Basejumper.com - archive

Was looking around on the guniess book of records site and found this Never heard of it, is it still jumped?

Highest BASE Jump
On August 26, 1992, Nicholas Feteris and Dr Glenn Singleman jumped from a ledge known as the "Great Trango Tower", which stands at 5,880 m (19,300 ft) in the Karakoram mountains of Pakistan. The extremely dangerous sport of BASE jumping – Building, Antenna, Span [bridge], Earth [cliff] – is effectively skydiving without the need for an aircraft, as jumpers will launch themselves from any suitably high structure before deploying their parachute. It is banned in most countries, although legal jumps can be made on specified dates and from approved structures.

Owing to legal considerations, Guinness World Records refuses to acknowledge jumps made from buildings.

You can buy the video (and the T-shirt, and the promotional literature, and hire Singleman to come talk to your group, and...) at the BASE climb web site.

About the only good thing I have to say about Glenn Singleman is that he has hired real professionals to guide him on his publicity stunts.

Nic Feteris, on the other hand: How cool is it to jump that lady in New York, just so that you can get deported, since you've run out of money to buy a ticket home? Pretty freakin' cool.

Odd, since the highest building jumps ever made have all been legal.

I generally agree. But do admit that Nic Feteris is a super hard BASE jumper. Freefalling under 200' in the 80's? You go first.

> is it still jumped?
Is it still jumped?!?!?!?!?!?
I have the "BASE Climb" video. Perhaps you don't realize quite well the "situation" of that jump.
They had to hire a whole alpine (high mountain) expedition to get on top of Trango tower, it's not a joke to climb to 5880m, left alone the fact that Trango is a difficult mountain to climb (difficult for expert mountaineers... ).
It costed them quite a small fortune to get there, in terms of people, permits and equipment, left alone the fact that they did NOT know that there could be a real exit point once "on top over there".
In fact, there was NO real exit point over there, and to do the exit, their alpine crew digged (litterally) a small platform in the snow/ice wall to allow them to put their feet to jump off.
The small detail Glenn and Nick DID not consider was that at exit moment, they were wearing high mountain boots, sort of skiing boots, very rigid, very stiff up just below the knee, i.e. giving you very small sensitivity (if not zero...) at your ankles for the jump.
Result: as soon as they exited, they went head down in an uncontrollable freefall only meters away from the wall. Add to this the fact that the air at 5880 m or so is much thinner than air at sea levels, yielding much more difficulty (and height and time!!!) to recover stability, which they never did. At a certain point, they someway somehow threw out their PC's and thanks to a perfect packing they parachutes opened well and they flew away down to the landing and they walked away with it.
And you ask if it has ever been repeated?
Do you reckon the amount of money (and risk...) involved in that sort of jump?
Just give me the money (they had at the time) to put a suitable alpine expedition up (and few months to get trained to high altitude mountain climb) and I would go!!!!! Left alone the risks involved with the climb itself... in a way, the BASE jump was NOT the most dangerous issue of the whole adventure.
Glen tried last year to jump another famous Hymalaian mountain (I don't remember which mountain) together with his wife (on purpose trained for this jump, trained from the BASE jump point of view, I mean...), but once close to the top, they had to cancel the mission because the two mountaineers that were supposed to take them onto the exit point, on the way up, experienced a snow/ice fall (I don't know the English term for this, when a huge piece of snow/ice falls off the side of a mountain and runs all the way down): they luckily survived but they had to discard their backpacks where they had the equipment necessary to get Glenn and wife onto exit point. Supposing Glenn and wife would have succeeded to do their BASE jump, it would have NOT been the most dangerous issue of the mission by far..........

maybe you should contact them and set them straight?

If I could find an email address for them, I would. The only contact info on the Guinness World Records Site is for "I want to set a record", or "I want to do a marketing/press event."

I just found an article here on about this very subject.

And as its pretty quiet in here tonight, i thought it deserved a post.

How is this one getting judged?

This super-high exit might have been 20,000' MSL, but that doesn't mean that it was a flat wall for 100 seconds of freefall... How high MSL is the landing area, how long of a delay did they take when they fell over, etc?

I would think that the B is fixed now at around 1,700ft, A at about 2000', S at just over 1,000', and E at 4,500...?

Just trying to figure out how much more they got from this huge expedition, or if the goal was to jump and land at the highest altitude above sea level?

I believe they were trying to exit at the highest altitude above sea level. The jump was a big wall, with significant delays.

I'd say that what they got from the expedition was a lot of publicity for their motivational speaking business, which is what they wanted out of it.

Avalanche