Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
crankster
Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
|
|
|
Mar 29, 2014 - 10:20pm PT
|
Dumb stunt.
|
|
philo
Trad climber
Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?
|
|
|
Mar 29, 2014 - 10:22pm PT
|
Hardly a "dumb stunt". It was a thing of amazing beauty that took way more effort than most folks would ever realize. As for risks to the non-jumping people, you are probably at greater risk at a NASCAR event. So when several high speed tires and an engine block go over the fence and slam into the drunken stands it' is OK because car crashes and beer swillin' are Honey Boo Boo Red Neck approved risks.
But engaging in what are perceived as "extreme risk" adventures is just not acceptable to Joe, "the Plumber, Q. Public".
Climbers condemning the risk taking of BASE jumpers is rich with irony.
|
|
7SacredPools
Trad climber
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
|
|
|
Mar 29, 2014 - 11:16pm PT
|
I've never base jumped but I find it very appealing. There's something beautiful about climbing a mountain, a face, or even a building and then leaping off. Kind of a full circle thing.
People legally and illegally endanger themselves countless times, in countless ways, every minute, of every day.
I'm not saying this should be allowed, but if it were up to me I'd shut down a street for an hour on calm nights and let the fly boys have at it. Ha, guess I just said it should be allowed...
And Philo, you're bang on.
|
|
johntp
Trad climber
socal
|
|
|
Mar 29, 2014 - 11:22pm PT
|
I'm not much into telling people what to think, or that they are allowed to think.
Climbing is about, to a large degree, self-reliance. That means constantly making judgments. It you don't, and you get into dicey things, you really risk death through stupidity.
Ken, don't know you. BASE104 has done a ton of sheet. Big walls, alpine, BASE (hence the 104), Alaska treks solo. You just piss me off that you are passing judgment; he is a friend. If you knew him you would appreciate his enthusiastic spirit and self reliance. The guy knows where he is coming from.
John Penca, aka johntp
edit: apologies for the OT post, but I stand up for my friends.
|
|
Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 12:27am PT
|
Flashback: 1991ish.
I'm in college in Atlanta. They are constructing this huge new skyscraper about two blocks from my house in midtown. The Nationsbank tower. No idea what it's called now, Nationsbank was bought out or folded. It was the tallest building in the state at about 1000' and something like the 10th tallest in the country.
This big bitch on the right:
Anyway, out on some drunken exploits one night, we're walking home from the bars and this thing is under construction with all the height on, but not even windows or anything. We're gawking up at it, there'e a big light on the tip and all of a sudden.."AIIII YAIYAIYAI YIPPPIE KAI YAY MOTHERFU#$ERS!" Whoosh! WHOOSH! Two guys jumped it. Coolest thing I'd ever seen at that point. First base jumpers I'd ever seen. I don't even think I'd ever heard of BASE at that point.
Years later, first El Cap route, pre-dawn after the first night on the wall...whizzzzzz...oh sh#t rockfall! Then pop, pop..two jumpers. Two days later, more jumpers.
Since then, I've watched guys jump El Cap when I was on the summit twice. It's surreal to watch. You can't quite get your head around that this guy you know is about to step off into the void and then HOLY SH#T!! there he goes. Seen Half Dome jumped, a few bridges, and a couple cliffs in so Utah. Never done it myself, actually just did my first freefall from a plane recently. And it's probably not something I'll ever do. But it's still one of the coolest things I've ever seen...those dudes hucking Nationsbank, in the middle of the night with no fanfare, no audience (that they knew about anyway). No cameras, nothing but two dudes and a true adventure in the middle of 3 million sleeping people.
Some diabetic fatf*#k stuffing their face Ben and Jerrys or some teen texting on their phone while driving are infinitely more dangerous and costly to themselves and society at large. Yet we don't have a scale at the Ben and Jerry's case, or a movement lockout on texting apps. No throttle governors on ricerocket street bikes. No 75mph speed limiters on cars or trucks. All this patriot horseshit about FREEDUMB and LIBERTY, yet somebody does something that makes people realize they couldn't carry these guys balls with a wheelbarrow and they start all the "reckless stunts!! lock them up!!"
Keep hucking you crazy fux. I, for one, salute you.
|
|
philo
Trad climber
Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 03:53am PT
|
For a non-BASE jumper, Philo has the most BASE experience of anyone I know(did that make any sense?). That's a fact.
Hank that was really gracious of you to say. Not sure how much of a "fact" it is but there is some truth in what you say. I have been around BASE since the very early jumps off the Painted Wall in the 70s. I have been fortunate enough to be closely associated with some amazing cats who huck. I have also seen a whole lot of human carnage, some BASE related but much more related to climbing. No I have never jumped except up and down while watching BASE jumpers. Several years ago knowing my passionate fascination for flight Hank comped me a tandem sky dive at the LZ he frequented. That was a cool offer and I was excited by the prospect but foolish chivalry got the better of me and I gave the jump to my then wife for her 40th bday. It was an awesome experience and the video rocks! My favorite part was waiting at the LZ with hank, my then young kids and a bevy of nubile hotties in short shorts and tube tops. At one point in his most gregarious Hankness Caylor looks over at the smoker next to him and noticing her tattoo he quite flirtatiously, but loud enough for all to hear, asks her "You know what they say about girls with Tramp Stamps?" Then noticing my wee little impressionable daughter Amber standing coyly to his other side he answers his own question with a hilariously limpid "woo hoo".
Cracked me up.
|
|
Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 04:00am PT
|
if you Base Jump into the horse trough at Knotts Berry Farm you get a free prime rib dinner, with desert,
watch out for the horse,
|
|
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 10:57am PT
|
I call crotch rockets zoom splats. they go zooming down the road then they go splat. A huge part of it is not that you do something dangerous but how you do that dangerous activity.. then there are the activitys that have high objective hazards that you have little or no control over.. high altitude mountainering and sever alpinism comes to mind... street raceing.... little bit of funky wind when you are proximity flying...
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 02:05pm PT
|
Ahh..that crap about me is exaggerated. I was never any good at anything. Just good enough to be a witness to some cool events. Like Forrest Gump.
I will say that my first BASE jump from El Cap was the most incredible experience of my life. The birth of my son was right up there with it.
It is such a beautiful experience. I was so scared that I almost sh#t my pants, but the microsecond that I jumped and saw the entire SE face of El Cap fill my vision, all anxiety left like a wave. The first couple of seconds were quiet, but as I accelerated, I could feel and hear the wind. Then you are flying. You learn how to fly your body by skydiving, and it is pretty simple to jump El Cap. I assume that your wingsuit inflates at about the same moment, but I left BASE long before wingsuits.
The ten seconds that it took for El Cap Tower to come up to my right felt like minutes. It is so intense that time dilates and it feels like it is very slow. I started tracking at about 3 seconds, when you have enough airspeed to start turning, tracking, whatever. El Cap is so steep over the Dawn wall that you visibly see it slowly falling back as you track further and further away. I would guess that even my shitty first track put me several hundred feet from the wall. Actually striking El Cap baffles me. It is such an easy track.
Then you throw your pilot chute and open. Later, when I was jumping El Cap regularly, I would fly left, close to the wall, and exchange monkey shouts with my bros climbing routes.
I won't give out all of the info on how to avoid arrest, but I was always super paranoid and was never caught.
You have to pull kind of high on El Cap, because you have to reach the meadow area to land. On Half Dome, you can burn it all the way down and open super low, so Half Dome is the longest jump in the valley for a non wingsuiter.
I missed out on wingsuits, and I can tell you this: Wingsuit BASE is its own animal. It requires real skills that are not required in normal BASE.
I can still remember everything about that first BASE jump. I can even remember the smell. I've never been more alive in my entire life.
Stuff like jumping a gigantic building is really no biggie for a good jumper with modern gear. If you haven't seen the video of Hank telling his building strike story, well, that is about as bad as it gets..and hilarious.
BASE taught me a lot about fear. Hey, just don't be afraid. I bet half of the posters on Supertopo are scared of the dark when sleeping alone out in the woods. It is a pretty common fear. I just learned not to flip out, and it helped me free soloing, getting charged by a very pissed off grizzly bear, lots of stuff. A lot of people get sensory overload and their brains just shut down. BASE is full of people whose brains go into a weird hyper-aware zone of experience. Those who can't get that type of focus naturally don't last very long.
I would have to say that my first jump from El Cap was the most surprisingly aware moments of my entire life. Like most things, BASE becomes fairly routine as you gain experience. You can evaluate risk on a real time basis, and most of all, have the knowledge to just turn around and climb back down if conditions aren't right. I've turned around on a ton of jumps if the winds are goofy for example.
Have any of you bitches free soloed? Geez, we used to always just downclimb a 2 pitch 5.8 instead of rapping off or hiking down the backside at our home crag. After you have done a route a hundred times, soloing it is no big deal. I used to solo routes all of the time, and a few times it got intense enough to kind of approach that BASE type awareness.
Hank has his own stories to tell, but what got him into BASE is probably the same uber-experience that I had.
El Cap was always a beautiful jump. It baffles me that anyone could die on it, but there are no experience or currency rules. Anyone can jump it, and the accidents have all been from people who shouldn't have been there. For instance, if there were an invite only BASE event off of El Cap that Hank ran, it would all be qualified jumpers, much like the legal jumps of the KL tower in Malaysia.
Sean's death hit people hard, but I got an email from Potter the other day saying that he was doing good. They went in and helped recover Sean's body as well as figuring out what went wrong.
I am totally serious when I say that if you haven't done it, no way will you understand it.
I will say that the few moments of my life where I achieved absolute clarity were mostly jumping. It is not a stunt. People who call it that are mostly nimrods whose only qualification to comment consist of an internet connection and a keyboard. It really is that far out there.
|
|
donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 02:35pm PT
|
Nice summation....we always fear and revile what we don't know or understand.
|
|
tradmanclimbs
Ice climber
Pomfert VT
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 03:15pm PT
|
nicey written.
Still think proximity flying is about as smart as street raceing...
|
|
Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 03:32pm PT
|
Witness the sickness:
That's the RADNESS BRAH!!!!!!!!111!!111
|
|
Sanskara
climber
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 03:45pm PT
|
I don't jump but I will.
Since the first time I saw someone fly a wing suit I knew I was something I had to and would do. Jumping off Christ The Redeemer has been a big part of that dream. I know at some point I will fulfill it.
For whatever reason I only became keen to people jumping about 5-6 years ago when I was first learning to climb. Don't ask how I missed it for so long but I did, maybe I was aware and it just did not grab me and resonate as something "I had to do" who knows?
I have not really had a regular steady form of income since I started climbing. I am kinda all all cards in kinda guy and set some lofty goals that I at least felt require I put 100% of my energy into climbing. Well a least as much as life would allow. With that said skydiving with intention to BASE jump have not been a realist pursuit as skydiving is expensive and I am broke!
That pic of Christ The Redeemer might be just the motivation I need to get a steady job. Well that and I have reached what I consider a pretty good base to build off of with regard to my climbing abilities and I don't really need to give it 100% anymore.
Sweet pics, inspiring thanks for sharing!
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 04:04pm PT
|
That's the RADNESS BRAH!!!!!!!!111!!111
What's so RAD about it?
I've seen people in iron lungs being RAD !!!!!
|
|
BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 09:12pm PT
|
Sanskara, there are lots of things you can do at a DZ to make money, primarily packing other people's rigs. I know people who earned their whole living that way.
A lot of skydiving experience isn't necessary if you have a good mentor, but it definitely diminishes you chances of getting hurt. Don't give up. It is worth it.
You might have to get a job of some sort for a while, though. A good rig isn't cheap.
|
|
crankster
Trad climber
South Lake Tahoe, CA
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 09:20pm PT
|
BASE is not climbing.
It is something else.
But it is not climbing.
It is jumping.
Jumping is not climbing.
|
|
Sanskara
climber
|
|
|
Mar 30, 2014 - 09:40pm PT
|
Base104,
I can come up with the $$ for a rig. I could save the money to get certified if I wanted. It's just a matter of setting the ball in motion.
I do construction work so I can make as little or much as I want. I just prefer climbing to work so I have chosen a life that allows me time to climb and just enough resources to make it happen. Well at least locally, if I wanted to do the volume of climbing I do locally in far off cool places I would have to actually get a regular job and probably climb much less in the end.
As for base if I could find the mentor I am sure I would be off and running. It was only a handful of years ago now that I took up climbing. Being I took up ice climbing before rock it was not very easy to break into. I really had to persist, take it one step at a time put myself out there again and again over and over in hopes of landing in capable hands willing to teach me the ropes. Ultimately I came into the right hands but not without quite a bit of effort on my part. In all reality I payed guides for a good season and a half a couple times a week till I had something to bring to the table to offer a partner.
I imagine if I found it hard to break into ice climbing I will find base equally if not much more difficult to find my way. As they should have been people where very very cautious when I first came around wanting to learn to climb ice. I did not let it dissuade me but instead used the resistance as motivation to get from point A to point B. I am so glad I did as I know take the sharp only a few short years later on climbs that I once though might always be above my pay grade. Climbs I once looked at and would think if I can acquire the skill to get my ass up that someday that will really be something. Climbs I never thing I had a chance of ever getting up.
I am sure I will figure the base thing out in due time. Tbh I have yet to even open my mouth and say boo about it to anyone or share with another that is something I have been thinking about for quite some time.
One of my concerns is that being on the east coast I may have much less exposure to the community if I do start reaching out making it all that much more difficult?
|
|
Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
|
|
|
Mar 31, 2014 - 01:13am PT
|
Ken, don't know you. BASE104 has done a ton of sheet. Big walls, alpine, BASE (hence the 104), Alaska treks solo. You just piss me off that you are passing judgment; he is a friend. If you knew him you would appreciate his enthusiastic spirit and self reliance. The guy knows where he is coming from.
johntp, it is good to stand up for your friends.
But I don't care how good he is, he does not have the right, nor do you, to tell people that they are not allowed to have opinions on stuff posted on the internet. Why the hell post it, if you don't want it commented upon?
The only reason would be for hero-worship. Is that what you guys are about? Somehow, I don't think so.
I assure you that I am more qualified and famous in my area of specialty than you or base are in yours....however, when I post in that area here, which I do from time to time, I expect feedback, pushback, judgements, disagreements, etc. and I get them, no surprise.
THAT IS WHAT THIS PLACE IS ABOUT!
|
|
WBraun
climber
|
|
|
Mar 31, 2014 - 01:36am PT
|
Ken M -- "I assure you that I am more qualified and famous in my area of specialty than you or base are in yours."
Who gives a sh!t how famous.
Concentrate on being the doctor you're supposed to be.
Let these guys worry about themselves .....
I've been around these type of guys my whole life.
I don't for one instant believe you even have a clue to theirs .....
|
|
Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
|
|
|
Mar 31, 2014 - 02:05am PT
|
Ken M, it sounds like you don't believe in 'second opinions'.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!