Mastering Human Flight
The path to jumping off a mountain in a wingsuit
Introduction
For our first post we bring you the first instalment of Braden Dean’s story. He’s an accomplished BASE jumper, skydiver, snowboarder, and a genuinely rad human being, among other things. Here he will give us a peek into the life of someone who jumps out of planes and off of insanely high things on the regular. We assume he has pure adrenaline pumping through his veins at all times, but that’s just a guess. Here’s Braden’s story…
Flying was a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid. My interest didn’t lie in flying an aircraft the same way a scuba diver doesn’t really dream about operating a submarine. What I really wanted was to experience flight first hand, the same way Da Vinci dreamt when he sketched pictures of humans with wearable wings.
I saw a wing suit for the first time in Warren Miller’s ski movie “Journey” in 2003. I was blown away. I saw Loic Jean Albert flying down the side of a mountain only 15 feet above the ground and at that moment I realized that “true” human flight was possible. I didn’t know the path towards learning how to skydive and BASE jump but I knew I wanted to get there.
It took me several years to find out how someone gets into a sport like wingsuit BASE jumping. First, learn to skydive, then BASE jump. And then you get to skydive with a wingsuit. Becoming competent with flying a wingsuit skydiving is extremely important before taking it off a cliff. With a checklist of seemingly insurmountable tasks, I got started.
Like most things, BASE jumping wingsuits is a combination of countless smaller skills added together, unlike most things, a miscalculation results in death. These skills, such as learning to control your body in freefall, gaining forward speed (tracking), exiting stable into still air (one of the big differences between a BASE jump and a skydive) and how to fly a parachute are all super integral parts of what goes into making a safe jump, and they can only be learned through practice.
Fortunately, the journey is a ton of fun! Over the last 3 years I have committed to making several hundred skydives and BASE jumps. The process of learning the skills required to fly wingsuits has been exciting and every single jump has been a rewarding experience. Throughout my travels I have met some amazing people, traveled to many new places and learned a lot about what it takes to reach a goal.
I made the decision that this was the year I was going to bring my wingsuit to Europe to fly in the mountains. In May I made plans to head to Italy/Switzerland. I bought a plane ticket for early August and set myself a pretty ambitious list of goals to complete.. I wanted to log another 100 skydives before I left. I also wanted to make sure I did enough BASE jumping to get current with my BASE gear, and keep my confidence doing exits into still air. Considering the time Frame, it was looking like a busy summer if I was going to reach my goal!
The summer started with a trip to the Perrine Bridge (AKA “The Potato Bridge) in Twin Falls Idaho so I could get current again doing BASE exits and break in some new gear. This bridge is special because it is the only legal span in North America. It stands at 486 feet tall and it’s easy to log several jumps in a day. I spent about a week at the bridge and logged around 30 more BASE jumps.
On my way back to Canada, Suz Graham (my partner in crime) and I stopped in at Kapowsin Air Sports in Washington for some wingsuit skydiving action. This was the first of several trips to Kapowsin for us over the summer. Much of this time was spent living in the back of a pickup truck and jumping from dawn until dusk. Absolutely exhausting, but so much fun. We had the opportunity to fly with many talented wing suit pilots in Kapowsin and learned a lot.
Between some sporadic work trips, where I was speaking to athletes and at conferences about managing risk, behavioural safety and performance, I was able to log almost 100 skydives this summer. I felt confident in my wingsuit and felt ready to head to Europe. I made one last quick trip to California to do a couple dozen more jumps skydives and started packing for my trip.
The day before I left, it came time to load up my wing suit and I realized my hands were trembling. I had done so much preparation over the years, but was I really ready? I thought of what I was doing over the next few weeks and knew I wasn’t going to sleep tonight.
To be continued…
To see more from Braden check out his instagram: @bradendean
To see what the rest of Eagle Energy is up to visit our website: www.eagleenergyvapor.com & follow us on instagram: @eagleenergyvapor
