Men's Journal

courtesy Neil Amonson

What do you do when the concept of human wingsuit flight has become blasé? See who can plunge to Earth the fastest.

by Charles Coxe

First it was the fog. Then rain. Then rare mid-August snow and cold that left some jumpers’ fingers too cold to pull their chutes on the first try. “I didn’t bring gloves, so I had to put my extra socks over my hands,” says Neil Amonson, a dorm supervisor at the Oakley boarding school in Park City, Utah, whose new love of BASE jumping led him to the World BASE Race above the postcard-perfect hamlet of Innfjorden, Norway. “I’m actually scared of heights,” he says, “so there’s really never a single jump where I’m not very uncomfortable.”

Watch video of Amonson from the BASE Race, courtesy of GoPro:

The concept is simple: Jumpers pair off on parallel wooden launch platforms, await the starter’s signal, then plunge off a 2,800-foot cliff, wingsuits spread like flying squirrels, to see who can cross a finish line on the ground below the fastest. “The jump itself is normal, except that you’re racing,” Amonson explains. “But from the bottom, it’s an awesome spectator event. The public doesn’t care if you’re doing crazy stunts and flips — they’re just psyched to see you jump off a cliff.”

“You can really see the different techniques,” Amonson explains. “Some people dive steep to build up speed, while some soar straight for the finish line. When they come screaming over the road and deploy just past your head, the noise sounds like a rocket going by.” Then the winner has to hike two hours back up the mountain to race again.

To many of the 32 racers (a mostly European group that also included American J.T. Holmes, returning this year without his close friend Shane McConkey, who died this spring in Italy), it’s the head-to-head format that really makes this event unique. “It was wild — we were dueling,” Amonson says. “You don’t know exactly when you’ve crossed the finish line, and you can’t see if you’re beating the other guy. You’re literally side by side the whole time. We exit the platform at the exact same time, diving straight down to build up speed. When I pulled my parachute, I had no idea who won.”

After three days of soaking wet racers trying to squeeze jumps around the inclement weather, organizer Paul Fortun, a former BASE jumper himself sidelined by back injuries, was forced to cut the event short with a four-man final: Norwegian veterans Frode Johannessen and Petter Bergsjø would race for the $3,000 first prize, while the improbable American rookie Amonson would face off against his “idol,” Croatian wingsuit pioneer Robert Pecnik, for the bronze. Although all four finalists finished within a second of each other, reaching the finish line in less than 19.5 seconds and clocking over 150 miles per hour, it was Johannessen who took the gold. “I’m excited to be called the World’s Fastest Flying Human Being,” Johannessen says. For his part, Amonson is “just excited to be involved at the beginning of what’s become a legitimate sport.”

He may have come in fourth, but Amonson, a decorated Air Force vet with a degree in aeronautics, is already gunning for next year’s medal stand. “Frode has very solid technique — he did his first BASE jump the year I was born — but he’s also the heaviest competitor with a very thick chest, which gets into a concept called wingloading,” Amonson explains. “Basically, we’re not gliding like a normal wingsuit jump, we’re diving fast and steep to build up speed throughout the jump.”

“This is a new sport and we’re still breaking down the physics as we go, so I’m going to experiment a bit,” says Amonson. “I’m talking to guys who do swooping, which is speed and distance with really small parachutes. I’m much taller than Frode and have a bigger frame, so in theory I should be a much bigger wing.”

“I’m going to strap weights around my chest when I jump to see if that makes a difference.”

(Jumpers can sign up for next year’s World BASE Race, July 12-17, at worldbaserace.com)

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