Leap of faith

By Matt Minich

I was safe. Relatively safe. One of the world’s most experienced parachutists was strapped to my back, and our pilot chute hung open between my feet. There would only be a few seconds of free fall, then we would both hang under the safety of a canopy parachute.

I kept my eyes fixed on the ho-rizon - on the salmon spire of Castleton Tower and the desert beyond. I ground my heels into the cliff’s edge and took slow, measured breaths. I didn’t look down.

Somewhere near the pit of my stomach, my intestines practiced Aikido.

“Are you ready to do this, Matt?” asked Mario Richard, his voice steady despite the thousand-foot void in front of us. I wrestled my hand into a thumbs-up, and the countdown began.

I looked down.

Just hours earlier, Richard and I sat together at ground level in a Moab coffee shop. I had driven through the night from Denver to meet him and his wife – pro-fessional rock climber Steph Da-vis – for an interview about their new business, Moab B.A.S.E. Adventures. I had also come to sample their wares.

It had been an anxious pilgrim-age. The closer my car came to the desert cliffs of Moab, the tighter my throat closed at the thought of my pending jump from the top of one.

In addition to professional guid-ing and stunt work, Richard and Davis offer tandem B.A.S.E. jumps. For $500, Richard will strap you to his chest and jump off a cliff – no experience neces-sary. When it finalized permits in May of 2012, their company became the first on Earth with such a product.

For safety reasons, Richard does

insist clients not exceed his weight of 185 pounds. Beyond that, they need only the physical fitness to reach the jump site and the mental fortitude to make the leap.

It sounds risky — and it is. Be-fore the jump, customers sign a “death waiver” which clarifies in bold, half-inch typeface that “you can be seriously injured or killed.”

But Richard is no cowboy. An ac-tive skydiver and B.A.S.E. jump-er for more than 22 years, he has never sustained an injury more serious than a sprained thumb. In one of the world’s most dan-gerous sports, a record like that is all but unheard of.

“Most experienced B.A.S.E. jumpers would probably rather be under his parachute than their own,” Davis says with a laugh. A seasoned jumper herself, Davis was the first passenger under the company’s tandem rig: a custom design Richard compares to a family-sized station wagon.

The moments before that para-chute opens defy description. I feel bodyless in midair — dis-solved into the grey skies and sandstone towers of Castle Val-ley.

The adrenaline rush brought on by free fall brings with it a sense of hyperawareness. Lines are sharper and colors brighter. Three seconds feel impossibly long.

When I ask Richard later about this sensation, he’ll describe it simply as “the Now”. Discuss-ing the experience on the valley floor, he will jokingly compare it to an initiation or a religious conversion.

And he’ll be right. I’ll never know whether to think of Rich-ard as a pusher or a priest, but I’ll spend the rest of my life with a monkey on my back. The hook is in, and “the Now” is still out there in the Utah desert, tugging the line.