Swiss Air
I spent the last two weeks in Switzerland, flying my wingsuit off cliffs. Sorry for being a little MIA on my blog. It’s easy to sink deeper and deeper into base, and sometimes hard to take the focus elsewhere.
On this trip, I made several visits to the nearby Kandersteg Valley, which neighbors Lauterbrunnen.
In the Kandersteg, we did some bigger jumps, including one called the Black Wall, which scared me more than I can remember being scared in a long, long time. The jump went just as I hoped it would, but I had a question mark in my mind as I left the cliff, not really knowing for sure if I would outfly the long expanse of trees, and it’s something I still turn over in my thoughts, questioning my decision. For sure, it’s a jump I won’t ever forget.
On the more relaxing side, I got to do two beautiful helicopter drops over the Eiger, flying over the snowy ridge for thousands of feet. That was absolutely unforgettable, well worth the high price of the heli rides! And just to try something totally different, I joined in the Wingsuit Base Race. It’s a very unusual type of flying for this event, just bombing straight forward as fast as possible to a direct point, and kind of the opposite of what I normally do in my wingsuit.
It was very interesting to be timed in flight to a fixed point, so I was experimenting with different flight angles, and got disqualified on my second jump for pulling too low by a couple of seconds. This bothered me a lot initially, because I wanted to keep participating. In the end almost half of the field got disqualified for the same thing, and many people commented that the cutoff should have been more generous by 5 seconds as it was last year.
Regardless, doing the same flight with timing of both the flight and the canopy ride, to a specified distance marker, taught me a lot about flight and angles, even if I only got to do it 3 times (with one on the practice day). So the experience was valuable in that.
I flew a lot, thought a lot, and learned a lot, and return home weary and satisfied. A little different than I was before.
-
http://www.bilafond.wordpress.com TAHIR
-
mozhgan
-
Guyom
-
Les Phillips
-
Steph Davis
-
Richard
-
Seran Vreskala
-
http://www.highinfatuation.com steph davis