Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  At Chasm View, I leaned out and looked across the sheer face of the Diamond and at the parties still halfway up the wall. The clouds were turning gray already and building. The other climbers would probably get caught in the afternoon thunderstorm, a little early today, while I’d be safely down from the mountain.

  When I was a teenager living in New Jersey, my piano teacher was a tiny woman who’d been a Juilliard scholar. I would sit at her Steinway grand piano and cringe slightly as I dropped a note through the most technical section of a Mozart fantasia, hoping she wouldn’t notice. The sound of the grand piano was so lavish, so rich, compared with the small upright I played on at home, that I wanted to get through the fast strings of notes into the orchestral chords, to hear them filling the room. I also hated making mistakes. Failing. I could feel her sharp eyes drilling into my shoulder blades at the first error, and her inevitable shrill voice rang out behind me, “Fix it!” With a sigh, I stopped the lush flow of sound. It wasn’t enough to fudge through the piece to the end. I couldn’t go on unless I played it perfectly. I could still hear her voice in my mind. Free soloing up the Diamond and surviving it wasn’t good enough. I hadn’t played it perfectly. I had to fix it. I needed to solo this route again, as many times as it took until I learned how to control my fear and erase it completely on my own terms. I would fix it. I hopped from boulder to boulder, across the ridge, over the Camel, and down the gully to my bivy cave, then past Chasm Lake and all the way back down to the green world.

  Climbers on the Diamond, seen from Chasm View

  I hiked up again on a windy, stormy morning, knowing the east face would be sheltered once I reached Mills Glacier. The cirque was empty and the air was still. I had the whole place to myself. Except for the clouds rolling overhead, and the strong west wind (which might explain the lack of people), it was perfect. I looked up at the looming, dark face, streaked with wetness from heavy rain the day before, knowing the route could be wet and possibly slippery at the crux, where I’d been overcome by fear in perfect conditions a few days ago. But I had complete faith now that my safety or peril was utterly dependent not on the conditions or the climb itself, but on what I did with my mind. I made a conscious decision to stay entirely relaxed, from start to finish, no matter what.

  As I started the second pitch, raindrops struck my face. I immediately started to downclimb, knowing I was close enough to Broadway to get back there safely. I knew I could climb back down the North Chimney in a waterfall if I had to. But fifty feet down, the rain stopped. Just as quickly, I climbed back up, a little amused as thoughts of the eensy-weensy spider popped into my mind.

  The beautiful little snow patches I had enjoyed seeing on the face two days ago had melted. As I traversed way left, my hands dunking into big edges filled with water, I focused all my attention on maintaining a rising mind state. I was warm and relaxed, totally happy and calm, alone on the quiet face.

  High on the route, the thin vertical cracks were soaked. I coated my fingertips with chalk and wedged them securely into the seeping cracks, climbing in guarded, wet-rock style as the chalk turned into something that resembled mayonnaise rather than a drying agent. After many years in the mountains and on big walls, I was no stranger to wet rock. As long as the holds were sharp-cut and positive, I knew I could climb up them without slipping off even if they were running with water. For a moment I considered what I might do if the flaring finger slots in the crux section above were also soaked, because it would be almost impossible to climb those, but I reasoned that the steeper cracks should be dry. Anyway, worrying about it at this point in the route was pointless; I was fully committed.

  I got to a stance below the crux and wiped the chalk slime off my hands onto the backs of my thighs, dipping back in the bag to cake my hands with dry powder. I was in luck. The jams and footholds in the bulge were dry, and the climbing felt like nothing. I climbed through the steep section slowly and confidently, feeling the way I wanted to feel—deeply relaxed, calm, and self-possessed.

  At the top, I sat for a while and watched the clouds roll over, until raindrops started falling on me. In a quiet, euphoric state, I thought more about fear. I should have been much more nervous soloing the Diamond on this stormy day with water running down the wall. Instead I felt totally comfortable, relaxed and confident, enjoying the touch of the pink-and-gold granite and the positive edges and cracks under my hands and feet. I’d been almost amused by the threatening clouds and the wet rock. I believed with all my heart that I would reach the top safely. My goal was almost unrelated to succeeding on the route; after all, I already had. Rather, all my energy was focused on climbing it right, fearlessly, with relaxation and good feelings.

  As I scrambled down the North Face, the brooding sky opened into heavy rain. I smiled as my thin wind jacket turned transparent and began sticking to my shirt. I knew this lifting feeling. It was the feeling of a beginning.

  Chapter Five

  The Edge

  Zipping into the gray sparrow suit

  August in Boulder felt like the point of a corner. It was still the height of summer, but I could almost smell autumn in the first morning chill. The drop zone had the magical atmosphere of life purely in the present, the sharp focus of flying through the air and the upbeat energy of the other jumpers. Boulder had been good for me. I’d landed here two months ago, lost and helpless, uncertain of where to go and what to do. Now I was filled with direction and energy. I felt stronger than I’d ever been, and curiously fearless, but at the same time more vulnerable. I was more guarded than before and maybe less quick to trust, but I felt keenly how kind people were to me, how much others helped me out of simple goodness. In Boulder, in a bigger city than I’d ever lived in, I’d discovered how nourishing it could be to become part of a whole. In this way, as in seemingly every other, I was a late bloomer. I still sought solitude and quiet space on my own and with Fletch, but now I understood the power of community, of both being and having a support system.

  But the Diamond had got me thinking about the future. And thinking about the future brought me around to the thought of going home. Though it would be easy to stay here in Boulder forever, in this simple, carefree existence, my real home and my real life were six hours west, in Moab. I couldn’t live in a fantasy world forever. But more than that, I didn’t need to.

  I could see, though, that I’d become addicted to jumping every day, the seductive mix of abandon and control. Emotionally, I felt dependent on it. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I went home to Moab and quit jumping cold turkey. A town of five thousand, Moab had Skydive Moab, a small tandem skydiving operation that ran during the tourist season, but no big, bustling drop zone like Mile-Hi. Their Cessna 182 had room for two customers clipped to their tandem masters, and fun jumpers didn’t pay enough to get the plane up in the air. What Moab did have was cliffs. Lots and lots of cliffs. For a skydiver, that didn’t mean much. For a base jumper, a four-hundred-foot cliff meant just enough altitude to freefall for two seconds, open a parachute, and land.

  If skydiving was the last thing I’d ever thought I’d be doing, base jumping was even more last. Rock climbers generally don’t feel an instant kinship with base jumpers. At first glance, the two pursuits could hardly seem more opposed. Climbers spend almost all their time trying to climb up walls, and the rest of the time training for strength and technique. Falling off is the worst thing that can happen and is usually bundled up with death, injury, or failure at the least. While watching climbing has been compared to watching paint dry, base jumping seems made for YouTube. Base jumpers aren’t so interested in the finer points of getting to the top. For them, the whole point of being on a cliff is to fall off it and once it begins, it’s over in seconds.

  Climbers and base jumpers tend to hang out in high places, and I had encountered some base jumpers on the same cliffs I was climbing. But despite the obvious differences between climbing up walls and jumping off them, I saw many parallels between the two games of gravity. Li
ke climbers, base jumpers live in a fringe, almost countercultural, community. They often drop out of real life, traveling the world in search of altitude. They are both small user groups and not politically powerful, and thus become almost the scapegoats of national park restrictions. Even more than climbers, jumpers feel most alive when tasting risk in a daily existence defined by survival.

  Still, as a climber, watching someone leap out from solid earth into air is perhaps the ultimate taboo. Nothing could be more drastically opposed to climbing or more terrifying to a climber than the thought of running off the edge of a cliff into free fall. My mind could barely wrap around the idea, and I didn’t even like thinking about it.

  The first time I saw a base jumper flying a wingsuit, I thought I had just seen someone die. I was perched on a small ledge fifteen hundred feet above the ground on the side of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, close to the top of the sheer northwest face. The overhanging summit block sat just two hundred feet above us, and I could see the curious ravens poking their heads out. My husband and I had free climbed the route, starting at first light. I was feeling a little sleepy as I fed out the rope, when suddenly the sound of a large falling object tore through the air. Instinctively I flattened myself against the wall. I’d been grazed by huge blocks of ice and rock before. In another split second, my brain registered the sound as something bigger and slower. It sounded like a body.

  Base jumpers had jumped past me before while I was climbing, on El Cap or in Moab, and the distinctive sound of a falling body was always immediately followed by the loud crack of a parachute opening. The canopy would blossom out and float through the air while climbers on the wall whooped and cheered. But the bang didn’t come. I leaned out from the wall and looked. I almost thought I saw a silver shape in the air, but I blinked and saw nothing. Seconds went by. The sound never came. I looked out into the distance, toward the valley floor, over the expanse of green trees and gray talus slopes, and saw only empty air. Gripped by dread, my brain tallied the falling body, no parachute opening, nothing to be seen—it could mean only one thing: the base jumper had fallen to his death on the granite boulders fifteen hundred feet below us. My stomach clenched.

  Above me, my husband was laughing and shouting, “Did you see that? That was amazing!” I climbed up the last two pitches in a daze, feeling nearly sick. I sat on the top of Half Dome, hollow and stunned, immune to the blue, green, and gray panoramic views of Glacier Point, El Capitan, Mount Watkins, Clouds Rest, and Tenaya Canyon. Death was not new to me, after years of alpine and rock climbing, but to be here virtually watching that jumper’s last moments of life filled me with grief.

  Dean was talking fast, not making sense to me. Since I knew next to nothing about base jumping, I had never heard of wingsuits. I had only seen regular base jumpers in the past, opening their parachute after a few seconds of free fall near the cliff face. Apparently, special nylon suits enabled the wearer to fly out from the wall for an amazing distance through the air before opening a parachute. The jumper had been in a wingsuit and had flown out from Half Dome, way across the valley floor, much farther and lower than I had thought to search for an open parachute. My husband had known what he was seeing the whole time. While I was searching for a parachute that never opened, he had watched the winged man rocket through the air from the top of Half Dome all the way to Mirror Lake in the valley floor.

  I was emotionally wrung out. The descent felt even longer and more tiring than usual as we made our way down the cables on the rounded granite shoulder of Half Dome and then the nine miles of trail back to the valley floor. They were tedious hours of downhill walking compared with the birdman’s two minutes of glorious flight through the sky.

  When I thought of that day, I remembered the sick feeling in my stomach as tears poured from my eyes, making it hard to see the granite footholds on the wall, and then the mixture of relief and anger I’d felt when I realized I’d gone through all that emotion for nothing. In the end, when I thought about the birdman, I just felt upset.

  In recent years I’d met several people who’d learned to skydive solely so they could start base jumping as soon as possible, including my husband. And I had made several friends who were dedicated base jumpers. I’d learned a lot about the mechanics and the methods of jumping, just by being around them. In Moab, I’d watched them run off the edge of the cliff right in front of me, and it was disturbing.

  Now, against all likelihood, skydiving had pulled me into the air. Though pretty short on skydiving, Moab was loaded with cliffs, a mecca for base jumping. And walking to the top of a cliff didn’t cost a thing. Base jumping was starting to seem … practical.

  It was a strange thought, but it did make sense. Most base jumpers believe a person should do the bare minimum of a hundred skydives before learning to base jump. And I had two good friends who actually taught first base-jump courses. If I got the requisite skydiving experience by the end of September, I was sure they would let me join one of their courses. Used base gear is much cheaper than skydiving gear, and if I just found a rig, I’d be able to fly as much as I wanted from the Moab cliffs just outside my house without ever buying a jump ticket. Rather than being a geographically inconvenient money pit, jumping would become a normal outdoor pursuit, like climbing or running.

  Now, though I would have sworn it was the last thing I’d ever do, even more last than skydiving, I wanted to learn to base jump. And I wanted it badly. For a few months, I’d been consciously forcing myself to live in the present, shutting off my fearful, sad thoughts of the past or future. Now the future seemed full of promise, as it always had before. I had direction, a major goal, both in climbing and in jumping. This was the life I knew and had always lived, the energy of being caught by inspiration and swept into the passion of a big project. Now everything I was doing and would do became a piece of a growing whole, a flagstone that needed to be turned and examined to see where it would best fit into the pathway I was building toward my dream.

  It’s funny how many times in life I’ve found myself rolling full steam ahead toward something I was sure I’d never do. Whatever might happen in life, whether I liked it or didn’t like it, I could know one thing for sure: it would change. There was absolute certainty in uncertainty, in some ways an enormous comfort.

  It made me see that I should never rule anything out, never assume I’ll have the same desires or goals in the future as in the present, never close myself off from any possibility, no matter how outlandish it might seem at first. No matter what I’d done or thought or been before, I didn’t have to be anything or stay any way now, and I had the endless possibility to be anything I imagined. The one thing I could always count on was that I would change, as much as everything else would. And rather than use my energy fighting it, I could embrace it and use that energy to fly. Somehow I’d never truly understood that until this summer. It was so simple and so liberating.

  In past years, I hadn’t taken much interest in the nuts and bolts of base jumping, though I’d become familiar with it. For a whuffo, my knowledge of base jumping had become pretty deep just from being around my jumper friends.

  While skydiving is regulated and even fairly mainstream, base jumping has always been perceived as somewhat renegade. In the early years of base jumping, base jumpers were blackballed from drop zones, and many drop zone owners were known to get furious at the sight of a base canopy spread out on the packing carpet. Somewhat like vampires, base jumpers teach one another how to base jump, and survival is often a matter of luck until a jumper has gained more experience. Most experienced base jumpers will avoid mentoring anyone, but those who do traditionally insist that an aspiring jumper make hundreds of skydives first. No one wants to be responsible for someone’s death or injury, and it’s notoriously difficult to make hungry, new jumpers understand just how serious things can get when a jump goes wrong. Though base jumping doesn’t seem to require much athleticism or skill at first glance, an enormous wealth of knowledge and exper
ience is required to make it out of an emergency situation, and that, in a nutshell, is the problem with base jumping and new jumpers. The incidents of fatality and serious injury are frequent and expected in base jumping, especially in the first year before a jumper has gained any real experience and usually knows just enough to get into trouble.

  However, many highly skilled base jumpers who are pushing the envelope of safety also consistently die in numbers that would be unheard of in other sports. Perhaps the common thread with base jumping is severe consequences from pushing one’s limits. At any given time, there are probably fewer than two thousand active base jumpers in the world.

  Less visible and even more unique is the core group of extremely experienced jumpers jumping since base began in the eighties. They value “conservative” decision making and a more low-key approach and, on the whole, are much less prone to accidents and death.

  In the eighties, when base jumping was in its infancy, Carl Boenish coined the acronym B.A.S.E. for “building, antenna, span, and earth”—the objects jumpers use to leap from. A jumper who had made at least one jump from all four objects could write to Carl and receive the next base number. Brendan, I knew, was B.A.S.E. #391, the low number his badge of longevity in a notoriously dangerous sport.