Basejumper.com - archive

So after 6 years of skydiving, I didn't do no BASE jumping and it doesn't look that I will be doing any soon and I don't feel that good about it. One serious question. Is it as good as I imagine or it's like skydiving?

Picture one cold winter night, pitch black, out in the middle of nowhere, Sweden. Snow up to waist level in some places. Picture two guys walking down a long icy, plowed road. After about 1½ hrs of walking, they enter a forest. On the edge of this forest, there's a tower. The exit is @ ~330 ft. One of the guys climbs the tower on an uncaged ladder while the other acts as ground crew.

The wind is howling, there's ice falling down from the tower. The noises made by the wind and the falling ice are frightening to say the least. The whole tower is moving because of the wind. The guy doesn't have any real experience climbing ladders that tall, and definitely not under those conditions. But he keeps on going, one small step at a time. An hour later, he reaches the exit point. Half an hour after that, he jumps. Can't really see shit, just white snow below. Flares too high, but still makes a relatively soft landing (after all, snow is soft).

That was my seventeenth BASE jump, first jump that I planned and executed without the involvement of another jumper. It was a rewarding experience.

Now, picture a trip to the other side of the world. Picture a bunch of really great, positive people. Picture a guy with four previous CRW jumps, all of them introductory two way.

After this guy jumps with the other guys for a week, he's been docking 20th on a 20-way diamond, he's been in his first scary CRW moment (though not a wrap or an entanglement) and he's been riding a sky rocketing development curve. That was me around my 300th jump, in 2010.

BASE and skydiving; apples and oranges. It is what you make of it. It's as simple as that.

well Sebcat, your BASE and skyjumping do really sound exciting

now imagine, guy goes to do hsi first jump off some antenna and dies. guy goes to do his first aff jump, lives.

Well said...