Blog

Little Colorado Heli BASE

• May 2008
• Uncategorized

Last weekend was the much-anticipated Apex BASE heli boogie, in Arizona. BASE jumpers have known about the Little Colorado Canyon for a long time–1800 foot walls up the sheer canyon sides, with massive sandy beach landings in the river bed.

With the permission of the Native Americans, and a helicopter to get out of the steep canyon, American jumpers can enjoy legal terminal BASE jumping–plentiful and accessible anywhere else in the world, but very meager in the States.


Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti are talented organizers. They worked with the local Native Americans to get permission from them to jump in this site, and got in touch with Dave Gibbs our helicopter pilot/jumper friend to get a chopper. A group of thirty jumpers was invited to meet on the canyon rim, miles from civilization, to camp out together and fly from the sharp cliff edges. Everyone would pool together to share the costs of the permit and the helicopter fuel.

Dean and I were along as high-angle rescue crew, along with Hank Caylor and Lee Hardesty. This is a bit of a gamble…..if no one got stuck on the cliff or hurt, we would be able to jump. But if there was an accident, we would be involved in a pretty complicated rope rescue operation. So we all hoped for an incident-free trip, for even more reasons!

The cliffs were amazing, and it was a lot of fun to be out in the desert with such a great group of people. Fortunately, no one got stuck on the wall or hurt, and Dean and I were able to jump as much as the rest of the group.

After a couple of tracking jumps, and a few jumps in my old Classic wingsuit, I felt psyched to try my first Vampire BASE jump. Funny enough, I’ve been skydiving my V2 so much, it turned out to feel the most comfortable of anything. Dean and I jumped together, with JT Holmes following us, and it was an incredible flight along the tiered cliff bands below, way down to the sandy river bed.

Jimmy and Marta were thrilled that the boogie was a safe and successful event, and also happy to have started a relationship with the locals, who are the reason this whole thing could happen.

Spending days and nights in this spectacular place, seeing it three dimensionally from above and below, made us even more curious about the hundreds of miles of beautiful desert canyonscapes that surround it…..