Questions from Russia
Hello Steph!
My name is Oleg; I’m 21, live in Novosibirsk city (Russia) and have some questions which might be interesting for other people as well. Not long ago I started to do skydiving and made 28 jumps till now (I know you don’t like to count the jumps, but it’s the only apparent way to express my experience until I’m “small”). Also I do paragliding since summer 2009. Actually, I want to start wingsuit BASE jumping some day and therefore want to learn how to fly a wingsuit. I feel like, for me, the best way to do that is to go to US for a while during the summer, and live at a DZ while learning to fly a wingsuit and gaining experience needed for FBJC (which I’m planning to take after that).
But that’s only the half of the story. The other half is that when I had a first look at your blog, which I found because of my desire to read articles concerning BASE, I understood that I know nothing about climbing, but thoughts like “why I’ve never thought about climbing before?”, pictures and articles presented, made me interested in climbing. At first I thought that it was a temporal interest, but it only increases with time and becomes even stronger than my interest in BASE jumping.
So, my questions are:
1). If you were me (but with your knowledge) what would you do? Where would you go? I can guess you would say “Moab”, since I’ve read your article “MOAB: SUBTERMINAL PARADISE” in “The Great Book of BASE” (by Matt Gerdes), where you said that Moab is the best place for combining those things (and not only them). Is it really good place for skydiving (I mean if there are good wingsuit flying instructors, prices, planes, …)? Maybe it’s better to skydive somewhere else for some time and then go to Moab for FBJC? Or, maybe, you’ll recommend me to forget about BASE until 1000 jumps :-)… It’s all my guesswork however.
2). Until I didn’t find a place to climb, which is hard to do here (because absence of mountains implies lack of climbers and gyms), can you suggest me some good exercises? I actually, looked through related topics at “rockclimbing.com” and bought the book “Training for Climbing” (by Eric J. Horst), but still want to know your opinion (it counts as 10 opinions of other experienced people for me 🙂 ), especially on the subjects: should I “train” my fingers (if yes, how?
Do I need a fingerboard?)? How not to injure fingers while building its strength?
Thank you for your nice blog and inspiration it gives to people,
Oleg
Dear Oleg,
You are very thorough! That’s a good quality in a jumper. I agree, you should skydive and paraglide as much as possible. If you want to do as many jumps as you can for the least amount of money, I recommend you go to the Lodi Parachute Center in California. Jump tickets are $13 if you buy a block of 50 or 100. Anywhere else, jump tickets are $22-$30. So I always go to Lodi if I just want to hang out and do tons of jumps. You can get wingsuit instruction there too.
You can do a first base jump course through Asylum Base, who is actually located a half hour away from Lodi, and they even offer first base jump courses held in Europe. So if I were you, I would go to Lodi for a month or two, and speak with Marty at Asylum about base courses.
To train for climbing, I would say that as a new climber, the best thing you can do is to climb as much as possible. Of course building strength is always a good thing, but you do need to just go have fun, get on the rock, and learn the movement. If you go to California to spend some time jumping at Lodi, you could take a trip south to Joshua Tree. There you can camp out, meet other climbers, and boulder around on the granite boulders all around the campsites.
Because you are new to climbing, please be really careful about your fingers. Fingerboards are good, and will make your fingers stronger, as well as get you doing more pullups, but as with base jumping, hold back! If you get too carried away too quick, you will get hurt, so be judicious if you decide to start doing workouts with it–again, going climbing is the best thing you can do to start climbing 🙂
Good luck and blue skies!!!
🙂 Steph
Thank you for the answer!
Since I wrote that, I’ve already found the climbing gym here, ironically enough, all this time it was just about 1 mile apart from the University I study at :). And I’ve bought a fingerboard (probably not the best one, but the only one there was in the shop). Fortunately, I knew about the possibility of injuries (from the rockclimbing.com and from the Horst’s books), so I do not work on the upper limit of my abilities yet (to build the strength gradually without injuring tendons). Of course I expected that more experienced climbers in the gym would climb better than me, but the exciting surprise was the large significance of the technique in climbing. I feel like a cow on the ice while superinefficiently climbing the wall :). All my “training for climbing” without climbing gave me nothing!
Thank you for the advice about the Lodi Parachute Center. If my plan comes to reality (this summer I’m planning to visit my relatives living in U.S.), I would stick around the places you gave me, having as much parachute fun as I can.
Thanks again,
Blue Skies and Nice Climbs!!!
Oleg
I’m glad Oleg!! I’m not sure when you are thinking of doing a California trip, but for both Lodi and Joshua Tree, spring and fall are the best times. Even winter can be nice, but June-August can be really hot.