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Did anybody notice how in the recent years a "Rock Drop" evolved into a "Rock Throw"?

It's quite striking coming back after a little break... all 5 new walls i did last week were uniformly referred to as "solid 6..7 seconds". The only difference is how strong you throw a stone!

Wingsuiting sure did progress a long way...

 

I was always under the impression that the "rock drop" was a method by which the vertical distance to impact could be calculated, and should be considered independently of the conditions under which you might be jumping. basically, dropping the rock and timing the impact gives you the height from exit to impact. if you alter the rate of acceleration, you are skewing the results of the measurement.

This post was meant as a partial joke, but there's a serious side to it.

In case of a proper wingsuit exit, there's no such thing as "distance to impact with a good launch". We are flying away immediately, well separated from the wall at 3 seconds, and don't really need all that altitude anyway.

But when we slip and tumble or plain fuck up the exit we need space/height/time to recover. The original idea of a "rock drop" was to objectively determine the size of that safety margin. Many of the modern exit points don't really give you any. However humans like to feel safe, hence 7-sec throw sounds a hell of a lot better than 3-sec drop

"False sense of confidence is better than none at all" is still my favorite quote

That's a big difference, wow.

where's it now?


How's that possible? What's possible for a rock, not always possible smart for a man

Yes, the cliff could be 280 straight down, then a shelf, which a rock can clear with some forward speed, and then final impact at 420. So with that forward speed, if you were to pull just as you're clearing the ledge, that would be a >4s delay... slider down. Broken lines, broken neck? And even if you do clear the ledge in freefall, the ledge will instantly steal those precious few feet of separation from the wall.

Then the cliff is essentially still a 280ft jump, not 420... right?

If it's a 100ft rockdrop and 420 with a push, then it's a 420ft jump (you clear 100ft in 2.5s), but again, the ledge will eat the separation.

Just another example how rockdrops might be deceiving.

 

Rock drop throw

http://fba.base-jump.org/...s/fba-1256507547.jpg

Looks crappy.

"Underhung", "Slider-down", "Long BASE career": pick two!

There are petites villes on the ledges of modern French exits

Even so, strong push in this particular case does not change the "nature" of the jump, it only gives you a bit more separation. It doesn't turn it into a 420 jump in the same sense as when you clear a ledge 5s below on a wingsuit jump and get 6K of total altitude. You're still pulling well above the 280ft mark. In this case, the false sense of added security created by a rockthrow instead of rockdrop, servers as a seductive Siren luring you to make this jump instead of finding something better...