From climbing up mountains to jumping off them
Algeria has just opened its doors to visa on arrival. This gave us the perfect opportunity to explore the desert in the South. Although the check-in counter at Geneva airport had never heard of our type of visa we had no trouble making it to our final destination of Djanet. The internal flight across the desert was 4 hours long, which really gave us the scale of this huge country. Algeria is 90% desert and is the largest country in Africa.
Below the tip of my toes is a 300-metre drop onto the glacier below. My foot is curled over the edge of the rock. Gaining maximum purchase as I push off at a perfect angle, pre-determined by a thousand other jumps. Ingrained into my muscle memory. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but it does make permanent so I’ve made sure to practice perfectly.
We sat on top of our sleds waiting for our train, which was now 5 hours late. Staring across the tracks at the landscape. A man-made mountain of spoil. Kiruna is a mining town and everything here revolves around the iron ore mines. This was the reason for our late train. A mining carriage took priority of the single track and we had been waiting for it to pass, slowly watching the sun set over the black artificial mountain. It was -10 and we were well within the arctic circle – an imaginary line that shows the extent of 24 hour sun and 24 hour darkness.
Read moreThe idea of this is to make some points about doing a ski BASE, as with many BASE jumping practices there are many ways to do it. All with the pros and cons. I will mention these different methods, and mention the way I do it and why. At the end of the day it all comes down to risk assessment and what makes more sense to you.
Three years ago, a single picture took me halfway around the world. It was a picture of the cliffs surrounding Lake Michaelson on Mount Kenya. A lone figure stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down to the dark inky lake. Aptly named ‘The Temple’, these towering yellow cliffs became my fixation, and I wanted to make the pilgrimage there. I managed to BASE jump from the same spot in the photo. After the jump I looked further up the mountain to the great peaks of Batian and Nelion. This would be my new goal. Two years later i returned. The goal was to be the first person to wingsuit in Kenya; but the experience soon became about much more than just the jump. I got to know my team, explore the grand massif, and learn about the community and my own limits.
A powerful easterly wind rips up the great sand dune. It takes with it the desert heat and animates the sand into a frenzy, blasting my face. I have travelled with my wife halfway around the world in search of flight and by chance have met up with our African friends.
It’s fair to say lock down has effected us all. The most important lesson I learnt while serving in the Royal Marines is to adapt, improvise and overcome. My international travel plans and work had been cancelled for the year. I was fortunate to be stuck in Switzerland with it’s lax lock down rules. It was time to focus on the climbs and flights I had my eye on for years but had been too distracted before.
There has been lots of questions about my wingsuit BASE jump from Lord Berkeley’s seat. I thought I would try and answer some of the technical questions in this article.
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Tonsai is a paradise. Even with the whole world crumbling around us. Anxiety had hit the climbers in Tonsai. Last minute flights were booked in fear of being locked out of their own country. Apart from the wifi connection updating us with the progress of the virus, we were isolated. Disconnected from the world. Instead we spent our time focusing on the moves on a route or meticulously packing our parachutes.
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The Proposal
EWA: Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I was finishing gearing up while Tim was putting the camera on a tripod. Aiming to capture the minutes before our first jump from Table Mountain. So there he was, approaching me; getting closer to the edge of the cliff where I was standing. He had a strange look on his face. He started speaking, with his voice shaking slightly and eyes weirdly glassed. Then I knew he was about to propose! He told me that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, and that he was never so sure of anything in his life. He knelt on one knee and asked. “Will you marry me?”