The Complete Guide to BASE Jumping

Chapter 1: What Is BASE Jumping and Why People Love It

Let's start with what BASE jumping actually is, because I've found that most people - even the ones who can tell you what the acronym stands for - have a slightly wrong picture in their heads. The word "BASE" is an acronym for the four types of fixed objects you can jump from: Buildings, Antennas, Spans (bridges), and Earth (cliffs and other natural formations). That's it. You put on a parachute rig, you stand on or near the edge of one of these things, and you jump. In that sense, it's remarkably simple. But the reality of what a "session" or "project" looks like is far more complex, more technical, and - honestly - more bureaucratic than the ten-second Instagram clips would have you believe.

The first thing you need to understand is that BASE jumping is, in almost every way, the direct opposite of its more famous cousin, skydiving. In skydiving, you jump out of a perfectly good airplane at 13,000 feet. You have about 60 seconds of freefall, during which you're moving at around 120 miles per hour, and the whole time you have a piece of equipment - an automatic activation device, or AAD - that will open your parachute for you automatically if you become incapacitated or just freeze up. You also have a second, reserve parachute strapped to your chest in case the first one malfunctions. If something goes wrong, you have time