Re: [BASE813] Loaded Magazine UK
Title: The Ace of BASE
Loaded could die in the next five seconds. We are stood with our man Brendan on the edge of a 600ft cliff, high up in the Australian blue mountains, and we are about to leap off into the rocky abyss below. Loaded is about to join a club of absolute loonies called BASE jumpers (buildings Antenna Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs) – the four different areas jumpers leap from). It is regarded as the most stupid form of skydiving because the altitudes are so low.
The only thing separating the BASE jumper from the Grim Reaper making a premature visit is a parachute – but if he doesn’t open it in those 5 seconds, the paramedics will be scraping his body of the jagged rocks below, and he would not be the first, more than 80 jumpers have died in the past 20 years.
Loaded is currently teetering on a rocky outcrop known as Dxxxx’x Exxx, 100 miles xxxx of xxxxxx. Couldn’t we have started small?
“In Australia we've got the hardest places to jump in the world” boasts veteran BASE jumper Xxxx Xxxxxxxx, whos helping us with our first leap. “We’ve got to land in much harder places and the drops are so much shallower”
Despite the high death toll, Xxxx reckons there’s more broken bones missing fingers and grazed limbs than fatalities. Make the slightest miscalculation and you’ll smash into the massive sandstone cliff face or plunge full tilt into the eucalyptus forest far below, Get your altitude wrong before opening the chute and you’re just as fucked. Not that Xxxx’s worried. An Aussie BASE jumping legend and veteran of over 300 jumps he been leaping off skyscrapers bridges and antennas (often illegally) since 1986. He’s even jumped off Malaysia’s twin petronas towers in KL the worlds second highest building 16 times!
“For me it’s about perfection” he says “the harder the jump is the more perfect you have to be and the better it is after”
Xxxx’s mate Xxxx also knows all about the downsides. His left ankle’s still swollen after surgery after it was smashed to pieces two months ago. He also saw a close friend killed during a leap from Norways famous troll wall. Xxxx meanwhile is full of sensible last minute advice for the first timer: “just leg it and hurl yourself off the edge”
Following this advice Brendan takes a small run up and leaps, hurtling into the valley. The silence as you wait for his chute to open is pin droppingly deathly. Im sure the mad buggers going to peg it. Seconds later the cracking sound of his canopy opening ricochets like a gunshot around the cliffs faces. He makes an impressive landing far below. Loaded snapper Ian nearly falls off the cliff capturing it on film.
Xxxx leaves next. With chute clutched tightly he takes a huge run off and launches himself with awesome force. Plummeting in an arc over the valley below, he leaves it as long as he dares before finally triggering his main chute and falls gracefully, sailing down and making the most elegant of landings.
Then it’s me. I run for dear life, jump, count to 8 and pull. It feels like the end of the world. But there’s no time for fear. I crash through the forest like Rambo, but for one big difference :big john didn’t do a mid air plop plop.
mmmmm...............
