Friday, September 17, 2010

And they say I'm crazy . . .

I'm afraid of heights.  There.  I said it up front.

Yeah, I've summitted three Fourteeners, and I teach skydiving almost every weekend now, but that's different.  I'll crawl all over the outside of an aircraft as long as it's above 1,000 feet and I'm wearing a parachute.  Mountains?  Well, the first one I did, the north Maroon Bell, in Colorado, back in 1978, I was feeling pretty sick at the top.  "That's just altitude sickness," said the lead climber in our group.  "Yeah," I thought, "The kind of sickness you get in the top of a tree that you weren't all that sure you could make your way back down."  We finished that descent by moonlight, by the way.

Anyway, I said all that to say this:  These guys are crazy.  This looks fun under only one circumstance: wearing a B.A.S.E. rig the entire time.  Under that condition, sure, I'd do this.  But otherwise, unclipped, unrigged, unenclosed?  Not on your life.  Nuts.  Plain and simple.

So, without further ado, here's the video.  If you can start it and watch one minute and not watch the entire seven plus, then you're a better man (or woman) than I.  And that's all I have to say about that.