Blog

Leaving the Nest

• December 2007
• Uncategorized

BASE jumping and skydiving have totally captivated me, for a lot of reasons. For sure, the main intrigue is the intense exploration of fear, calm thought and body control. Nothing combines those more than wingsuit flight, for me.

Our second to last day at Arco was spent sport climbing in the sun, enjoying the crisp winter air on smooth limestone. I walked up to the beautiful castle, to look out over the town, and think a little. Dean and I also both needed to pack our BASE rigs, which is at least a 45 minute job. With the short days, we figured we’d just pack and climb, and have two jumps on our last day. As I finished packing my rig, I took out my old grey Birdman Classic wingsuit, and started threading the wings into my BASE rig. I’d told Dean I would consider jumping it, a few days ago, if I made a few more important progressions in my tracking jumps over our week at Brento.

BASE jumping is so tricky. You learn things quickly, but you can also get seriously hurt in the space of a second. It’s not like climbing, where you can and should push yourself more than you think you can. This makes it hard for a climber to learn, because in BASE you should always be holding yourself back when you gain confidence. The thing that confuses this even more is the contradictory need of always having to push through fear when you do something new, which is usually on every jump during the learning phase. I have learned that to progress or do new things, I have to operate with tiny, tiny, baby steps, which is exactly how I like to do dangerous and difficult things. So if I have a goal of progressing or learning a very simple thing with BASE, I may need to do it incrementally over the space of six separate jumps off the same object, adding only one small variation of progression on each jump–for example, doing a different style of exit on the first jump, landing in the more difficult landing area on the second jump, etc, always making sure I am never doing two new things on one jump. So there is a strange push/pull in BASE, where I have to push through fear to make small progression, but also pull back and not try to push too fast.

The thing is, since the minute I first put on that grey wingsuit at the Mile Hi Drop Zone in September, I have been dreaming of wingsuit BASE. Since this is considered one of the most advanced (i.e. dangerous) things in the sport, I shouldn’t even be thinking about it right now…… And it’s difficult for Dean in these last three months of me learning to BASE jump, as we are jumping together all the time, and he is somewhat stuck into the role of an advanced, mentor jumper when we are together, because of his greater experience level. But he is very reluctant to either encourage or discourage me, or anyone for that matter, with moving forward in BASE, and is always urging caution and self examination to all the newer climbers-turned-jumpers, who are so used to being good at what we do and pushing ourselves hard….potentially a lethal combination for a new BASE jumper.

I am reluctant to encourage a “mentor” dynamic with Dean during this learning phase, as my decisions have to be fully my own, and I don’t want Dean to feel, or even add, responsibility for decisions I make, in a sport with such serious consequences. I started jumping on my own, for my own reasons. Though I am eager to get input from others, and learn as much as I can, even at this early stage I have learned that I need to regulate myself without relying on the judgment of others. Already I have experienced opposite, and equally strange situations of people discouraging me from progressions when I was more than ready, and other people at other times encouraging me to do things I am not ready for. So I am really forced to think hard about my decisions in BASE, and have the strength to stick to what feels appropriate for myself, even in this beginner role where it feels natural to just listen to others who have more experience. This is all complicated, and takes a lot of soul searching and calculated thought. But it is also a very interesting and valuable element of BASE, for me.

Dean got really quiet as I was rigging the wingsuit, and I could tell he was trying to decide what to say and how to make me think carefully about jumping it, without telling me not to. We both abhor being told not to do things, and know all too well that with us, telling us not to do something usually results in going straight off and doing it….. Honestly, I was a little uncertain too, but I felt I was ready and the time was right. Brento is absolutely the right place for first wingsuit jumps, thanks to its extreme height and steepness. I had made many solid tracking jumps off Brento, and I had also intentionally landed in the small, gravel cliffside landing area, which is the “out” if you realize you won’t make it over the forest to the main field–usually if you take too long of a delay in a tracking jump, or if you fly a wingsuit inefficiently. I had also exited in a track position, with my arms back, similar to a wingsuit exit. And I’ve made about sixty skydives in that small wingsuit, before switching to my bigger Vampire 2, including a helicopter jump. And I’d also asked Robert Pecnik a few days before, after he had seen me jump several times at Brento, for his honest opinion, of whether I should jump the wingsuit or not.

I figured Robi, who is perhaps the best wingsuit pilot in the world, and has mentored hundreds of other wingsuit jumpers, is a pretty good judge of whether someone is ready or not.

Dean had commented too, that I should ask Robi if he thought I was ready to BASE in the Classic–but it was pretty obvious that it was just Dean’s attempt to Jedi mindtrick me into getting someone else to tell me not to do it 🙂

Much to my surprise, Robi was very encouraging. He said I’m extremely current with skydiving, BASE and wingsuiting, despite my overall newness to the sport, and currency is the most important thing, as well as good general ability. He also pointed out that since I’ve been jumping the Vampire, to go back to the small Classic would feel even more comfortable.

In the days after Robi and the other Slovenians left Brento, as I was mulling over my decision about the wingsuit, Robi surprised me with text messages to check up on me, and encourage me to go for it if I felt ready:
“If u feel confi with exit and height perception and pull go for it Steph. It is not difficult. Just be fresh and focus on exit start of flight and pull time. U have good number of jumps w classic and good overall base performance and it will be ok 🙂 No worries. U can handle it.”

I was really touched by Robi’s encouragement, and of course I totally respect his judgment. So having his go-ahead meant a lot to me and gave me the final push of confidence that I could safely try to make my first wingsuit BASE jumps on my last day at Brento. As I finished rigging my suit, Dean suddenly said, “I forgot you’d done all those helicopter jumps, and that helicopter wingsuit jump. You’re probably more ready than I was, when I did my first wingsuit BASE jump. But just think carefully. You really are going too fast, and we know that’s wrong in BASE.”

I knew that both Robi and Dean were right, and I had to decide how I felt.

So I didn’t really sleep the best that night, feeling kind of worried and nervous, knowing I was going to go for it the next morning.

We walked up to the top of Brento the next morning, with our climber friends Sanam and Nicolas. Dean and I got all dressed up in our wingsuits, planning to do a two-way together.

I clambered down to a small point, fought the feelings of fear, and launched into the air.

Almost immediately, I went head-down, which always seems to happen when I am nervous before a jump. Luckily, this happened on my first helicopter jump, and I knew I should stay calm, maintain my body position, and wait to level out. Finally, I leveled out, and felt the sensation of wingsuit flight, but decided to pull at a conservative height. I was still low enough that I needed to fly my parachute to the closer, cliffside landing area, and I was very glad that I had done a previous jump using that landing area, and that I had walked up to examine it with Dean before we had done any jumps at Brento. I was gratified to have one of my best canopy flights and landing control ever, as that has been one of the hardest things for me in BASE.

So overall, nothing bad happened on my first wingsuit jump, and I counted it a success, but really wanted to make a second jump so I could correct my head-down exit mistake. At the same time, I felt completely drained and wiped out. I had really been afraid before the jump, more afraid than I’ve been in skydiving or BASE except for my first cliff jump off the Tombstone, and the fear had left me pretty depleted. So I packed my rig, had some espresso at the coffee bar, and decided to let the timing determine what I would do. If we weren’t driving to the top by 2:30, it would be too late for me to make a final jump, because it takes forty minutes to drive, an hour to hike, ten minutes to organize at the top, and it is dark at 4:30…..so this has been my personal cutoff time for an afternoon jump on this trip, causing me to bypass a couple of evening jumps when the others decide to squeeze one more in.

We were ready in time, and I felt better hiking. I realized, as always with firsts in jumping, and especially with the wingsuit, that once I make it through the first one, everything feels good. Standing at the edge on the second jump, I felt excited, not scared, and had a perfect launch exit, straight into flight.

Dean jumped behind me, and after a few seconds zoomed over my head–in his Vampire, and with lots of skill, he flies much faster and farther than me, a novice wingsuit flyer in an old Classic–

I watched him pass, and chased him in flight for a while, then decided to be conservative and pull high so I could fly all the way over the trees to the meadow landing area in front of the bar.
This second jump was so much fun! The first wingsuit jump had left me wiped out, and this one made me so exhilarated that I was almost unable to sit still in the car as we drove away from Italy, towards Munich, to catch our flight home….of course I texted Robi to thank him for all the encouragement, and let him know it had all gone well. “Bravo! :)” he sent back, right away. I love being a part of this supportive, inspiring community. The jumpers are amazing.