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A Leap of Faith

A BASE jumper takes a leap off a high cliff and into adventure.

You've probably heard of "Base jumpers", but did you know that BASE is always seplled with capital letters? That's because it is an acronym for the things they jump from...

Buildings
Antennas
Spans (like bridges)
Earth (like cliffs)

..(like REALLY high cliffs)

Valeri Rozov, (shown above in a summertime jump) one of the world’s most talented BASE jumpers made a jump from the Alps “Grandes Jorasses“, a place experts had deemed impossible for a free-fall, because they had decided that there was no place on the mountain which offered a safe place from which to launch. But Rozov proved anything is possible. (I guess - if you're crazy enough!)

“This first BASE jump from the Grandess Jorasses has been both meritable and pleasant,” was Rozov's crisp comment after the Grandes Jorasses jump.

It took four days to climb to the top of the mountain, traveling with a team of Russian climbers.

From the mountaintop to the glacier, almost two and a half miles below.

When they reached the top, Rozov put on his wingsuit and, with a quick dance, jumped off the top. The others, who were climbers, not BASE jumpers, stood and watched in amazement.

In free fall on the way down.

The trip to the bottom was done in a free-fall state, using the wingsuit only to guide him away from the rocky, outjutting crags.

He exited the top of the mountain at an altitude of 3800 meters (12467 ft), from the central buttress of the spur, right by the northeast face. Wearing a wing-suit, Valery took advantage of a 250 meter clean vertical section just below the jump-off spot. The jump saved a total of 1200 meters – Rozov free-fell for 50 seconds before opening the parachute.

“I almost crashed into a hut,” he laughed after landing.

'Fortune favors the bold' the saying goes and it proved true in Valeri’s case: He jumped in beautiful weather conditions. The rest of the team instead, were caught in a sudden storm and it took them two days to return to the bottom of the mountain.

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The Grandes Jorasses (4,208 m; 13,806 ft) is a mountain in the Mont Blanc massif. The border between Italy and France disects the mountain.

The jump was on the French side of the mountain, the north face is one of the six great north faces of the Alps. One of the most famous walls in the Alps, it towers 1200 m (3,900 ft) above the Leschaux Glacier.

To learn more about Valeri Rozov, who has also lept off sheer rock walled mountains in the Antartic, and has jumped out of a plane, free-falling into an active volcano, take a look at the following web sites:

Wikipedia
Summit Post web site
YouTube for a video of one of his jumps