Dickinson was scared, but after his first go, he was hooked. He and Evan scaled a fence, climbed a 150-metre antenna and jumped.
It was the spring of 2011, in the middle of the night. Instead, he obsessively watched videos online and began jumping from planes as soon he turned 18.īy the time he was 23, he made his first BASE jump. When he was a kid growing up in the Toronto suburbs, his most extreme sports were gymnastics, dirt biking and snowboarding.Īs a 16-year-old, Dickinson watched with envy as his older brother Evan started skydiving, but his parents wouldn't allow Graham to try it for himself. His videos, shot on a headcam and by fellow pilots, give viewers a jaw-dropping perspective of humans in flight. Tech and social-media companies such as Facebook, GoPro and YouTube have expanded the sport's reach, pushing the intense visuals of wingsuit flying to wider audiences online, where Dickinson's profile grew. There are likely fewer than one thousand active participants worldwide who BASE jump with a wingsuit, though its popularity has grown since the early 2000s. The suit Dickinson wears at Tianmen Mountain is called the Freak 2, known for its agility, one of 11 models manufactured by Squirrel, a company that specializes in wingsuits and BASE jumping equipment. Toward the end of a flight, the pilot pulls the chute. For each metre of vertical descent, a pilot can cover three horizontal metres, flying at a downward angle and hurtling as fast as 200 kilometres an hour. A third wing between the legs completes the squirrel image.Īs air rushes through the inlets the suit inflates and the three wings become rigid. Strong nylon fabric connects the inside of each arm with the body, creating two wings. In 1978 the American was among the first to jump off El Capitan, a rock formation in California's Yosemite National Park.įunctioning wingsuits were introduced in the mid-1990s by French skydiver Patrick de Gayardon, moving the sport away from parachuting and toward something that resembles actual flying.Ī modern wingsuit, when fully inflated, makes the wearer look like a flying squirrel. Everything he thought aboutīASE jumping, a sport in which jumpers leap from bridges, antennas, structures, and earth, was popularized by Carl Boenish. Even among the most daring in this extreme sport, Dickinson is known for his willingness to plunge headlong into danger.Ĭlad in his wingsuit, which hangs on his body like a sleeping bag, Dickinson is poised to fly.
Other BASE jumpers would call this attempt particularly risky. In the winter, it's quiet – and solitude suits him when he jumps. Tourists visit it in droves in the summer to pray for a healthy life. He will jump from the cliff and attempt to manoeuvre a 180-degree turn in order to fly back through the celestial archway. Today, Dickinson is ready to conquer a flythrough of Heaven's Gate, the opening in the rock face, roughly the size of a football field, that goes clear through the mountain on which he's standing. He knows the area well and has always meticulously planned his jumps: Measured altitude and slope with a laser rangefinder, pored over topography data, and often studied video. The Canadian daredevil is in the final moments before taking flight in his latest thrill-seeking endeavour. He's surrounded by a chain of mountains that thrust skyward from the jungle below. 25, light winds and a temperature hovering around 5C create reasonable working conditions for Dickinson, a BASE jumper and wingsuit pilot who jumps off cliffs and out of planes for a living.ĭickinson, just a week removed from his 29th birthday, is a couple hundred metres above the ground. Graham Dickinson stands on a precipice near the peak of Tianmen Mountain in remote, central China.