Monday, April 2, 2012

Red Rock Rendezvous wingsuit skydive

I'll have to get to some more Indian Creek climbing reporting later. Today's post is about a wingsuit skydive at the Red Rock Rendezvous near Las Vegas.

Yogaslacker slacklines set up at the RRR 

For starters I was at the RRR with the Yogaslackers to teach slackline classes. It was also nice to catch up with some other people there that I knew. Now on to the main event...

Beaver, the big man at Prana and all around great guy is also a pilot and the plan was for him to fly Steph and Mario overhead and they would jump out of the plane with wingsuits and fly down and land at the festival. There were a lot of things that could have prevented this from happening from bureaucratic to natural - like excessive wind - so they were keeping the plan on the down low.

The call came in that they were on the way so I grabbed my camera and headed out to the field to wait. Beaver did a flyby for a final check before circling up around to altitude.

They did a flyby before circling up

spotting the plane off in the distance


At the last minute they got clearance for another 1000 feet for the jump. It was hard to see the plane as it circled but some sharp young eyes could see it. Through the telephoto I could see Steph and Mario out under the wing before they jumped. Then they swooped down through the air before opening their chutes and coming in for a landing. Shortly after they landed the wind picked up, but it was just about perfect for the landing.

Steph and Mario out under the wing

Swooping through the air

deploying the parachute

Spiffy new Prana wingsuit and parachute

Mario came in fast 

Steph approaches the landing

Her chute was slower making for a slower landing into the wind

Steph is all smiles back on the ground

and we even got a nice sunset



I any case, it was a pretty cool thing to get to see. They got some cool footage with their helmet cams and Sam took some footage with his camera so I think they will put a video together at some point. I'll try to put a link to it here when I can.

And here it is: Prana Red Rock Rendezvous wingsuit dive video

I'll try to embed it too:





Sunrise at Red Rocks
I finally finished my RRR and Red Rock climbing trip report. It duplicates some of the content here, but has more too. You can see it here:

http://www.electricant.net/grundyman/rrrlv2012.html

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