Blog

Urban BASE

• July 2008
• Uncategorized

When I was little, I liked a story called “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse.” The mice go to visit each other, both experiencing a completely foreign environment. The city mouse has to learn how to dodge cats and deal in the outdoors. The country mouse has to learn how to survive in a highspeed urban environment, when he goes to visit the city mouse. They both find it all pretty harrowing, but I always thought the country mouse gets a little more worked over on his visit. Let’s face it, cities are hard core.


It’s noticeable and puzzling that French Canadian people seem to be able to manage in the rocks and in the mountains just fine, even if they have a complete lack of experience. I guess when you have to deal with months of snow and ice your whole life, you get pretty rugged. I’ve been joining the Moab crew of BASE jumpers on climbing days and BASE recon trips in the mountains recently, and they are all totally able to deal.

Three Quebecois jumper friends of mine were going to be in Montreal last week for a movie stunt gig, BASE jumping off the Montreal Stock Exchange, and invited me to come up for an intro to urban BASE (which is all they have up there and might be why they like Moab so much). The tables would be turned……!

I started BASE jumping in order to do more fun things with cliffs. So I have always been pretty sure I would not be interested in urban BASE. First of all, you do it in cities. Second of all, it does not involve cliffs, but rather, large things that are metal and often radioactive. Third of all, it is mostly illegal. Quite understandable due to liability issues in this litigious age, but definitely makes things a hassle. For example, doing lots of energetic things at night, which does not fit in with my alpine rhythm of dawn-o-clock starts and eight-o-clock bedtime. I could go on, but you see the issues.

But hey, we must be open to new experiences, and when we have an opportunity to be yanked out of our comfort zone, we should not let it pass by! Besides, it is the 400th anniversary celebration of Quebec right now, and that’s pretty exciting.

Martin, Mario, and Bertrand were hired to do the BASE stunt for a Canadian movie about skydiving. Apparently, they are always hired to do all BASE stunts for all Canadian movies that involve BASE jumping, of which there are more than you might expect.

This movie involves lots of drop zone drama and romantic entanglement, and culminates in a scene where three guys jump off La Bourse, the Montreal Stock Exchange building, and then one of them (the good guy, of course) gets paralyzed in a tragic canopy collision. Yikes. Fortunately this stunt was only about the jumping part.

Since building jumps are incredibly illegal, everyone was tickled beyond belief to be jumping La Bourse in broad daylight, with a police crew blocking off the streets for their landing. We had all imagined I might get to jump it too, but the city permits were a little more specific than we had expected, so I became a photographer, while the guys jumped three times in broad daylight, getting paid, no less!

My disappointment was eased by a bunch of fun wingsuit flights at the Voltige and Trois Rivieres drop zones with my hosts.

The good thing about Quebecois(es?) is that they can switch from hugging cops and getting paid to jump the Montreal Stock Exchange, to standard urban jump protocol, in the blink of an eye.

It doesn’t even seem to bother them, but then, not much seems to bother Canadians, who are remarkably even tempered.

You have a lot of tall, non-cliff objects around a big city like Montreal or Quebec, besides just buildings. You have your antennas,

your pylons,

and your bridges.

All of them, if you were to BASE jump them, would require all sorts of interesting and adventurous activities,

like climbing iron ladders,

landing parachutes in the dark,

waiting for gaps in traffic to dart along bridge sides, up to massive cement tubewalks,

and scampering around scaffolds above lanes of night traffic.

All of which, of course, we would never do, and certainly not in a foreign country with the city mice.