Fun Skydiving

I've been in a skydiving phase lately. Pretty much every ounce of free time that I have is spent studying for class or heading to the drop zone. This last weekend was particularly fun. Although I was a bit sick, I've found that freefall is a great cure for the common cold.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the balloon jump we put together. It was my 3rd jump out of a balloon, and this time we spiced it up a little bit.


While the other guys jumped out of the basket, Joe and I decided to get creative and rigged some ropes up to the basket and descended into freefall by rappelling out. When the balloon hit about 6,500 feet above ground level, Joe and I began our treacherous rappel out of the balloon while intentionally forgetting to tie stopper knots. In climbing it is important to tie a knot at the end of a rappel rope so as to prevent falling off the end of the rope. But this is exactly what Joe and I had in mind. We started down the ropes, hanging 50 feet below the hot air balloon, and then rappelled off the end. It was a really cool experience because of the unobsructed 360 degree view of Boulder and the front range. We could see all the northern Colorado mountain ranges, and probably all the way to Kansas. It was a truly spectacular experience. The freefall was fun, and the farmer that approached us for landing in his field wasn't too angry, which was great. It made for a spectacular morning!

Click Here to see the youtube video.

I'm hoping to get to 200 jumps by the end of May so that I can legally and legitimately fly my wingsuit all this summer (although I'm not sure if I can wait that long so it may be when I get to 150 jumps). Only 78 more jumps to go!