Free falling: Base jumpers hope to bring adventure sport mainstream

COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — On a cliff in Norway, Neil Amonson stood with 48 other people, part of a world-record base jump, and tried just to soak in the enormity of the moment.

"As a human being, as an experience, it was amazing," he said. "Maybe like swimming with whales. To be in the air with 49 people falling, all around you... Usually I jump, and I fall alone. This time, everything jumped with me. It was like, I was in free fall and so was everything around me."

Amonson and the others set a world record for the number of people involved in a simultaneous base jump last month. There were 49 people from 15 different countries who jumped from a 5,000 foot cliff.

The impromptu event occurred at the end of The World Base Race, which featured 35 wing-suit base racers. Amonson finished fourth in the races, losing to the man who invented the suit he wore during the race.

While wing-suit base racing is a fairly new development, base-jumping has been around for a while. Amonson admits the sport doesn't have the best reputation but hopes events like last week's in Norway will help change that.

Instituting rules and making sure participants are qualified and equipped are just a couple of changes he hopes will move the sport from an activity of outlaws and daredevils to a main-stream adventures sport. He points to the transition that other sports have made from exile to mainstream such as snowboarding.

"I don't expect to see winged suit base jumping in the Olympics, but it is a sport that spectators could watch and appreciate," he said. "It's totally different... We have to challenge that stereotype of base jumpers as reckless criminals."

A decorated war veteran, Amonson never set out to base jump. Instead, he sought out a career in the Air Force, which led him to skydiving. It was an Air Force colleague who introduced him to base jumping.

"A friend of mine in the military went home for vacation and came back with a base jump parachute," said Amonson, who said he has always been afraid of heights. "He said he had a guy who was going to teach him, and that he'd teach me too... We both learned together."

It was a little more difficult to embrace than skydiving had been.

"It was really scary," he said. "Those first 100 jumps, they were really uncomfortable."

Amonson had to "trick myself" into climbing the structure from which he'd then jump.

"I had to play a little head game with myself," he said. "But the feeling afterward was so good. Any time you do something that's so challenging, it's a sort of a reset button. When you really challenge yourself, it reorganizes your head. You forget the little things that catch up with you on a day to day basis."

Base jumping has become his passion, which is why it thrilled him to be involved in an event that helped legitimize the sport.

"The organizers of the event did a good job of emphasizing skill and safety," he said. "We had a warm-up week where we had to prove that we had the skill and ability to jump safely. There were rules and they enforced them. It makes me comfortable to participate in something like that."

One of the Norwegian jumpers organized the world record jump, which took a lot of coordination and cooperation from jumpers who spoke more than a dozen languages.

"It was amazing," Amonson said. "It just went perfectly."

e-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com