfall, broke several ribs and his back in three places and spent a month prone in a hospital bed. In 2003, his friend and fellow jumper Dwain Weston died in front of his eyes while the two were attempting to become the first duo to fly simultaneously over and under the world’s highest suspension bridge in Colorado. Weston crashed into the bridge and was killed instantly. The two men were wearing wingsuits.

His leap off the Empire State Building in 2006 was also foiled. He was caught before he could launch himself and was convicted of reckless endangerment. Wanting to stop any further attempts by anyone to throw themselves off the Empire State Building, the powers that be in New York were hoping that he would receive at least a 1-year prison sentence, but he got off with 3 years probation and 100 hours community service… The experience shook Corliss though. “I’ve become very good about dealing with fear, but sitting infront of a judge – this was a different kind of fear because I could have had my freedom taken away,” he said.

The step from BASEjumping to proximity wingsuit flying was a natural one for him, wingsuit flying being an evolution of BASE jumping that now preoccupies most of the sport’s top athletes.

And it was only a matter of time before he was looking for the ultimate challenge, the ultimate risk… to proximity fly down the Matterhorn.

It is illegal to proximity fly down mountains in the US, so to perfect his precision technique he practiced by flying close to (a few feet from) parachutist Luigi Cani, a Go Fast! sponsored test pilot. And then it was the next plane to Europe, Italy and the final training jump at the famed Montebrento.

Thank god for Europe where you are still allowed to be a daredevil even if it means you might lose your life…

Henry Lowther, a pilot, says “I like to see people doing this stuff. It’s life… There’s no 100% safety… never.”

Montebrento (psymosk) has a fearsome reputation claiming the lives of 6 BASEjumpers in 5 years…

…and it lived up to its unpredictable reputation for Jeb Corliss as he landed in trees and broke his left hand.

Did this mean that the long anticipated Matterhorn jump was off? Are you kidding? There was nothing wrong with his right hand was there?

mralan1969uk

“Oh my God,” were his first words after landing, “I was so close I can’t breathe… I scared myself so much you have no idea how scared I was. Oh my god, I shouldn’t be this close…”

And once he’d regained his breath, he said “that was so much cooler that I thought it would be. That was the best proxy flying I’ve ever done in my life. Without question.”

At times he was as little as 5 to 10ft above the mountain… that takes courage. “You have to manage your fear” he says, “but keep in the fear that keeps you alive.”

Corliss still has his eyes on the ultimate goal: to become the first person to leap from a plane and land without a parachute.

The attempt is currently stalled due to fund-raising hurdles; he needs to raise $3 million to pay for the contraption he’s dreamed up to facilitate the landing. This will be built by some former NASA engineers and is most often imagined as a sort of slide built at an angle that he will match as he flies in, then impact and use good old friction to slow him down. However, he is keeping the actual design secret for now…

“To really do something we’ve never done before is getting almost impossible,” he says. “To land something at basically terminal velocity and walk away? That’s human achievement. It’s every bit as important as climbing Everest the first time, but you can do it on the ground, in Vegas, with 500,000 spectators there watching it live…”

Watch this space…

Wingsuit flying is something else. That and BASE jumping. They are about as extreme as our extreme sports go…

“The oldest rule in base jumping is to never ask permission just forgiveness!” Shane McConkey

If you are new to the concept, this is a fabulous video brought to us by redbull and dedicated to Shane McConkey who died on 26th March, 2009 whilst skiing and wingsuit flying in the Italian Dolomites. His death was the result of faulty equipment.

This particular video, which brings the sport so much to life, was taken in New Zealand when Shane, Miles Daisher and Chuck Berry explored unchartered terrain in new Zealand – another incredible Red Bull project.

The Department of Conservation in Queenstown, New Zealand, gave the team permission to film in Sinbad Gully.

As Shane says, in his blog, “Chuck has done plenty of recon work in most of Fiordland over the years so he had a very good idea where we needed to look to find big cliffs for us to jump. It would all be completely exploratory base jumping. Most of the Fiordland area has never seen a base jump. The problem is access. The mountains in Fiordland are impressive. They shoot straight up and maintain a steep angle all the way to the top. Normally base jumpers can find a way to hike to a good exit point usually with minimal climbing required. Not here. Just about everything in the area is steep, rugged terrain that would require at the very least a few days of serious climbing and rope work. We had the time and the gear but didn’t have an exact jump that we knew was possible so we decided to hire a helicopter and went big wall hunting the easy way. We flew straight to to one of the gems that Chuck has had circled on his map. The mountain was called Terror Peak and the cliff just below it was perfect. A 3,400 foot jump to the valley floor with a 1,000 foot start and some fun ledges and terrain to buzz with our wingsuits. An easy jump and flight with some great visuals along the way down.”

And the result of it was that fabulous video, and another sensational place for wingsuit flyers and BASEjumpers to practice their terrifying art!

“Miles coined the jump “Terrorflying” even though the jump was anything but that! For a base jumper, pioneering new jump sites, or what we call “Opening a new object” is perhaps the most exciting aspect of the sport. The sport is still quite young and the base world is still being discovered and mapped. To have the opportunity to open up a new site, and a big one, in a stunning place like Fiordland is an amazing experience. It was one I will not soon forget!” said McConkey.

In a sense, wingsuit flying is a cross between skydiving and hang gliding. Like both of these activities, wingsuit flying requires the flyer to either jump out of an aircraft or off a precipice to achieve a high enough altitude. While hang gliders can coast in for a safe landing, wingsuit flyers have to deploy their parachutes and float the rest of the way to the ground – they simply can’t reduce their speed fast enough for a safe landing without the use of a chute.

­But, until the moment they pull their parachute chord, wingsuit flyers can soar horizontally, like a bird, at high speeds and perform aerial acrobatics – all the while descending at a rate much slower than that of a typical skydiver.

It must be an exhilarating sport – albeit a death defying one.

This is the same crew doing mainly BASEjumps from a cliff they later called ‘Sin Good’  as “it was anything but bad”. The video is from shanemcconkey.

You might have noted the Red Bull wingsuits, the Red Bull Chutes etc. So what has Red Bull got to do with all this?

You all know what Red Bull is don’t you? That sexy slender container that contains an energy drink produced and sold by the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH and sold in over 130 countries.

However, it also has an aggressive international marketing campaign. The numerous sponsored activities range from extreme sports like windsurfing, snowboarding, skateboarding, wakeboarding, wingsuit flying, BASEjumping, surfing, Formula 1 racing, and breakdancing to art shows, music, and video games.

They play a very active role in extreme sports.

We’ll finish with a longish video, also from redbull, of the boys and Red Bull having a ball in China and BASEjumping a Chinese sinkhole… and anything else that looked interesting along the way. It took months of negotiation to get the government to allow the Red Bull Air Force and friends into their borders for the BASE jumping session at one of China’s natural wonders, and although no professional film crew was allowed to accompany them, each diver operated a personal camera with great success:

This article is dedicated to Shane McConkey. He will be sorely missed.

This is becoming an exhaustive subject! Sorry. But apologies again for some more mis-information…

We recently reported on Dana Kunze’ 172 ft dive as being the highest dive in the world. We thought that was pretty extreme.

We were then corrected and told that it was actually Oliver Favre who held the title with a 177 ft dive. Also extreme.

And then Dana Kunze himself has set the record straight for us….

Yes, it is perfectly correct that Oliver Farve completed a dive of 177 ft. However, he sustained injuries – in fact he broke his back – and the rule of the game is that you are disqualified if you are injured in this sport.

Therefore… it is Dana Kunze who holds the title and achievement of being the World’s Highest Diver.

If you are an avid reader of our Blog (which we sincerely hope you are) you might remember similar rules in another extreme sport we follow with interest – freediving.

Although Sara Campbell completed an incredible 100m constant weight depth dive – the first woman to have attained this remarkable depth, she briefly blacked out as she broke the surface and was therefore disqualified. She completed the competition with a successful 96m dive – still a world record breaker. littlefreediver

There are rules that are put in place to try and protect competitors from doing themselves a damage.

There have been many debates over regulating thrill-seeking ”extreme sports’ – Freediving and High diving, to name but two, have imposed their own strict rules.

Lawmakers in Switzerland have been pushing for laws regulating fate-tempting sports, which often involve inexperienced participants, but passing such laws, whether involving caving, canyoning, paragliding, ice climbing or bungee jumping, has proved difficult in Switzerland, even in the face of several disasters in recent years.

The problem is people do extreme sports because it gives them a feeling of freedom – an escape from the nanny state we all live in. If everything became too regimented one risks pushing these people toward activities that are even less controlled.

You might have heard of the BASEjumping accident at Table Mountain, Cape Town on Friday? It seems that South Africa has a remarkably sympathetic and sensible attitude to extreme sports enthusiasts and this accident has drawn it into focus. Would the rest of the world could listen and learn…

Base jumper Karl Hayden sustained minor injuries after his canopy malfunctioned as he leapt off Table Mountain on Friday. Rescue workers spent several hours combing the mountainside before airlifting Hayden to safety, the Cape Times reported. Hayden was lucky; despite multiple fractures — wrist, rib, femur and pelvis — the Capetonian managed to avoid a spinal injury, the daily reported.

That was the situation.

And the shout that goes out worldwide saying “aren’t people like Karl Hayden wasting rescue services time and money by doing a sport that is inherently dangerous? Why should rescue survices then put themselves in danger by trying to rescue these foolhardy idiots?”

Well, the response in South Africa was calm, measured and sensible. Wayne Smith, deputy director of Metro Medical Services, South Africa, agrees that although there are risks involved, extreme sports will continue despite any attempt at regulating the activity.

“Extreme sports are always going to be around. Extreme sports are risky but society needs to give people who enjoy those types of activities the necessary space to do so,” said Smith.

Mountain rescue worker, Roy White, says he has no problem in helping those who put themselves in harm’s way.

“It’s part of my job. Most of us are quite happy to help them. Where do you draw the line from an accident to an attempted suicide? Everyone who uses the mountain faces a certain amount of risk.”

If regulations were brought in, the feeling is that very quickly most extreme sports enthusiasts would find a way to circumnavigate them. Banning a sport in a certain area would only make things worse because they would go ahead and do it anyway and that would make things even more difficult for rescue services.

It seems rescue workers and extreme sports enthusiasts reach a stalemate when it comes to regulating the sport. But perhaps the last word belongs to basic common sense.

“We can’t regulate the sport but we could advise them to leave contact details with someone. It all comes down to educating people about good mountain use,” said White. And that sort of prosaicness is comforting and oh-so sensible.

Anyway, what has happened to freedom of choice? I am not advocating that you go out there and so something so ludicrously stupid that the result is death. But, if you do an extreme sport, you are obviously aware of the risks, are you not? And having evaluated that and decided to continue, then that, surely, is your choice, is it not? and having taken that decision, you are not likely to be the type of person to squeal if something goes wrong… are you?

If you are aware of the dangers before you begin, you can’t then cry “but nobody told me…”

The problem is that we are being so conditioned by over zealous governments as to ‘what to, how to, when to… do anything’, that if anything goes wrong one instantly hears “it’s not my fault., it must be yours’”. I think for this very reason a chunk of society, in a last ditch attempt of having some control and decision over their own lives, take to an extreme sport where they decide on a sport, learn the art and then make their own decisions and no-one can tell them what to do…

What do you think?

The second edition of the Nissan Outdoor Extreme Winter Games are happening right now in Chamonix.

5 international teams of extreme sporting professionals have, this week, been climbing, freeriding, BASE jumping, wingsuit flying and paragliding their way around the valley in an attempt to make the most impressive extreme sports short film.

Do you know what the Nissan Outdoor Games is all about? Here’s a quick video from OutdoorGamesTV to remind you…

The films will combine the skills of the individual athletes as well as the creative talents of the film crew that they work with.

Chamonix, the death-sport capital of the world as it has been described in the past, is the perfect backdrop for Nissan’s second games . This quote, from someone who lived in and loved Chamonix many many years ago, personifies Nissan’s quest:

“The great object of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this craving void which drives us…” Lord Byron

The results will be displayed on a giant screen in the Outdoor Games Village in the Tourist Office square today, Friday 20th, and Saturday 21st February, and prizes will be awarded for Best Sport’s Sequence, Best Photography and Jury’s Special Award.

There will also be an opportunity to talk to the experts themselves or try your hand at ice climbing, slack-rope walking and the climbing wall.

On Saturday there will also be two air shows combining BASE jumping, wingsuit flying, speed flying, acro-paragliding and hang gliding. The first one will take place at mid-day on the Aiguille du Midi and the second will be above the Grands Montets ski area at 3pm.

Cham will be at her best – difficult when lovers of Chamonix say she is ALWAYS at her best, but Cham has it all this weekend, and with the fantastic snow conditions that Europe has had this season, this year’s films should capture some amazing images of the valley and surrounding regions.

This was the Ride The Planets winner last year, again thanks to OutdoorGamesTV for posting it:

We have often written about Jeb Corliss, one of the most celebrated and well known names in the world of base jumping and wingsuit flying , who in April 2006 was arrested while attempting to jump off the Empire State Building in New York. Earlier this week Corliss, 32, of Malibu, California, received probation and community service for his thwarted stunt.

He was convicted of reckless endangerment in December. Prosecutors argued he could have caused injuries by jumping, despite his claims to have studied traffic patterns around the foot of the 102-storey tourist attraction.

The skydiver could have faced up to a year in prison for the offence. The judge, Thomas Farber, said he received letters from Raymond Kelly, New York City Police Department commissioner, and the Empire State Building owners asking for a jail term for Corliss.

Mr Farber, however, rejected the suggestion, saying, “I simply don’t find it warranted in this case.” He added that in all his years as a prosecutor and a judge presiding over murder, rape and other cases, he had never received a letter from a high-ranking police official asking for a specific kind of sentence.

“From some of the letters I received, you would have thought the defendant tried to commit a terrorist act,” the judge said. Mr Farber sentenced Corliss, who had no prior criminal record, to three years’ probation and 100 hours community service, which he said the Californian could complete in his home state.

Corliss has made more than 1,000 safe jumps in countries all around the world including Japan, Russia, France and Malaysia.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Corliss is attempting to be the first man to land on earth, with only a wingsuit and no parachute, and to survive, and then go up and do it again. Details of how this will be achieved are top secret but we do understand that a special landing strip is being designed, somehow to be suspended in the air, which Corliss will have to fly to with pinpoint accuracy.

OMG – sure sounds tough – good luck Jeb.

Below is a video from wingsuitflyer which gives an update on the wingsuit landing project and as its coming up to a year since that release any further news would be greatly received. As for Corliss’s escape from imprisonment – well thank goodness Judge Farber used his great common sense – Corliss is no criminal.

[youtube=http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=UsztEWuC3cs]

The Burj Tower in Dubai will, when finished, be the world’s tallest building. How tall is that? Not sure. It currently stands at over 650 metres, or over 2,132 feet but architect William Baker from SOM is not letting the cat out of the bag until construction is finished, scheduled for 2011.

If, as speculation suggests, the tower is over 800 metres , 2,624 feet, it will be four times higher than London’s Gherkin and nearly twice as high as New York’s Empire State building. The trouble is when you build something that tall – for a base jumper or wingsuit flyer, it is like putting a carrot in front of a donkey. It just has to be done.

In May 2008, in the early hours of the morning, two men, one from France and the other from Britain, entered the building dressed as engineers. Security and workers presumed they were part of the construction team. They decided not to risk using the lifts and so climbed the stairs to the 160th floor, it took them an hour and 15 minutes, and then waited for dawn.

Everything was set, they launched themselves from the world’s tallest building, as Herve says ‘ What is always the best is the first time!!’, and they were the first – watch the video below to see their story and their flight – thank you mazen2k for the video.

As a side note it is worth mentioning that the planned 1,600 metre building, that was to be built in Moscow, has been stopped due to the economic crisis.

Inspired by the flight of a flying squirrel Jeb Corliss will attempt to be the first man to land from a wingsuit flight without deploying a parachute. Although details of the landing structure are top secret we do know that Corliss is going to have to master the art of precision flying.

Jumping from an aircraft Corliss will reach terminal velocity, about 120mph, and then aim for what is called a ‘gateway’, which is further described as 20 feet by 20 feet, no other details have been released. He will need to be controlled and accurate as he does intend to get up, walk away and do it all over again.

If successful it will be a fist for mankind; at the moment Corliss is practicing his flying proximity skills and control of his wingsuit whilst airborne, and attempting to raise the $2.0 million required to build the landing structure.

We will keep you posted of any developments – below is a video from wingsuitflying of Corliss’ preparations

And the inspiration – here is a short clip from moconservation of the flying squirrel, which as the commentator says ‘don’t really fly, they glide…….the only mammal to truly fly is a bat’………maybe it was Bruce Wayne who first truly inspired Corliss!

The final installment of the Jeb Corliss story – this video from excalibour88 shows Corliss basejumping from that same bridge, over the Royal River Gorge, just a year after his buddy Dwain Weston had his final fatal journey and crashed into the bridge being killed immediately.

Flipping in different directions, forwards and backwards, Corliss seemed to lose control as he nearly hit the canyon wall – in his own words, ‘I was as close to the wall as you can get without touching it…..if I had pulled (the parachute) a second later I would have gone in’.

Corliss goes on to talk about his view and opinion of both base jumping and life, ‘it is who we are, it is what we are, if I die doing something i love it is not throwing my life away………I don’t believe you can push life too far, if you stop pushing you become stagnant and die……you must evolve…….find what it is you love to do then go do it.’

Powerful words from a man who certainly follows in his own creed. Who knows where or how the story will end. We started this series of blogs reporting that Jeb Corliss wanted to be the first man to land from a wingsuit flight without deploying a parachute, tomorrow we will bring further news on this latest venture.

Yesterday we wrote about the craziest base jumper on the planet, a man who had completed over 1200 base jumps with hardly a scratch to his name, a man who always like to push the envelope that little bit further.

In October 2003 Dwain Weston with his buddy Jeb Corliss would attempt to fly over (Weston) and under (Corliss) the Royal River Gorge suspension bridge in Colorado, at over 1,000 feet the highest in the world.

It was to be the last jump that Weston would ever make, as the two men were about to jump from their aircraft above the canyon Weston turned to Corliss and said ‘Whatever happens happens’.

Seconds later and in trying to push that envelope that little bit further he crashed into the bridge at 120mph and was killed instantly – his body broken and smashed drifted down into the canyon on his parachute. Corliss landed, covered in Weston’s blood and with his severed leg on the ground next to him.

The frightening, graphic and shocking video of the event is shown below from excalibour88