Weekend Adventure: Wingsuit BASE Jumping

July 18, 2010— -- At the top of Notch Peak, a sandstone cliff more than 9,000 feet high in the Utah desert, Mike Swanson wants to get on the ground as quickly as possible: He doesn't like heights. The fastest way down is straight off the edge.

"I'm scared every time, absolutely," said Swanson, 37, a member of the Red Bull Air Force, a team of professional skydivers and BASE jumpers who regularly push the limits of human flight. "But I trust my equipment. I trust my skills."

With a specially designed wingsuit and parachute, Swanson of Truckee, Calif., leaps from the rock face and plunges into the narrow canyon below. Although scared of heights, Swanson loves to fly.

After free falling for a few seconds, his wingsuit, consisting of fabric between the arms and legs, creates lift as he banks to the left, flying through the canyon like a bird.

"The idea of jumping with a wingsuit is it allows you to jump a lot of locations that you wouldn't normally be able to BASE jump," said Jon DeVore, 35, manager and Red Bull Air Force team member who's a Juneau, Alaska, native living in California.

"With the wingsuits on, it slows your descent rate down to 40 to 50 mph compared to a normal BASE jump where you'll be going close to 100, 120 mph. But with a wingsuit you can slow that down so you can have a lot more time on your jump."

These "Birdmen," as they are sometimes called, are not technically flying, despite appearances. Throughout their jumps, they continue to lose altitude, but the lift of the wingsuits creates the sensation of flying for the jumper and the illusion of flying to the observer. It's not actual human flight but perhaps as close as is humanly possible.

"It is the feeling of flying, absolutely," said Miles Daisher, 41, a Red Bull Air Force team member from Twin Falls, Idaho. "When you can control how fast you go down, you can control turning. It's a bit like flying a plane."

The illusion of flight is enhanced by smoke canisters attached to the jumpers' ankles that leave a white streak behind them as they descend, eventually deploying a parachute to land.

"It really adds to the dramatic effect," Swanson said. "When you see the smoke and you see the trail come down, then you really understand the speed and how fast and how far we are moving."

The jumpers of the Red Bull Air Force travel the globe searching for the biggest and most challenging BASE jumps, an acronym for the places from which they jump: buildings, antenna, spans [bridges], earth [cliffs].