The parachute has been adopted in a variety of extreme sports, with the most obvious being the classic skydiving experience.
But extreme sports enthusiasts are nothing if not innovators.
You may have heard of base jumping but are not really sure what it is—so let’s find out.
Base jumping involves leaping from tall places with parachutes. You might jump from buildings, bridges, antennas—anything tall that adjoins a traversable valley of some kind. You then “fly” through the valley very close to the ground and open your parachute at quite a late stage.
If that makes it sound like base jumping is a much scarier and more intense experience than skydiving, then it usually is.
It requires a great deal more skill and should not be undertaken lightly.
It is far more dangerous than skydiving, not least because it cannot be done in tandem.
Let’s find out more.
What does base jumping mean?
The word itself is actually a sort of acronym for the things that are most commonly jumped off.
BASE comes from building, antenna, span, earth.
In base jumping, you might jump off buildings, tall antennas, and the cliffs and mountains of the Earth itself.
In practice, base jumping, as I said, is about leaping from heights with a parachute in order to glide down to a landing somewhere.
It takes huge amounts of skill and practice to be able to nimbly guide yourself through these narrow passages while flying through the air, and thus is considered a very dangerous extreme sport.
Base jumping also sometimes involves wingsuits, which add another layer of extremity to the practice.
Wingsuits are again even harder to operate, and collision is extremely likely in a narrow environment.
The practice seems to have originated, or at least been popularized, in the 1980s.
Since then, it’s become a global phenomenon for thrill seekers everywhere.
Though it is illegal in many places, it is becoming more common as a legitimate practice.
So, how is it different from skydiving?
What is the difference between skydiving and base jumping?
There are a couple of main differences between skydiving and base jumping.
Though it might not be the first thing that comes to mind, perhaps the single most important difference is in the fact that skydiving takes place from a moving plane, whereas base jumping starts from a stationary position.
This is a key difference. Calculating trajectory and speed from a stationary position much closer to the ground is an entirely different thing to calculating a skydiving jump.
Of course, the other more obvious difference is the height you are jumping from.
Skydiving from a plane gives you a greater amount of time to make decisions, and ultimately all you really need to do is fall and open your parachute at the correct altitude.
This is obviously an oversimplification, but compared with base jumping, skydiving certainly is the simpler activity.
It’s also probably worth mentioning that base jumping is just a lot more dangerous!
As you can probably imagine, it is the kind of thing that only the most extreme thrill seekers are looking for.
It’s not for the faint of heart.
So, what does it feel like?
What does base jumping feeling like?
When base jumping, one of the big differences from sky diving is the extent to which you feel the drop.
A skydiving freefall feels much different because you don’t really get that roller-coaster feeling in your stomach.
You are much further away from the force pulling you.
So, when you base jump, you do very much get the sense of free falling, as you do on a rollercoaster.
Once that subsides, though, it is more of a sensation of flying through the air.
The idea with base jumping is to have a faster forward trajectory than you would while skydiving, as you need to clear a horizontal distance as well as a vertical one.
Can anyone do it, then?
Can anyone base jump?
No, not really.
You certainly cannot just jump into it without any experience.
In fact, some would say it’s the single most dangerous sport in existence.
So, you really need to be very sure of what you are doing before you start base jumping.
It’s also strictly regulated under the law, and you can’t just do it from anywhere.
So, you’ve also got to be in the know in terms of where and how you can do it.
So, no, anyone cannot base jump.
How safe is base jumping?
As I said, it’s considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world.
It requires extreme precision and an ability to stay calm in remarkably chaotic situations.
Many do get very good at it and can jump safely hundreds of times, but there’s also an incredibly high rate of death and injury.
In short, base jumping is not very safe at all.
But, in a way, that is the whole point.
It is a sport designed for the most intense thrill seekers who are not satisfied with merely falling out of a plane.
Base jumping is an entirely different beast than skydiving, then.
It takes extreme skill and if even one thing goes wrong, it can be very, very bad.
Base jumping safely takes a huge amount of practice and experience, so you should be prepared to spend several years getting ready if base jumping is something you want to pursue.
It’s not to be trifled with.
