Blog

Jumpers Gone Wild

• April 2008
• Uncategorized

Suddenly, and with no prior warning, the Moab jumpers started raging.


We have a great crew of BASE jumpers/skydivers in town. I can’t think of many people I’d rather spend all day, every day, and all evening, every night, with. Which is lucky, because that’s what’s been going on all week!

It all started normally enough, when five of us gathered together one morning for a cliff jump called G Spot, at the top end of River Road above the Colorado River. Mario, pilot/jumper/etc., was the one who found and named this exit some years back. Naturally there was some speculation about the name as we hiked to the top, talking and laughing. “No!” Mario protested, “It’s not what you think! It’s named because of the G painted on the cliff, where we walk by!”

The jump lived up to its name. Mario and I jumped simultaneously from different spots along the cliff, and flew down over the river and onto the dirt road landing area to meet Sean, Brendan and Andrew.

I can’t think of a better start to a crisp spring morning.
Then it was off to the airport.

One wingsuit flight led to another, and then Sean and Mario and I were getting an early morning start to hike up to Castleton.

Sean and I climbed up the North Face, fixing a jug line for Mario and enjoying the perfect cracks, and we hauled all three BASE rigs up the wall. By mid morning, we were on top gearing up, with perfect wind conditions (none) for our jump.

Mario (who’s been BASE jumping for years. And years and years.) suddenly decided he wanted to fly his parachute in a corkscrew, all around the tower, and that he would have less wind drag to make it all the way around if he removed the pilot chute from his BASE rig.

For those of you unfamiliar with BASE jumping, the pilot chute is the small parachute that you throw into the air while you are falling, and that small parachute then pulls out your main parachute. You know, the thing that saves your life. So basically, the pilot chute is the most important piece of equipment in this scenario. Now apparently Mario wanted to do a BASE jump with no pilot chute, which until this moment, I would have considered an oxymoron.

Being climbers, Sean and I don’t even much like the concept of things that have no back up. Now I know I can be way too literal, but removing the gear that pulls out your parachute kind of seems like the opposite of a back up to me. I like Mario! Just the thought of him BASE jumping with no pilot chute was so unsettling and borderline panic-inducing, that I basically just had to leave, and jumped off Castleton with no further discussion.

Sean apparently felt the same, and next thing we knew, we were down at the bottom, staring up at Mario’s figure on the summit of Castleton. He somehow rigged something to a bolt, jumped with no pilot chute, the canopy opened (thank God) and then he flew a perfect corkscrew all around Castleton Tower while Sean and I cheered from the foot of the talus cone.

All of this was merely the preamble to an idea Mario had hatched for a local skydiving boogie day. When a bunch of skydivers get together and do lots of skydiving, they call it a boogie. It’s basically a big skydiver party. Since Mario loves flying the Cessna, he thought it would be perfect to get all the Moab jumpers excited to jump in Mineral Canyon, from the dirt landing strip down beside the Colorado River. We would get to hang out in a beautiful canyon beside the river and skydive over one of the most spectacular places on earth, and he would get to do some amazing canyon flying, in and out of the offroad landing area. No convincing was needed!

We held a party, I mean a Planning Meeting, and somehow woke up the next morning to meet for an early jump into Mineral Canyon. (Compared to climbers, jumpers know how to party, and they believe in practice.)

Moab is the most beautiful place on earth (I think), and one of the most wild and free. When you take off from the little airport runway and head west, you are immediately out over miles and miles of rugged, surreal desert landscape. The Colorado River snakes through deep canyons of red sandstone, green and purple dirtscapes, massive lunar craters–a geologist’s fantasy. I was glued to the windows as we passed over Hell Roaring Canyon, Taylor Canyon and Moses, Dean’s BASEline site, and endless miles of stone, earth and water.

Sean and I left the plane together and flew side by side over the red canyon rim and down along the bowed river. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, flying birdlike above the desert land, then riding under my parachute above the sweeping cliffs, and then down past the edge into the canyon below.

All day, we flew up in the Cessna, picking up speed along the dirt runway, curving up in the air just before dead ending into giant cliffs, soaring over miles and miles of untouched Indian-Creek-like buttresses.

We dropped out together in groups of two and three, continuing the flight with human bodies in wingsuits, flying up beside and around each other like birds, and then turning it on and screaming out above the canyonway as fast as we could before throwing our parachutes and gliding back down to earth.

I’m sure there’s something more fun than this, but I don’t know what it is.

Mario was vibrating with excitement, filled with the thrill of adventure-flying the tiny plane up through the canyons, swooping in and out of the canyon rim and buzzing our friends on top, and lining up through the intersecting canyons for his landing pattern into the landing strip. A desert pilot’s dream day.

At the end of the day, Keith and Mario and I took off again, back to the airport, while everyone else drove trucks and dirt bikes out of the canyon, or set camp for the night. The sun was setting, and the desert was filling with evening glow and long shadows, an almost full moon in the sky beside the snowy LaSal Mountains.

Keith and I left the plane, and for a moment all three of us were flying in the air together until Keith disappeared below, Mario swept away in the Cessna, and I flew out alone towards the pale moon.