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I'm planning on making my first BASE at Kjerag in a few months.

1. Is it just as frightening as AFF, or worse or easier? I mean, when you're standing on the edge, how hard is it to jump? Has anyone bottled it?

2. Is it advisable to start skydiving with tracking pants then wear pants on my first BASE? Or should I just practice tracking normally during my skydives and BASE without them?

3. Since BASE canopies are obviously much larger, should I practice canopy flying and accuracy with a large canopy when doing my pre-BASE skydives?

4. Once I've completed my first base course, how many jumps can one realistically do at Kjerag in one day?

Please only answer these questions if you're able to, rather than telling me to contact the Stavanger BASE Klub. I'm already talking to them but it would be good to get some feedback and answers from others.

Any thing else?

Depends on you, depends on you and yes, some people do.


Practice both, the kjerag instructor will probably want you to do your first few jumps sans tracking suit, but if you're comfortable with it in the sky and your base exits are good then you could start jumping with it pretty quickly.


Best to, yeah.


3 maximum on a good day, but prepare for several days in a row of 0 as well. Plan for at least 2 weeks if you want to guarantee a worthwhile amount of jumps, bad weather could easily wipe out the majority of a 1 week trip.

(And unless you're a millionaire, bring as much food with you to Norway as you can carry - buy extra baggage allowance for it if you can - and buy everything fresh you need in Stavanger before you get on the ferry.)

It's a personal experience and everyone is different. For me it was easier. Maybe easier isn't the right word, it was just better. It was bliss.


Don't do it if it doesn't feel right.

I had a student who, if he had any food in his stomach, puked/dry heaved on the walk to the exit point. Thought he was going to pass out.

I thought I was going to pass out on my first jump, I was so nervous, I remember it like it was yesterday, it was six years ago, the only thing I remember was asking myself "what the hell am I doing?"

In both cases breathing and just doing what you have trained for made it go by a lot easier.

Just RELAX.

It took me longer to exit then it did to climb the 500' and catch my breath. (i was 270# at the time)

after i tied off my bridal i stood there thinking
"dont go head down, dont go head down, dont go head down" but all worked out

did it again 3 days later. but it was differant second time "why the f#ck are we up here again, why the f#ck are we up here again"

make sure you want to and your ready.. thats my .02

Good for you. Maybe if you could provide some more info regarding your background (time in skydiving, number of skydives, what do you normally jump / any other significant skills like 10 years in rock climbing etc) it also would be easier for people to provide you a bit more detailed feedback / advice.


For me it was actually not frightening. Scary yes but frightening no. Then again for skydiving has never been frightening as well so cannot compare. I think important is that you are mentally prepared BEFORE even going to the mountain. You have to be in solid understanding on what and especially WHY you are doing it and also that you actually WANT to do it despite the obvious risks involved. You have to have a good feeling about your preparation that you have done everything possible to build up the skills and knowledge needed to conduct a base jumps. You need to know that you did not take any short cuts and there should not be any second thoughts in your mind like "should I have done ...". If you are prepared, you can be honest to yourself and you know it, it should not be very hard to jump.


Skydiving with tracking pants is advisable for sure, wearing them in your first jump in Kjerag however is not. Kjerag can be jumped in safe manner very well without tracking suit so therefore I would not recommend adding it to the equation for the first jumps. After you have demonstrated a solid jumps sans tracking suit, depending the time you have available, maybe you start doing some jumps with the suit towards the end of your trip. Consult your coach from SBK regarding this further.


Yes you should. Optimally yous should hook your brand spanking new base canopy to a large CRW/Student container and make skydives with the exact same canopy you are going to take off from the cliff.


Like stated above, max 3 but think more realistically 2. And that´s already speaking about the good weather days. Keep in mind that the weather is very unpredictable and if you end up with 1 jump per jumping day (exc travel etc) on your trip that´s already pretty good average (around 10 for 2 week trip for example).



Get physically to shape, the hike can be a bit strenuous if you´re horribly out of shape. Buy proper hiking boots well before the trip and do a lot of hikes with them to break them in BEFORE going to Norway. Buy proper gear (speaking about proper goretex outer shell jacket and pants and outdoor / sports under layers). Don´t forget proper hiking socks! Prepare yourself clothingwise to anything between +25 relaxing by the beach in sun and getting your ass freezed inside a cloud with temperature dropping to 0 and starting to snow on top of the mountain. If you go by car, buy ALL your food and alcohol what you will need during your stay from somewhere else than Lysebotn (it is hidiously expensive there).

Have fun, don´t bounce.

Private message sent with my Skype info

1. FEAR

I had to shit before my 1st few SKY jumps
and probably my first 100+ BASE jumps.

On my 1st A, #8, my legs were shaking so
bad the top platform was vibrating, most
of you saw my 1st B, my 1st E is on here,
and occasionally I still think to myself:
whatdafuck ug why huh this is stupid


I have had BASE students who sat at the
exit for extended periods of time, like long
enough for video camera batteries to run
dead and the winds to change directions.


2. TRACKING PANTS

I have never been there so this might be
a site specific thing, I don't know, seems
that one would learn in a jumpsuit first.


3. CANOPY

Sure, practicing with a similiar wing loading,
planform, material, etc. is beneficial but not
absolutey necessary. If you can SKY jump
the exact canopy you will BASE jump then
definitely do it but learning how to fly slow,
read the winds, and land accurately can be
done with any wing.


ANYTHING ELSE

I agree with the suggestion of buying a good
pair of boots, some quality socks, and breaking
them in before your trip while hiking, walking,
mowing the lawn, etc. to tune up your cardio.

Also suggest handling your will, filling out any
advance directives & becoming an organ donor.

I did my FJC there 2 years ago and managed 125 jumps in 2 weeks but we had good weather. Dont worry about a tracking suit as I was getting a 20 sec delay/track in free fly pants and a hoodie. The center has a tracking suit you can try out as you get into the jumping.

as stated it is v expensive so get as much stuff outside norway and make sure you are fit do you can concentrait on jumping and not the hike in.

enjoy

125 jumps in 2 weeks?? Is this a typo or sky jumps?

125 jumps in two weeks? Not possible.. You mean 25?

Perhaps it's in metric.

He means 15 - I'll bet the typo was either due to pain meds or fat fingers...

Funny, last night I had a similar conversation with myself. While on the exit point, standing there alone, I actually said out loud, "what are you doing? This is dumb, climb down...You're going to jump anyway aren't you? Idiot." That was in place of the super cliche' 3.2.1.cya.

Ive never counted down.. Just calm myself, big breath in and out and go..

Same here.

Leonardo Da Vinci once said, "For once you have tasted rock you will walk the earth with your eyes turned away from it, for there you have been and there you will absolutely not long to return."

Do an experiment. Go to the second floor. Open the window. Make sure you have concrete below, not grass or dirt. Jump. Hit concrete flat and stable. Feel that taste in your mouth now? (Spoiler: it tastes like lead. I know. )

With that said and tasted, why would anyone NOT want extra separation from the object?! Why everyone advises to do a first terminal jump without tracking suit, is beyond my taste... err... I mean, comprehension.

Yes, it's extra surface, extra power. The reasoning usually is, it can out power you, make exit less stable, etc. Doh! Of course, if you're not proficient in it. If you didn't do your homework, didn't make a bunch (50 at absolute minimum!) of performance tracking skydives, didn't jump it a lot from a balloon or helicopter - then yes, you're complicating your 1st jump.

But if you're proficient in tracking suit, if you feel like hand in glove in it, like fish in water, then that extra surface and extra power can be used for your benefit. For example, I find the tracking jacket very helpful in making flat&stable exit, that extra surface on arms helps a lot to balance (compared to bare arms in t-shirt). If you've practiced it a lot in skydiving and from balloon/heli, you've nothing to worry about, imho.

Personally, I didn't find Kjerag all that overhung with a huge drop that the legend has it. I only jumped it in wingsuit, though, but it seemed to me that the column on the left and positiveness come about pretty quick. Most likely, you won't do your best track on the 1st jump, that means in plain clothes your track will put you close enough to the wall/talus that a good "panoramic" line twist with 180 can annihilate before you even switch the direction of your panoramic scan.

You WANT that extra separation. You DON'T want the taste of lead in your mouth. Trust me.

When you're a baby and they teach you to swim, they don't just throw you in the water. They put those inflatable armbands so it's easier for you to keep afloat. Same here. Once you're proficient in tracking suit and still air exits in it are practiced enough, its power will help you do your first jumps safer than without it. "Naked" tracking is much more demanding for good performance and requires better skill to get X amount of separation from the wall while in tracking suit you can track so-so and still easily get 2X.

Another aspect: if you have some problem on deployment, you'll land somewhere in much closer and easier reachable area to LZ than if you did a no-TS track so help can reach you faster.

Flame on!

No need to flame on. I personally have maybe 30 jumps from Kjerag sans tracking suit (before the invention of such thing) and my experience from the profile of the wall is quite different than yours. It very easy to make delays over 20sec sans tracking suit, if I remember correctly the recommended delay back in 2003 for the first jump was something like 13-14sec. Ask your self a question, if you claim to be a proficient skydiver (as you should be when attempting to do your first jump from terminal E) should you be able to achieve enough distance to the rock even in case of the "panoramic line twist" with such a delay? Back in the days we used to jump the Nose and La Mousse in LB slick as well and plenty of people have survived there, even in case of line twists and 180´s and those are half the usable height than Kjerag sans tracking suit.

Don´t get me wrong, I´m all for tracking suits. And I agree with you that IF the person has done a very thorough homework, jumped his ass off with tracking suit from plane (say 50-100 jumps), practised dead air exits from a balloon with it (say 20 jumps) he most likely is good to go from first jump on with it from a terminal E. However, as I do not know a single person with such preparation before his first jump, given a object like Kjerag which allows it, I would suggest couple of jumps slick first before "suiting up" just to have one factor less in the equation to worry about.

I teach only very experienced skydivers to base jump and each one of them I have teached to jump slick first. Even from lower E´s than Kjerag, with enough skill and currency they all have been able to do proper tracks and reach enough separation to the wall, even in case of 180´s. Call me old school if you wish, after 9 years in the sport I take it as a compliment. :)

For me it is all about what the student is current and comfortable to use and that´s the setup he should use in his first base jump as well. If the guy has done the base specific program described in your post, most likely he is very comfortable in the tracking suit and definitely go with it. If the guy has 300+ freefly skydives in last 12 months, I would say go with your freefly suit or similar width cargo pants and a hoodie as this is the setup he is most current and comfortable to manouver in the air.

Luckily in BASE each one makes his own decisions so my view on this is as good as yours and everyone elses. So flame on! :)

Hey skylark

send me a private message mate or talk with base 603 i believe he has already sent you a PM

we both have very good knowledge of the area...

i am sure we can both be of help mate..

markus +1

Your first few jumps from the terminal kjerag exit 6 will be in normal clothes, until you have the instructors ok to wear your tracking suit and thats if you have done the nescessary skydives..

also you wont be wearing go pros on your first few jumps.. but dont worry all the PRO's heheh the guys with 20 jumps will be filming ya mate..

+1 I agree maretus. It may be less than 1% of folks who jump Kjerag for first jumps have the kind of prep that yuri_base described. Lets says in a perfect world they DO have that much time in air with new shiny TS from aircraft. IMO, they should jump a couple times in street clothes just to "get the experience" of a BASE jump. I dont care how many times or how low or what type of equ. you exit a king air, skyvan, hot air balloon, ultralight, paraglider, etc, etc, etc......those ARE ALL SKYDIVES! Jumping a terminal E for your first BASE jump has so many different aspects than a skydive. Throwing a TS in the mix right outta the bag is just a bad idea. After a cpl of jumps in street clothes, evaluate how the student does then turn them loose in TS if all goes well.

Im a classic example of one who got a brand new custom made (2nd gen) PF TS. I took the pants only out of a plane one time b4 heading to N. Norway. I had 1300+ skyjumps and 300+ basejumps and took the suit off a termial E......stupid, stupid move. Dont recommend that to anyone.

But to the OP, of course I was scared on my first ever BASE jump. But I listened to EVERYTHING my mentor taught me and ran it through my head over and over again. All went well including changing out my undies Alway remember there is no shame in backing off wheather a newbie first timer or an exp jumper with hundreds of jumps. BASE is not something you do to impress your friends.

What specifically was the issue?

one of my friends had 150 skydives and 600+ base jumps, and i believe he took his TS from a terminal E without even skydiving it. well, i say terminal, it was 1400'

Keep an eye on this exit as you will be jumping that this season i would say

http://youtu.be/I2qZD7amy4Y

The power in the suit and the sensitivity in the input. I spent the entire jump "figuring it out" and had a shitty track. Eventually I got it but You can learn all that stuff on some skydives. After I got back home I took it out of the plane and was shocked at what I learned to do with it.

But.......thats what happens when you order your new suit late and it comes in 2 days before you leave for Europe using your non-refundable/non-transferable plane ticket.

You tell the pilot to drop to 10.000 feet, lower the landing gear, 15 degrees flaps, 100 knots airspeed and open the door.