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(I post this here because it is not skydiving/bonfire related and I will get the answer I want 10 times faster here.)

My buddy tells me of a cliff he jumps regularly that is 100 feet in Blue Mesa Lake (CO). I have been on cliffs that high and I struggle to believe that someone casually jumps off of cliffs that high. I do not believe it undoable, but I do remember hardcore greek divers in a documentary doing no more than 130 feet.

Also, what is the competition regulation height for olympic diving competitions? I think it is 10 meters or 33 feet.

(I googled but could not find.)

cliff jumpers do jump from over 100ft they dont do it casually they are skilled about it

Landing feet first? Doable if you have diving experience. I'd pass.

Back in the days I saw an extreme highdive competition sponsered by a wellknown energy beverage, and those guys jumped from 85feet (I think). Only one dude dived head first though.

Just don't land on your gut/back, tuck your machinery between your legs (spillage is inevitable) and squeeze you asshole shut.

If you go feet first, it's doable when treated with the appropriate respect. When I was younger we spent entire summers jumping a local bridge which offered platforms at 30, 50 and 70 feet. I guess the draw of gravity and human flight was strong even then.

Around that time, it just so happened to be that two friends and I were all madly in love with this girl from high school. One day she came out to watch us jump.

Trying to find ways to impress her, the topic quickly shifted to the legendary second bridge. One mile down the canal was a bridge with an arch that was 100 feet above the water. The story was that somebody had jumped it once, but nobody was sure if that person survived or not. Remember, we were sixteen...

Ten minutes later we find ourselves at the bottom of the arch in our swimming shorts, the girl standing by the water. It was here we ran into the first problem. Picture an arch about four foot wide. The bottom of the arch touches the road, and was quite steep. So with cars wizzing by and honking at us, we each took turns sprinting up the arch to get to the point where friction would allow us to climb further.

Now started a precarious shuffle to the top of the arch. Arriving there, we were 50 feet above the road deck, and 100 feet above the water. It was there we noticed the second problem. The arch wasn't completely against the water side. At road level, there was an twelve foot wide bicycle lane between where we stood and the water. We had noticed it from below, but standing at the top none of us were certain we would be able to clear it.

Fortunately, teen romance and peer pressure enables even the most cautious kids to do stupid things. So five minutes later we played rock-paper-scissors, telling me I'd go off third.

The first guy goes. He takes a solid launch, gets sucked down the void, falls fifty feet where he passes the bicycle lane by a mere four feet, falls another fifty feet and then makes the loudest splash I've ever heard in my life.

Seconds later he emerges from the water, screaming of joy.

The next guy took a few steps, cleared the bicycle lane quite easily, and makes another explosion in the water. A little longer this time, he emerges; not so happy. Screaming and cursing about how painful it is if your nutsack is pushed into your sphincter, I started to learn what exit point anxiety is like.

Oh well, for girls and glory. Off I went...

It all went fine. I landed with a big splash, swam to shore where we highfived and each got a hug from the girl.

My two friends decided to go again. So they ran up while the girl and I stayed behind (even then it was quite obvious who was the smartest of us three). When they finally made it to the top of the arch, I suddenly noticed flashing lights on the road deck.

Oops. The cops had shown up. They forced my friends to come down. Shuffling down that arch, gracefully falling past the bottom steep part; It seemed a lot more dangerous than jumping into the water.

Meanwhile, the girl and I ran into the forest and escaped the 80 dollar fine my friends got.

You'd think this would be a great opportunity to score the girl. Sadly, I was sixteen, shy and stupid. But at least we jumped the legendary second bridge. All hundred feet of them...

Long story, but 100 feet is survivable even when your sixteen and stupid. Just make sure you go feet first and shit your pants. Dive head first however, and it'll require significantly more skill. I never dove from anything higher than 20 feet.

Oh by the way, some of the numbers in the story above may be embellished, similarly to how the original poster's buddy embellishes his cliff jumps.


The most common high-towers I've seen in public swimming pools are 10 meters, which leads me to believe you are correct. There are competitions that go higher, but they're not Olympic.

I did a 90' cliff in Texas. It blew my asscheeks so far apart I thought I was bleeding. Three minutes later I crapped a gallon of lake water. If this info helps you out at all......

You made my day!

I've been off 110' a few times and regularly jump a 70 footer. These were measured using a competition ski rope that has the different length markers, not a laser. I've taken about 4-5 people off the 70 footer and all of them have been hurt to one extreme or another. The worst being a buddy that hit the water in a perfect sit position. When we got back in the boat he was trying to be cool and say he was OK, buit it only took a couple of minutes before the bottoms of his arms and the backs of his legs turned a nice purple color and he could no longer act cool. In about another 20 minutes he was ready to go home.

He didin't go to the hospital and had no long term damage, but it was quite painful.

Hit feet first, feet together, and put your hands over your head. Stay vertical.

Maybe fashioning a loin cloth out of saran wrap would help.

Actually...wear a diaper.

Thanks for sharing your story. I quite enjoyed it.

well, i regularly cliff jump 85', and if you do the math, its pretty close to the same as 70' or 100'. I always hit feet first. I always wear sandles. I USUALY wear a life vest, as i have seen my freinds get knocked out from messing up an exit.

cliff diveing is WAY different than that bullshit diveing boeard ballet that they do in the olympics. thats 10 meters like you said. and pro cliff divers can beat 130' for sure. but the cliff divers are not going for a tripple whatever with a baby splash.

I do it casualy, while my highest as of yet is only 96'. all at L.P., and a rock query in MN. he is telling the truth, there is some sweet cliff jumps I have seen done at blue mesa. sketchy ones at that. the greek divers are pros, and go at it differently than us wannabes.

there are some of us, who are still young and still very, very stupid. I have BASE jumped cliffs that i have jumped without a parachute. (however, i strongly recomend, even over water, at 96', use a PCA or static line)
I brought my laser to the sites i jump, and bouncing off a kid in the water after he surfaced, off our highest jump, i got 31 an 32 meters.

I exaggerated when i was little about the height of cliff jumps. but we proved it with a laser at the rock query, we found out something kinda scary, and kinda cool. over the last 9 years we have been jumping that mine, the water level has risen about 7" a year, with one year having dropped 15". I dont know how accurate that stuff is, but we got it offline at some fishing websight.

In durabgo, CO, there is a 10 meter bridge that everyone and their mother goes and jumps. its a good gainer practice platform. the creek is 15' wide at the impact, and about 15' deep. its a cool place, but i have heard of kids dieing there, and seen it on the news. i didnt understand why, but the river is running at a fair pace, and if you impact something thats floating down the river, (i did once) you could get knocked out. luckaly, i just got a bad bleeding bruise on my chin.

funny, the highest jump at every multiple exit cliff jump place is 100'. at that same mine, there is a 'white rock jump, that only the seniors have done. its a long hike, and we always look at it to speculate the height, and to marvel at how the seniors hiked over there and jumped it.

well, the last year we were out there, I brought my BASE rig. we took a group of local kids we met on the hike, they asked why i had a huge backpack on. they had heard of the white rock being jumped, but never seen it. they say they met the kid who jumped it.

it took 30mn to get over there, through brush and mosquitos. we got to the exit, only to find it is 130', and not verticle. not verticle as in you would need a motorbike to hit the water, we had never seen it from the exit, only the other side of the mine. no one had ever jumped the white rock.

WORLD HIGH DIVING FEDERATION

http://www.whdf.com/

I've done 35'-90' quite a bit (the 90 footer is the easiest due to its severe overhang--the 80 footer is the scariest--can't even see the water when you jump..E.P. in CA) And was foolish enough to do 110' ONE time in Costa Mesa, CA (wouldn't do it again).

You land wrong from 100' and you could be hating life (or loving death even)!

pope

Dude, I live in Newport Beach and one of my businesses is in Costa Mesa...what the hell did you jump that's 110'?

Share via PM if you feel more comfortable.

Kurt

I know its not about this exactly, but i just want to point out how much it matters about the various height distances. in BASE, we measure delay by TIME......... NOT height. we dont say, I took a 100' delay, or, I pulled 100' in to the fall. we say I took 3 seconds.

so, all that matters for cliff jumping is the speed you hit the water, at what body orientation, what muscel tensions, and of course, water depth.

impact force is a measure of SPEED, not distance fallen. the difference between 80' and 110' is very little, as the differene between 110' and 150' is very little. a few FPS.

just my 2 cents. we learn this doing rope jumping shit. it matters a lot knowing this stuff, and banking on it.

Edit: Bad calculations deleted -- my bad. You are, of course, correct here, except that the damage done in an impact is proportional to the kinetic energy, not the speed, which is proportional to the height fallen.

kinetic energy is proportional to speed^2 * mass, right? Speed is determined (partially) by height fallen, yes, but air resistance plays a large part of what the impact speed would be from any given height.

That would theoretically make the difference in kinetic energy between 10' and 20' (edit: at least half a metric smidgeon) greater than the difference between 110' and 120'.

edit: fixed

Speed squared. And the difference due to air resistance over the first 100' would be exactly half a metric smidgen.

OK, so i dont know this math talk shite, so lets keep it simple.

Impact force, is directly proportional to speed. Impact force is INdirectly proportional to distance fallen, as there is a lot of variables to include.

of course, you cant go cliff jumping with the locals and call it a 2.3 second cliff, they would think your weird and not call you back.

All I know is my asscheeks blew waaaaaay far apart from 90'. Do the math on that.

.... so how far did they "blow" apart? lol

learn how to cliff jump. never did anything of the sort, to me

 
Pictures?

Of the cliff jump not the ass.

I guess that explains why you got through your stint in the joint so easily.

Punktaker.

http://www.facebook.com/...2f0&id=203002032

dont know who you were replying to.

two way is the 80'

me and hobbes are standing on the 'white rock' in the other.

and the freefall BASE was very low, some say it has been cliff jumped, but the same peopl say the whit rock was cliff jumped, even though like i said it would take a dirtbike to clear the talus.

Perhaps (for certain types of "impact"). Damage done in a sudden impact, however, is more closely related to the amount of energy dissipated -- that is, how much energy is available to blow your ass cheeks apart, and how much is left even after that to do the sorts things that water shouldn't do without first buying you a drink. The energy dissipated is given by the kinetic energy at impact, which (as noted above) is proportional to speed squared.

Which is to say, as in a previous discussion, that (for sudden impacts, such as hitting water at high speed) twice the impact force sucks, but twice the impact force over twice the distance sucks even more. The same may not be true of more extended decelerations taking place over seconds.

To get really technical, what is relevant here is the "power" of an impact, not "energy", or energy dissipated in a given time period. The amount of kinetic energy dissipated in a water impact is about the same as in a "pavement" impact . (holding the velocity and the mass of the jumper constant) what makes the difference is the amount of time it takes to "decelerate" the body.

Can you support that with a reference of some sort? My understanding has always been that in hard collisions, kinetic energy at impact is the relevant factor, while force is important for more extended collisions.

The rationale goes as follows... As a warning, anybody with no interest in discussing the "why" of that should stop reading now. The below will almost certainly not make you a better jumper.

There is a certain minimum amount of energy involved in, say, breaking a particular bone. Undoubtedly, one can expend more than that to do the same damage less efficiently, but there is some way which takes the least energy, and that minimum is not zero.

For more extended impacts (a proper dive, or a bungee jump, as opposed to landing in a seated position), a lot of mechanical energy is lost to heat, and it's more useful to talk about the force applied to a part of the body (though the above argument still holds).

Either way, a certain amount of energy is required if one wants to break the bonds that keep the bone/spleen/ass cheeks together. You can apply half that amount as quickly, or as cleverly, as you like, making the power arbitrarily high, and it still won't do the trick.

Edit to add: Could be we're basically talking semantics here. It's not clear to me that one could manipulate force and power independently, so that it may be possible to use either in the case of an extended impact.

damn guys, we are talking about cliff jumping. this is not Apollo. for the most part, all water is the same (assuming salt water, mineral water, etc). and ALL that matters for the impact on water assuming it is still water, is speed. thats it.

weight?

Bunch of wanna be Steven Hawkings around here.

Why don't you guys argue if information is lost upon the demise of a black hole or something while you're at it.

All you need to know about physics is if you hit the ground (or water) hard, it's going to ruin your day.

Later

From Emergency Room statistics, the Life-or-Death 50% distance over water is 90 feet, independent of how the person fell into the water or the type of person who fell into the water. I use the acronym LD for Life-or-Death whereas in some circles it's referred to as Lethal Dose. Anyway, it's 30 feet over concrete.

impact force for the individual would be different because of weight, but the personal relative impact forces would be the same. hmm.... homeslice is right, we should bring the black hole into this.

but we are assuming that the jumpers are all fairly well built kids, not fat, slobby beer belly bitches.

Wow, so an average person has a 50% chance of living if they jump into water from 90 feet?
I believe it.
I assume a BIG person will hit the water a lot harder then a small person. Yes,
a small person will slip into the water like butter down a hot tube and a big guy will take quite a beating from the same jump. Better press them buns together and arms nailed to your side when you hit.

Nice pictures Calvin, BASE jumpers always have great pictures.
T

who the hell is comeing up with this shit? 50%?

dont get me started on fat people. just dont.

and arms above your head, covering your junk, or at your side. if wearing a life vest as i sometimes do, arms crossed over chest.

after i was base jumping for a year, and then over the summer went back to the big cliff jumps in MN, i was worried i would mess up exits and impact more face down. but, i guess its like riding a bike. only, scary.

I assume you mean, triping and falling. not a controled jump. is there not some russian kids that do close to 10 meter land jumps?

I think the russian guy your talking about is this kid:

http://www.youtube.com/...=related&search=



but the master of parkour is david belle, and he's french. One bad ass M.F.'n frenchman at that. search him on youtube..... entertain you for hours.

not what i was talking about, but thats cool, even though its been posted in every forum everywhere and im sick of seeing it.

i was talking about thebuilding jumpers, the kids that take HUGE jumps from building to building. maybe i was dreaming. i dono. but i have jumped 90', and it pisses me off to think that someone thinks there is a 50/50 chance of liveing theough a jump like that. that means i have cheated death on cliff jumps and won a lot.

was not replying to anyone in particular.

That's david belle and Cyril Raffaelli..... I think

in the end of this video
http://video.google.com/...=8970008800328106389

he does a pretty good building to building w/a 2 story drop. if there's cats doing bigger than that, than they've got issues. don't we all though

and don't be pissed off if you're good at cheating death....... i thought that was the point

thats the one! thank you.

and i like your sig line. faster my freind, faster.

for Calvin's benefit, I assume the above means that 50% of the people admitted to an emergency room after having fallen 90ft into water die.

the emergency room statistics are just that

they do not take into account the people who do not get injured, or get injured but do not make it to the emergency room, or die but do not make it to the emergency room

please correct me if I've gotten this wrong

I can see that.

because if that is true, me and 3 of my MN boys need some scientific testing, and to bust out our contracts with satan, cause we have the best luck of anyone. I bet me and those kids have 200 80-90'rs, the only injury i ever saw was a fat 45 year old lady, (that i know well) she enterered the water about 20 degrees head back, and came up with bruises that appeared so fast, it was scary. LP hospital sees a lot of that we found out.