New River Base Jumpers 2013

Popping Chutes

In October, I was finally able to attended the New River Base Jumping Festival. I have been trying to get down to the New for jump day ever since highschool.

It was pretty much what I expected. Everyone around the area turned up of the jumps. They closed down the bridge to all traffic, both north and south bound. However the north bound lanes was the only side which was accessible to people. The Jumpers had 3 options of launching them selves from the bridge. One was the use of standard platform, two was a diving board, and three was air-powered catapult. The offical redbull base jumping team was on site for the day, and they perform all types of acrobatics.

Once some one launch off the side and deployed their shoot, they have to make their way to a special landing zone below the bridge. If they didn’t make to land, they had to splash down in the river and be rescued by one of the several boats in the river. It was quite a day of jumping, people seem to be jumping every couple of minutes, whenever there was not a train coming up the gorge. Maybe one day, I’ll be launching off the bridge too. They said they had a recorded number of 1st time jumpers this year.

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