airdog07
October 3rd, 2014, 06:20 PM
Wingsuiting: adrenaline highs and dangerous lows Wingsuit diving is one of the world’s most dangerous extreme sports. Ahead of this month’s World Wingsuit League Grand Prix, defending champion Jhonathan Florez explains the rush behind jumping off a cliff in an inflatable suit
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/10/1/1412160772711/8d6cd571-e4f1-458c-a02c-2506d6c0f70f-460x276.jpeg
A flock of wingsuit flyers descend. Photograph: Richard Schneider/Flickr Creative Commons
At 3,810 metres the rear door on the Cessna Caravan opens and a blast of cold air rushes in to the cabin towards 31-year-old Jhonathan Florez (http://www.jhonathanflorez.com/). The chill interrupts his nail biting and signals its time for him to unbuckle from the aluminium floor, pull his goggles over his eyes, and prepare to exit the plane. At the door his bare hands clasp either side of a bar that extends along the top edge of the door. He goes through a training routine in his mind and steps out into air.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/30/1412091202821/e769e55f-c6a1-4e6b-a3b2-fbd228ef5aa1-294x420.png
Jhonathan Florez
He dives, his black-winged arms pulled inward until he clears the plane; he extends his arms, pivots his shoulders forward and spreads his webbed legs. Air fills the chambers in his suit and causes him to go from dropping to floating in a Batman-esque display. He accelerates, arches his chest and climbs slowly, then heads down toward a mountainside. Jhonathan’s goal is to drop down and into a valley, below the treeline, and fly at 127mph – terminal velocity – while using his feet as rudders to steer.
This is skydive proximity flying, also known as wingsuit flying. Skydives are always performed from a helicopter or plane, while Base jumps are from a cliff or fixed object. “Skydiving is one sport. Base jumping is another. Wingsuiting is not a sport: wingsuiting is a sub-discipline of each one of these sports. You can do either skydiving or Base jumping with a wingsuit,” he says.
Jhonathan, a native of Medellín, Colombia, now lives in Sacramento, California, and is the current gold medallist in the World Wingsuit League (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/) (WWL). In 2012, in La Guajira, Colombia, he set four Guinness World Records: longest time in freefall (9 mins and 6 secs), longest horizontal distance (26.257km or 16.31 miles), highest wingsuit jump (11.358km or 37,265ft), longest total distance (28.163km or 17.5 miles). He’s flown in the Alps, Andes, the floating mountain in Zhangjiajie in China, Italy, France, and the fjords of Norway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tu5Cyw8xlI&list=UUKIixYOJWw6L5FFYZe7la5Q
Jhonathan Florez in a practice run for the WWL in China Later this month he’ll be defending his title at the WWL Grand Prix in Zhangjiajie (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/2014-wwl-china-grand-prix-event-schedule), an invitation-only series which will see 26 pilots compete. “It’s like the Le Mans of the sky. You’re competing with the world’s best wingsuit Base jumpers, the big names who have been in the commercials. It started in 2012. The first gold went to South African Julian Boulle (http://www.graviting.com/julian-boulle-from-south-african-wins-the-first-wwl/), silver to Norwegian Espen Fadnes (http://www.espenfadnes.com/) and bronze to Italian James Boole (https://www.facebook.com/james.boole).” Jhonathan won in 2013.
I had the chance to catch up with Jjonathan while he was on set for the new Point Break film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058673/) where he is a stunt flyer and aerial cameraman. “I’ve been obsessed with birds since I was six years old. I flew remote-controlled planes when I was eight and at 11 I started building my own aeroplanes. That same year I started jumping from different things into water. At 13, I did my first skydive.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEOBr9_g33E#t=15
How do you know where to jump? The idea of wingsuiting from planes started with the “Birdmen” in Europe in the 1940s, but that met with mixed results – and several deaths. From the 1940s up to the 80s Jhonathan says that, “all the people who were attaching canvas wings [and jumping off cliffs and out of planes] died.”
In 1981 Carl Boenish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Boenish) legitimised jumping off a cliff and pulling a parachute as a type of extreme sport. He adopted the acronym Base (building, antenna, span and earth). Later, Patrick de Gayardon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_de_Gayardon) applied Ram Air technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram-air_intake), which has been used in parachutes since the 1970s to keep them inflated. De Gayardon, who is known as the father of modern wingsuit Base jumping, made the world’s first successful wingsuit in 1997. He died following a rigging accident in 1998. “He [accidentally] sewed some lines of his main parachute, pulled his reserve and that tangled in his main parachute,” Jhonathan says.
Wingsuiting and specifically proximity flying – which is to fly close to trees, cliffs and other objects – is the more dangerous version of Base jumping. “Proximity flying kills more people than other forms of regular Base jumping,” Jhonathan says. “Since 2002, there have been 87 wingsuit or proximity fatalities. Each year the number of fatalities increases; in 2013 there were 24, up from 19 in 2012.”
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/10/1/1412174187652/a4ef3e10-82bb-4db6-91eb-8fb1660d0dbe-bestSizeAvailable.jpeg
World Wingsuit League Grand Prix 2013 Photograph: Worldwingsuitleague.com
Risks include slipping on exit, “more common than you think”, says Base jumper and event organiser Hank Caylor. “In a wingsuit your legs are connected so it’s more like tiptoeing than running off a cliff towards the exit,” he says. Other risks are cliff strikes, improper equipment, twisted lines, and protruding objects. “A lot of people die when they collapse their wings in huge suits and can’t find their pilot chute in all the fabric. That’s called a mis-pull.”
Chris McNamara, 35, publisher of The Great Book of Base, retired from wingsuiting, proximity flying and Base because he deemed the risks too high: “It was the coolest sport in the world because it was an intense high. But once you get into it that high fades, and to keep that you have to push it, like flying closer to stuff, and that gets less fun. Then your friends start dying. I nearly died many times.”
Chris McNamara and colleague at Baffin Island, Canada However, despite the risks and the fact that Base jumping is illegal in many destinations, more people appear to be taking up the sport – although there are no official figures. Caylor believes there are 5,000 active Base jumpers who jump regularly and attend festivals and invite-only competitions worldwide. I asked Jhonathan why he does it: “It makes me happy. I love what I do. But I try to mitigate the risks and do it as safely as I can.” Nearing the end of his flight Jhonathan pulls his pilot chute, which pulls out his parachute. When the parachute deploys it sounds like the echo of a shotgun.
The 2014 World Wingsuit League China Grand Prix (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/2014-wwl-china-grand-prix-event-schedule) runs from 10 October to 20 October. Practice jumping begins 11 October and qualification rounds start on 14 October
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/10/1/1412160772711/8d6cd571-e4f1-458c-a02c-2506d6c0f70f-460x276.jpeg
A flock of wingsuit flyers descend. Photograph: Richard Schneider/Flickr Creative Commons
At 3,810 metres the rear door on the Cessna Caravan opens and a blast of cold air rushes in to the cabin towards 31-year-old Jhonathan Florez (http://www.jhonathanflorez.com/). The chill interrupts his nail biting and signals its time for him to unbuckle from the aluminium floor, pull his goggles over his eyes, and prepare to exit the plane. At the door his bare hands clasp either side of a bar that extends along the top edge of the door. He goes through a training routine in his mind and steps out into air.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/9/30/1412091202821/e769e55f-c6a1-4e6b-a3b2-fbd228ef5aa1-294x420.png
Jhonathan Florez
He dives, his black-winged arms pulled inward until he clears the plane; he extends his arms, pivots his shoulders forward and spreads his webbed legs. Air fills the chambers in his suit and causes him to go from dropping to floating in a Batman-esque display. He accelerates, arches his chest and climbs slowly, then heads down toward a mountainside. Jhonathan’s goal is to drop down and into a valley, below the treeline, and fly at 127mph – terminal velocity – while using his feet as rudders to steer.
This is skydive proximity flying, also known as wingsuit flying. Skydives are always performed from a helicopter or plane, while Base jumps are from a cliff or fixed object. “Skydiving is one sport. Base jumping is another. Wingsuiting is not a sport: wingsuiting is a sub-discipline of each one of these sports. You can do either skydiving or Base jumping with a wingsuit,” he says.
Jhonathan, a native of Medellín, Colombia, now lives in Sacramento, California, and is the current gold medallist in the World Wingsuit League (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/) (WWL). In 2012, in La Guajira, Colombia, he set four Guinness World Records: longest time in freefall (9 mins and 6 secs), longest horizontal distance (26.257km or 16.31 miles), highest wingsuit jump (11.358km or 37,265ft), longest total distance (28.163km or 17.5 miles). He’s flown in the Alps, Andes, the floating mountain in Zhangjiajie in China, Italy, France, and the fjords of Norway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tu5Cyw8xlI&list=UUKIixYOJWw6L5FFYZe7la5Q
Jhonathan Florez in a practice run for the WWL in China Later this month he’ll be defending his title at the WWL Grand Prix in Zhangjiajie (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/2014-wwl-china-grand-prix-event-schedule), an invitation-only series which will see 26 pilots compete. “It’s like the Le Mans of the sky. You’re competing with the world’s best wingsuit Base jumpers, the big names who have been in the commercials. It started in 2012. The first gold went to South African Julian Boulle (http://www.graviting.com/julian-boulle-from-south-african-wins-the-first-wwl/), silver to Norwegian Espen Fadnes (http://www.espenfadnes.com/) and bronze to Italian James Boole (https://www.facebook.com/james.boole).” Jhonathan won in 2013.
I had the chance to catch up with Jjonathan while he was on set for the new Point Break film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2058673/) where he is a stunt flyer and aerial cameraman. “I’ve been obsessed with birds since I was six years old. I flew remote-controlled planes when I was eight and at 11 I started building my own aeroplanes. That same year I started jumping from different things into water. At 13, I did my first skydive.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEOBr9_g33E#t=15
How do you know where to jump? The idea of wingsuiting from planes started with the “Birdmen” in Europe in the 1940s, but that met with mixed results – and several deaths. From the 1940s up to the 80s Jhonathan says that, “all the people who were attaching canvas wings [and jumping off cliffs and out of planes] died.”
In 1981 Carl Boenish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Boenish) legitimised jumping off a cliff and pulling a parachute as a type of extreme sport. He adopted the acronym Base (building, antenna, span and earth). Later, Patrick de Gayardon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_de_Gayardon) applied Ram Air technology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram-air_intake), which has been used in parachutes since the 1970s to keep them inflated. De Gayardon, who is known as the father of modern wingsuit Base jumping, made the world’s first successful wingsuit in 1997. He died following a rigging accident in 1998. “He [accidentally] sewed some lines of his main parachute, pulled his reserve and that tangled in his main parachute,” Jhonathan says.
Wingsuiting and specifically proximity flying – which is to fly close to trees, cliffs and other objects – is the more dangerous version of Base jumping. “Proximity flying kills more people than other forms of regular Base jumping,” Jhonathan says. “Since 2002, there have been 87 wingsuit or proximity fatalities. Each year the number of fatalities increases; in 2013 there were 24, up from 19 in 2012.”
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/10/1/1412174187652/a4ef3e10-82bb-4db6-91eb-8fb1660d0dbe-bestSizeAvailable.jpeg
World Wingsuit League Grand Prix 2013 Photograph: Worldwingsuitleague.com
Risks include slipping on exit, “more common than you think”, says Base jumper and event organiser Hank Caylor. “In a wingsuit your legs are connected so it’s more like tiptoeing than running off a cliff towards the exit,” he says. Other risks are cliff strikes, improper equipment, twisted lines, and protruding objects. “A lot of people die when they collapse their wings in huge suits and can’t find their pilot chute in all the fabric. That’s called a mis-pull.”
Chris McNamara, 35, publisher of The Great Book of Base, retired from wingsuiting, proximity flying and Base because he deemed the risks too high: “It was the coolest sport in the world because it was an intense high. But once you get into it that high fades, and to keep that you have to push it, like flying closer to stuff, and that gets less fun. Then your friends start dying. I nearly died many times.”
Chris McNamara and colleague at Baffin Island, Canada However, despite the risks and the fact that Base jumping is illegal in many destinations, more people appear to be taking up the sport – although there are no official figures. Caylor believes there are 5,000 active Base jumpers who jump regularly and attend festivals and invite-only competitions worldwide. I asked Jhonathan why he does it: “It makes me happy. I love what I do. But I try to mitigate the risks and do it as safely as I can.” Nearing the end of his flight Jhonathan pulls his pilot chute, which pulls out his parachute. When the parachute deploys it sounds like the echo of a shotgun.
The 2014 World Wingsuit League China Grand Prix (http://worldwingsuitleague.com/2014-wwl-china-grand-prix-event-schedule) runs from 10 October to 20 October. Practice jumping begins 11 October and qualification rounds start on 14 October