Arizona BASE in a day

[guest]

Official time: 3 hours, 22 minutes
freefell all 4 objects
details to follow at a later date.
C-ya

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You guys are so Cool !... Just wondering if this acomplishment was in order as we had done,... B.A.S.E.

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How is this possible? The bridge is two hours from the cliff. The hike out from the bridge is 30 minutes and the hike to the top of the cliff - my best time 21 minutes - not to mention getting to the base of the cliff and then back. Logistically not possible, but I'm always prepared to be enlightened.

If you would, please give us the details...

JJ

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[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Jun-24-01 AT 09:47 AM (PST)[/font][p][font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Jun-24-01 AT 09:43*AM (PST)[/font]

Hmmmmm...this is great! Hats off to ya.

BAES...
downtown--east--?--the new S?

... Wasn't Wes asking about a different bridge last week?

can you say helicopter?

Can't wait to get the skinny!

[guest]

We did B.A.E.S. It would have added about 3 hours to the trip if we did it in order.

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You may not know all of the objects and locations in the state. I'll give some more details this coming week. And who said anything about hiking.

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Ok, OK... Mr. Helicopter - I'm jealous...

Well, I had 4 E's yesterday with 42 seconds freefall! Official time: 8 hours with a two hour nap in the afternoon, on the grass in the shade. Try to do that in Arizona...

Why the suspense? Please share the howjadoit!

JJ

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Hi Mr. JJ ! It Would be nice if you would elaboate about your adventure yesterday, 4 jumps, 42 seconds of freefall time, plus, sleeping time !!! What country was this in ?...... A while ago, not to sound egoistic, a friend and I did 9 BASE jumps, all at night off a 218' cliff earning us 9 seconds off freefall, NRGB # 484

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Congratulations!

Sounds like you guys had at least as much fun as I did on Saturday...

--Tom Aiello
tbaiello@ucdavis.edu

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Disclaimer: No sites were burned during this record attempt.
(not that anyone ever comes to visit)


OK, here we go.


First of all, BASE 659 thought up this idea and was nice enough to invite me. We both shared in the planning and organization and could not have done it without our fantastic ground crew.

We started off at 2:00AM on Saturday morning when the alarm clocks started going off. We made wakeup calls to a few people and then we got our equipment together and headed out the door at around 2:30. We arrived at the building (sorry, location unavailable unless you are in town with a packed rig) and made it from the bottom to the top in 7 minutes. We are either in really good shape, or it’s not very tall. Those of you who know me can probably figure that out.
We arrived at the exit point at about 3:00 AM, but had to wait until 3:30 to jump to keep with our schedule. Our plan was based on jumping the second object at first jumpable light.
We got off of the building at exactly 3:30AM and except for the near miss on the power line, the jumps went well.
We jumped into the getaway car where our trusty driver Renee (my sister; she’s the only person that would get up at that hour to help me) was ready to take us to the next object. The first thing we did was to call the pilot and let him know that everything was on schedule. Amazingly, we got all green lights all the way to the interstate. It took us 43 minutes from the time we jumped the building until the time we got to the base of the next object which was an antenna (once again, location unavailable). During that time, we had stashed our building rigs and had geared up and were ready to climb with fresh rigs. (Potty break)
We were planning on climbing until it was light enough to jump and were at a safe altitude. It happens that it took us 15 minutes to climb to about 310’-320’. We jumped the A at 4:32AM. It was just above the second light.
That jump went off very well. 659 went first and I followed. We both landed within feet of the car, gathered our canopies and off we went. When we got in the car, 659 called the airport manager (Bob) and told him that we would be there soon. You have to have the gate at the airport unlocked so you can walk (run in our case) straight to the general aviation area. When we arrived at the airport, Bob was waiting there with the gate open. We thanked him as we ran past him to board the C-182 piloted my Mike (I guess that’s his real name) that we rented from a local DZ. With our gear in stash bags, we boarded the aircraft and within about 5 minutes were airborne en-route to the next object. En-route, we geared up and did gear checks. We thought that it would take about 20 minutes to get to the object, se we started calling our ground crew about 10 minutes into the flight. No answer. Uh-oh.
One of the wake-up calls that went out at 2:00 AM was to the Cliff ground crew. Steve, Ken and Paul were the guys that hiked up with our gear. Cindy was at the parking area as a secondary driver. They were assigned to hike our BASE rigs up the hill and leave the rigs at the exit point. A fairly extensive task for those of you that have been there. The water is high and you have to use a raft. They were also climbing in the dark. After they dropped off the rigs, they were going to mark our predetermined landing area so it was easy to see from the plane.
They were running about 2 minutes late. As we passed over the landing area on jump run, we decided to go around once and let the ground crew get ready. We had spotted the landing area on the first pass and had decided to jump on the second pass whether the crew was there or not. As we were within 10 seconds of jumping, we got a call letting us know that they were ready. They had a tarp laid out and a wind direction arrow made of TP. If you have to go, just use the arrow!!
We jumped from the Cessna at about 2000 AGL and did about 2-sec. delays. That may seem like a weak delay, but that was our first time jumping over really mountainous terrain. If you think it’s easy, you try it!! We jumped from 2000’ because it’s a wilderness area and the airspace is restricted to MOTORIZED flight under that altitude. The DZ owner wanted to keep it legal. That was the most scared I have been in a long time. We were circling around the landing area and the radius of the turn was big enough that we were flying over the cliff and then on top again. Wow, talk about stressed out!
The funny thing about this is that if you put me off of a short object and tell me where to land, I can hit a spot within a couple feet. If you throw me out of an airplane and give me 5 minutes to set up a landing, I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. I over shot the landing area by about 20 feet and was blade running through the cacti. Neither one of us hit the target, but we both stood it up and didn’t have any injuries or gear damage.
We dropped our gear where we landed and ran to the exit point of the cliff. We were geared up within minutes and our ground crew was ready with stills and video. We both got off without incident and landed safely. We stashed our gear as fast as we could and ran to the car.
The plan was that Renee, the original driver, was to drive from the airport and pick us up at the cliff. If she couldn’t make it there that fast enough, Cindy was going to take over and drive us to the bridge. Renee pulled in to the parking lot about 5 minutes before we got there. The timing was perfect everywhere. We couldn’t ask for anything better.
The 4 of us jumped into the car and started driving to the bridge. It was about 5:45AM. It was about an hour drive and we obeyed all of the pertinent traffic laws. Pertinent meaning; if they don’t catch you, you didn’t do anything wrong.
We came screeching on to the bridge (location unavailable at this time) at about 6:45AM where we were met my George. George was one of our bridge ground crew. He is the gatekeeper. Keith and Ben were in the rafts below. We did the video camera shuffle, got our rigs on that George had waiting for us and started climbing. About 5 minutes later, we were at the top ready to jump.
We did a 2-way round jump into the water where we were picked up by the raft crew. Time stopped when we hit the water at 6:52AM. It was really refreshing to swim in the cool water after working so hard all morning.
Keith and Ben picked us out of the water and took us back to shore where we hiked back to the car.

We were done buying breakfast and watching videos by about 10:00AM.

I hope you enjoyed the story. We really had a lot of fun planning the adventure and working through all of the details.

We would particularly like to thank our tireless ground crew. They went above and beyond the call of duty to help us accomplish this.

Renee: Driver/video
Cindy: backup driver/video
Ken: Cliff ground crew/video
Steve: Cliff ground crew/stills
Paul: Cliff ground crew/video
George: bridge gatekeeper/video
Keith: bridge raft recovery
Ben: bridge raft recovery
Mike: Aerial delivery
The DZ that let us use their airplane
Bob: Airport manager
Mick: Gear supplier
Ben: Gear supplier
Dan: Gear supplier

Special thanks to the BASE jumpers that let us borrow their best gear. For you safety freaks and geeks out there, we assembled, inspected and packed every rig that we jumped and all of the borrowed gear was the same size that we regularly BASE jump. We don’t jump other peoples pack jobs.

We would also like to submit our time as the fastest BASE in a day. If you know of a previous recorded time, we would like to hear from you.

Thanks,
BASE 554 and BASE 659

[guest]

Great story. Congratulation.