BASE Jumping

photo by Heather F.

Some friends and I headed up to Twin Falls, ID this last weekend to attend what is often called a "boogie", where dozens of jumpers get together and try to out-macho themselves by making bad decisions, performing advanced aerials, swooping and stalling canopies, and narrowly adverting horrendous accidents. Having a propensity for misadventure, I naturally had to go.

The tradition of carnage and close-calls was upheld as many people pulled too low, fell through other canopies in freefall, and so on. This was certainly an eye opening trip for me, and helped to solidify my ideas of BASE jumping as a fruitful endeavor.

photo by Heather F.

BASE has always intrigued me, but I've never been certain why. I did my first jumps off the bridge last November, and had a great time, but stood paralyzed by inexorable fear before every jump. This trip, the fear had almost entirely subsided, likely replaced by complacency. This disregard for the intensity of the situation scared me even more, and forced me to reevaluate my own reasons for BASE jumping. Surely something so dangerous and irrational couldn't be associated with such nonchalance.

I decided to take a short break from jumping on Sunday and took some photos of my friends instead. After seeing a few very close calls, I became worried that I would make some of the same mistakes. After all, the majority of BASE fatalities have been due to human error. So what are my reasons for jumping? And how do I justify the enormous risks involved?


I think a liberated state of mind is what compels me to jump the most. The clear consciousness of near death experiences, although dangerous in its habituation, is a beautiful thing. Focusing on nothingness, even for a few fleeting moments, is invaluable to me. For the same reason that I pursue highlining (which scared the piss out of me the first few times as well), I also find solace in the mindfulness provided by BASE jumping. The quiet flapping of nylon above my head, soft grass crunching beneath my feet on landing, the meditative action of packing a parachute, getting the folds just right, closing the container in a certain way, all of these things are the simple pleasures that appeal to me.

photo by Heather F.

But there is more than just the state of mind associated with BASE jumping. Finding a spiritual connection to your actions is worth so much more than the actions themselves. Succumbing myself to the act of falling, the wind whipping through my hair, the firm shout of canopy inflation, leaving the earth and returning to it once again, it really connects one to the world. I know everyone's reasons are different, some jump for fame, some jump so that they can do something that very few in the world will ever do. These are fun reasons, but I don't think they outweigh the risks involved. Putting oneself in harm's way simply for the accolades of others is reckless and irresponsible. I think all jumpers can say that there is further meaning behind their desire to jump. I'm not quite sure what that meaning is, but I know it is there. Like an astronomer piecing together glimpses of a black hole, the reason I jump is difficult to put a finger on. Some evidence is there, but it doesn't fit together; some desire is there, but it isn't completely understood. However uncertain I may be, I realize that as long as I search for the extra pieces of the puzzle, as long as I evolve, as long as I can safely stand at an exit point and question my existence, the jump is worth it. It brings me closer to a goal that is not objective or definite, but one that is being shaped by my very existence. There certainly isn't one singular path which is the most ethical or responsible. To live my life to its fullest potential, I have to constantly grow in my understanding of myself, and my understanding of the world. BASE jumping allows me to do this, and so is an industrious pastime.

I still get pangs of fear and glimpses of disaster every time I climb over the railing, but these are inundated by the understanding that I will be a different person when I land on the ground, and hopefully, a better person.

photo by Heather F.

Slackline Party

Another fun day of slacklining! Here are some photos:

Imagine, Part 3

Imagine, there are big holes in the earth. Craters without a bottom, shafts without an end, tunnels with no destination. You cannot see these holes, but you know that they are there. These holes have a singular destination: zen, dharma, oneness, mindfulness, actionless action, prayer, whatever you like to call it. As you walk through the earth, and experience its greatness, you can sometimes fall into the holes, into a different world. A world where everything is the same living, breathing, creature. A world where you understand that being alive is a gift and you are thankful for that gift. A world where you see the billions of stars as a singular, incandescent ball of firey life that warms the heart. Some places do not have these holes, while others have a very thin crust waiting to be collapsed. Living your life in a mindful way means walking through the earth and finding all the places where the crust is thin, where there are holes that you can fall into consciousness. Imagine living a life in this way, and you can live every day as a challenge, and as a gift.

Blind Ambition

I did some climbing this last weekend, and with the absence of sunglasses, my eyes became really sunburnt, to the point of mild snow blindness. The whole beginning of the week I could barely function due to the pain in my eyes. It was as if someone poured a bucket of sand all over them. Despite the painful aftereffects, the actual climbing itself was amazing. Here are a few pictures, and a link to my friend Scot's trip report.




Scot's Trip Report

Scary Saturday

Have you ever had one of those days where something happens that makes you feel lucky to be alive, twice? Last Saturday I had to take two of my friends to the emergency room for various accidents. They weren't really life threatening, but they could have been devastatingly worse. It takes a lot of courage to step back and ask the question: why are we doing these things? What responsibility do we have to others to be safe in our pursuit of passion, and what responsibility do we have to ourselves? This question is very open ended, but the answer usually points to the fact that climbing, skydiving, highlining, BASE jumping, are all very selfish activities.

Though I am still a humble novice in all of these sports, they provide me with the zest for life that is rarely encountered in day to day life. I have been around climbing for several years, and it has become an integral part of my existence. The fluid motion of constant movement over rock is very peaceful and relaxing. Lately I have been climbing easier and longer routes without a rope; only myself and the rock. Confidence on familiar terrain allows me to ascend without difficulty, and the freedom allows me to enjoy it. Most would be scared being unroped, a thousand feet above the greening grass of Chautauqua park; for me, I can only smile. I am able to do what I love most.

Skydiving and BASE jumping are perhaps my newest and most selfish pastimes. Paying hundreds of dollars a month to be ferried up to 17,000 feet above sea level in a twin engine otter seems outrageous to my hopelessly poor college peers. However, I somehow find a way to pay for all my necessities, and more, by working steadily and saving money for things that I love. I once compared with a friend and found that by not drinking more than a few beers throughout college, I have spent about the same on jumping as most CU students spend on alcohol. Which seems more selfish? Even so, it is hard to justify paying money for something that lasts, at best, a minute or less. Is it financially responsible for me to spend thousands of dollars a year on this alleged freefall "addiction"? No. But is it really wrong for me to do these things? This is debatable.

My entrance into the world of zen was earned through my pursuit of highlining. Perhaps the scariest of all the extreme sports (even my friends at the GoFast games thought I was a little crazy), albeit one of the safest, highlining forces one to abandon all fear, hope, desire, eagerness, etc. and adhere to the process of simply doing. Through higher and longer lines I learned to control my fear, ignore it, and turn it into the simple action of taking a step. I have been able to accomplish mild and mediocre achievements that I would never have thought possible when I was a big-eyed high school student scrapping up enough cash to buy my first set of quickdraws and cams. The highest lines in the world have been turned into banal strands of nylon under my chaffed and eager feet. My nonchalance of the danger comes not from any mental fortitude that I may have, or any physical skill, but simply from my desire to do what makes me happy. My delusional confidence arises from a faint desire to exist in my most natural state. This allows for any feat to be accomplished.

It is with this attitude that I approach the activities which I hold so close to my heart. I simply strive to be myself, and being myself entails doing these activities in my most natural state. I get frustrated when old friends and mentors look at me and think that I am crazy. They ask each other, at what point in the last four years did I go wrong? Where did I become such an adrenaline junkie? This couldn't be further from the truth. Adrenaline is an unfortunate by-product of these sports. It clouds judgment and takes me further from the peace of mind that I so readily embrace. They should be asking me, at what point in the last four years did I go right? Even this is an inaccurate question to ask, but it is a better one. In my opinion there are a few defining events in my life throughout the last four years, but none of them have single-handedly taken responsibility for where I am now. Where am I now? I'm only just a few mental steps away from my maturity level in high school. I still haven't accomplished anything worth noting, and I still haven't become the best at anything that I do. But I don't really want these things. What I have done is defined what makes me happy, and acted on these definitions to the best of my ability. In essence, I do what I do for myself, and not for the entertainment of others. Unfortunately, this is the definition of selfishness.

I hate being called crazy, because I am not crazy. I get a sinking feeling when I visit the people I looked up to only four years ago, the people who first began to spark my interest in the outdoors, the people who taught me how to live my life for myself. They all look at me now like I am a nutter, I'm out for cheap thrills and good bar tales. This saddens me because the very people who shaped my life no longer understand it. This even includes my family and my closest friends. I am constantly trying to explain myself, but am often without the words to do so. I can't tell anyone why I would climb without a rope, or walk a line a half mile above solid ground, or jump out of an airplane. While I'm still not very good at any of these things, I do them, and I don't have a reason why. I do them because they fill a gap in my life that nothing else can fill. They provide different facets of pleasure in a gem of existence. Do they help me to become a better person? Yes. Do they help me to become better than anyone else? Of course not. This isn't a battle to one-up the next guy, or do the most dangerous and extreme stunt imaginable. It is a battle to bury my own primordial doubt and replace it with happiness. It is a battle to define who I am and become the most passionate man I can be. I'm not crazy, I'm calculated and scientific, and free.

So despite the inherent and often publicized danger in all of these passions of mine, I cannot help acting upon these very human desires for adventure that I have. Instances such as the injuries I saw on Saturday, although detrimental to the adventurous spirits of my injured friends, only add fuel to the fire, for all of us. I'm sure once Jeff recovers from his surgery he will be more active than ever, and Joe has already scabbed up and been down several treacherous ski descents this week. I cannot put words to the song of passion, I can only dream, and experience the truth of my existence. I feel obligated to look out for the best interests of my family and loved ones, but I cannot stop doing what I love to do. Ceasing to do that which I enjoy would be a worse fate than dying in the midst of it. I cannot help but jump off things, walk in the sky, and ascend into the clouds. It is my nature. It is what makes me human. To call me crazy, to say I should not pursue these passions, to think that I am selfish and irresponsible, this attitude is a blind perspective to the truth of my bliss. I hope that now, by reading this, people understand why I do what I do, and can hopefully empathize with it. Thanks for taking the time to read what I have to say.

Going the Distance

I have been really excited about marathon slacklining lately. This is the act of getting on a long slackline (longer than 200 feet) and walking the line back and forth multiple times until one can no longer walk. It is difficult at first, but the oneness and meditative peace that accompanies this activity is unmatched. Walking a long, difficult slackline for up to an hour, or more, takes great mental and physical stamina, but also helps to tear away protective layers of you soul to expose your true being to the world, and to yourself. Here are a few photos from a longline session Josh and I had in Cheesman Park (Denver) last week.

Imagine, Part 2

Imagine you are a candle, sitting in a row of several. Only one is lit, while others are untouched and perfect. Once there was a match, and that match lit the first candle. Your body and mind manifested in that candle, and it shone brightly. You learned about wick and wax, you learned how to dance in the wind, and how to burrow in the wax to avoid it. You learned how to keep the wax around you hot enough to sustain flame, without consuming too much of your body. You learned about life, you learned about war, you learned about beauty, you learned about death. Through the bright fragrance of life you lived the best you could, and the match was not in vain.

Eventually, the body was used up, but the hand that lit the match then transferred your flame to a new candle. The burning lust for life maintained, but was now manifested in a new body. New lessons were learned, and old ones were remembered. You learned how to further preserve the wax, and learned how to burn through your body with a slower pace. Again the candle was eventually consumed, and you were transferred to another. This time you learned how to burn even slower, but also learned how to burn with increased luminescence. Brighter and more slowly you burned. Again and again the candle was eventually extinguished, each time the duration of existence becoming longer, and the light becoming brighter. Eventually you learned how to maintain life within the candle without using any of the body, and you maintain perfect light forever. The hand with the match no longer needs to assist in your reincarnation, and instead lies at rest in your eternal peace.

Imagine that you live each day in this way, not as a candle but instead as a human. Further extending your intellectual stamina and luminescence. Eventually your body will expire, but your mind and experiences will be eternal.

Imagine.

Imagine, Part 1

You are sitting down, in the cool grass of spring. A light wind tussles your hair, but not enough to notice. Imagine you are sitting there, eyes closed, seeing the red and black illusions of the imprints of light on your retina. Focus blurs, and the weight of your body subsides. You are sitting on the top of the Earth, it falling away on all sides. The senses of sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing, all dissipate in intense focus. But you aren't focused on anything at all. Imagine, as you sit there, your legs drip away into the earth, followed by your arms and torso and head. Rivulets of skin and bone melt into the one object that sustains all life. You inhale, and the earth expands. You exhale, and the earth contracts. The tides are your sweat, moving from place to place to cool off the body. The clouds form from the evaporated sweat, and then rain down in continued sweet perspiration. Imagine as you sit there, you sink deeper and deeper into the earth, knowing nothing, but everything. You travel everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. As you sit there in the earth, searching, you fall and rise, you fly and sink, you die and become eternal, you fight and submit. Imagine you are at peace so that you don't know everything, like you wanted to, but realize that you don't need to know everything. Imagine you are at peace so that knowledge is meaningless, but awareness and fluid thought are omniscience. Imagine you sink further into the earth. You are hot, molten in temperature. All life surrounds you, but cannot survive without your heat. You steam and rupture, you boil and fly towards the surface, landing in a barren land of rock and sand, devoid of life. You sink into the earth again with powerful thought and uninterrupted concentration, and grass sprouts, flowers emerge, the desert turns into a meadow, a beautiful sanctuary of life. It spreads as fast as destruction, and continues past visible comprehension. Trees blossom and petals fall onto your concentration. Your disturbed thought is interrupted by pure beauty, and you are overcome by bliss.

Imagine.

I love Life

I've been loving life more than ever lately, things just seem to be going my way. Even the bad luck I have here and there is so quickly outweighed by the wonderful adventures of life that I don't even notice the bad things anymore. I was inspired to put together a video of all of the awesome adventures I've had in the last few years that I managed to take random clips of.

Click here for the video on youtube...

Thanks so much to everyone who has provided support and love for my life and my adventures. I love this world more than I could possibly describe. Sometimes I want to shout it from the top of the world, and other times I want to ponder it in silent reverence. This is the scope of the appreciation I have for everything that we have here in this life.

Another California Adventure

A couple weekends ago I went and visited my friends out in San Francisco. It was a great trip. My friend Damian had the grand opening for his new climbing gym, Bridges, and we all hung out there and climbed and slacklined. Then Andy, Libby, Bill, Maria and I went out to Lodi to try to do some jumping, but the winds were at 30 mph pretty consistently most of the weekend so we didn't end up jumping at all. Even so, it was still a great trip, and I'm really stoked to have such great friends out there. Here are a few photos of the fun.

Ninja Night Highline

Said and I had the awesome idea to go set up a highline at night, and pretend we were ninjas. It would have worked out well, but there were added elements of the incoming blizzard (which dumped 15 inches of snow throughout the course of that night and the next day) and the night time environment, and the fact that I was rigging up the line by myself. It went flawlessly though. I was able to get the line up and tensioned in about an hour, with an extra 10 minutes for tightening. Then it was walkin time! Said crushed it, a noble send for his 4th highline ever, and walked there and back performing many tricks. Larkin also showed up with some big lights so that we could paint the rock with light and get some cool photos. It was a really great time, and even though I left Boulder to rig after a full day of work, I still got home before my normal bedtime. Alright!

My first tandem skydive!

Nearly a year and a half since my first skydive, I received the opportunity to participate in a tandem skydive. I had never done one before (as I went right into AFF for my first jump), and it was a bit scary.


My friend Boyd just got his tandem instructor rating (congrats dude) and one of the many requirements for this rating is to take 10 practice tandem jumps, 5 of which must be with other experienced skydivers. I met the 100 jump minimum for the ride-along, so Boyd and I geared up and headed to the plane. I rarely get on a plane without a skydiving rig anymore (even when I'm traveling I usually bring my parachute as a carry-on for the cool dropzones in different parts of the country) and it was a little nerve racking to have neither a helmet nor a parachute while getting on the jump plane. But the fear soon subsided as Boyd strapped in my harness and we jumped out of the plane. It was a short freefall, and very sluggish because of the drogue which sits above the tandem group to keep them stable and to slow the falling speed to an agreeable amount (without the drouge a tandem group can easily reach speeds of 200 miles per hour). When you pull the parachute (which simply releases the drogue and uses it as a pilot chute to deploy the main) you go back into freefall for a bit, as the drogue falls away and you accelerate for a bit before the main comes out. It was fun, but unexpected. After that, it was a nice long canopy flight to the ground, where we landed safe and sound.

So for anyone considering doing a tandem jump, do it! It was a lot of fun, and not as scary as I'd imagined. It is a great way to experience skydiving and I'm even more excited about jumping now. Thanks again Boyd for the sweet experience.

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!

Slackline Party

I hosted a wonderful slackline party at Chautauqua Park this past Saturday, and it was quite fun. We had a total of 13 lines up at once, and probably 60 or more people who stopped by to have some fun. It was the most successful slackline party yet, and I'm really excited to see the sport grow to this level. Here are some photos from the weekend:

Now Presented in 3D!

I was walking home on friday and the UPS man drove up and stopped me in the street. "Hey are you that slackline guy?". I suppose that I am that slackline guy, at least as far as redheaded male slackliners go. Anyway it turns out that the UPS man for my neighborhood is also a 3D photographer and was down at the GoFast games last September taking 3D photos of the event. You can see his work here:

3DSnow

There are a bunch of cool 3D photos of the BASE Jumpers, the JetPack Pilot, and of course, the Highliners from the event. He (David Snow) hooked me up with a cool 3D photo of me walking the Royal Gorge slackline 1012 feet above the Arkansas river. Cool stuff! The photo in its 2D format is seen below.