To base jump or not to base jump? Halvor Angvik's response

The blogosphere is a weird and wonderful place: in the evening you can write a post about a video you have seen of some crazy guy hurtling down the rocky face of the Eiger in a wingsuit and in the morning you can get a reply from him.
That’s right shipmates, here is Halvor Angvik’s response to my previous post To base jump or not to base jump? As you will see, Halvor comes across as a very intelligent, thinking, reasonable kind of guy. Here is his description of the science, the art and ultimately, the philosophy of base jumping.

Hi Alex. I stumbled over this blog while searching for copies of my Youtube video, which has been posted on quite a few sites after someone copied it to Liveleak recently. Internet is quite small sometimes...

First of all I want to thank you for the general review of the composition and the music, and for crediting Ugress which I think make some really unique music. The original video is found on my channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/HalvorAngvik but it seems this copied version is of a pretty good quality.

As it seems you have put some thought into this, I thought you might want a response from the jumper.

I would like to start of with some technical stuff, to put us on common ground when evaluating risks. As much as I have to agree that what we do in a wingsuit is falling, under the right conditions it is a very controlled way of falling. The ratio between forward and downward movement is up to 3:1, which means you can cover great distances. The thrust generated by air resistance fighting gravity is so powerful that the smallest changes of angle on your body or wings will make radical changes on your glide path for all three axes.
As a pilot, it feels more like flying than falling, and with reference to objects in close proximity you can actually pick a line in the terrain and fly it. Nothing need be left to chance if the jump is planned right and executed in the right conditions.

To refer to this particular video, I mainly fly in close proximity parallel to the wall, with high vertical clearance to the terrain. At any given moment I can disconnect from the wall, with enough speed in the suit that it can be done in the blink of an eye. It’s also worth mentioning that I never start out that close on the first jump on a new object. I jumped one of the walls in the video 10 times on that trip and the difference between the first and the tenth jump is huge when it comes to proximity and time spent parallel to the wall.

The most dangerous thing you can do with a wingsuit is to fly close proximity OVER the terrain. That requires a lot more planning and skills. You need to know that the angle of the terrain is well within your glide ratio limits and you need to know which parts of the flight you are in the clear to break off or pull, and where you have dedicated yourself to a line you will have to finish.
When flying over terrain you never maximize your glide ratio. By using a GPS logging device, I have calculated that I use approximately 70% of my lift capabilities when I fly steep over terrain. When I have picked a line, I know that I always have reserves to pull out if for some reason I end up lower than I thought I would. This goes for the two last jumps of the video.

In the first flight, over Eiger, you can notice the camera is shaking a lot. That is because I am going so steep I’m penetrating the relative wind on an angle where I start to lose all actual lift on the wings. I’m flying almost 1:1 in ratio at some points, which means I have around 60% more lift I can use. That flight was planned using 3D maps from Google Earth and pilots, as well as the one (pilot) who showed me the line and had done it several times before in a gradual approach.
The last jump actually only has an 8-10 second section where I have dedicated myself (to a line I must finish), the rest of the flight I can always break off to the left. At the point where I’m flying through the V-crack, I am actually trying to fly even lower into the crack, but I’m going as steep as I can while still having a stable flight. That means that I have loads of reserves to "pop" up and clear it with good margins.

These facts probably won’t change your mind about base jumping being a very high-risk activity, and it shouldn’t. It is a high-risk activity because any single mistake - whether it’s misjudgement of wind and weather, your skills for a specific object, or simply a mistake during flight or deployment, or equipment maintenance and packing - will most likely kill you. It might however help you to understand that I don’t do this for the risk itself, and the kick I get from handing my life over to faith and see how I manage. Every jump is planned to every last detail, and with good margins. I never doubt that my packing or rigging is good, because I will check it again until I am 110% sure it’s good, and I never fly off a mountain unless I am sure I can make the flight. It still doesn’t make it safe, but maybe it makes you see that it’s not that irresponsible either.

This brings me over to the philosophical part of this reply. Why do I jump? It is not because I’m fearless or braver than anyone else. I think I am as scared as any person and I certainly think a lot about the consequences of my actions. Neither is it for the adrenaline rush exclusively, though it is a good side effect. : )
Fear is one of the most powerful feelings I experience. It’s hard to control once it hits you and it’s hard to rationalize once it’s there. Ever since I was a small kid I have always liked to challenge that feeling, and the huge reward of satisfaction, and in some cases euphoria, I get from defying it and going through with something I am afraid of. When I first started jumping, that was probably one of the only motivations I had. As this is something I have been doing so long, and it is definitely not something I have from my family, I am quite sure part of this need is something I’m just born with.

After some jumps however, getting over the first jumps where I didn’t really have the personal experience to know how well the equipment worked and that I could do controlled jumps relatively safely, I found that base jumping gives me more than just chasing and conquering my fear.
When it comes to jumping mountains, you get to travel and experience untouched nature and places you would never go to if it had not been for the jumping, and you meet a lot of people with the same interests on the way. The feeling of freedom I get from hiking and climbing around in the mountain, out of reach of cell coverage and civilization, knowing that I am going to fly off a mountain when I get to the top, gives me an inner peace unmatched by anything else. Everyday problems are simply left at home in the city and I feel absolutely free. Mixing that up with the excitement and the overwhelming sensation I get from the feeling of flying through the terrain, it’s hard to imagine that I will ever find anything else that will give me as much as base jumping.

"To risk your life for the sake of pleasure is something I cannot understand".
I would rather say "I won’t risk going through my life without living". Every person has to take calculated risks at some points in life to get or do something they really want, something that makes life worth living. It does not have to be physical consequences; it might be an economical compromise, related to someone you love or other things you really value in life. Some risks might be bigger than others, but once you've found out what you really want to do in life I bet you would think its worth taking some risks for.

What’s left of life if you won’t risk doing what you really want to do? Are you truly living then? I would not be.

Thank you Halvor for taking the time to clarify what we see in the video and for sharing with us your passion and motivation for base jumping. I feel so much better about it now. I have moved it down the risk scale from 99.5 to something around 93, perhaps on a level with Formula 1 racecar driving, in the rain.
And I honour you for taking the calculated risks you do to go after what you want out of life… and scaring the wits out of the rest of us with your videos. God bless you, brother.

See my other posts about courage

Patrick O'Brian - the greatest historical novelist of all time

Who would you say is the greatest historical novelist of all time? Novels have not been around that long: a thousand years or so if you think of the Tale of Genji, more if you include sagas and traditional tales like Homer’s Illiad. But the title is still enormous, considering the great flowering of literature in the last thousand years. The title was given by The Times to Patrick O’Brian.
Who the heck is Patrick O’Brian you say? And until 4 years ago I would have said the same thing. I have now read what insiders call the ‘Aubrey-Maturin series’ of 20 books four times. I am just starting the fifth time. (That is why I was glad to learn that there are two English translations of The Tale of Genji – if I wish I can at least re-read it with a different translation and a different nuance).

Patrick O’Brian’s serial masterpiece is set in the heyday of the age of fighting sail in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Britain is fighting a war for her survival against Napoleon’s France and foremost in the struggle is the Royal Navy of the period. The heroes are Jack Aubrey, whose career we follow from lieutenant to master and commander to frigate captain and finally to admiral, and his ‘particular friend’ Doctor Stephen Maturin, physician, naturalist, and spy, who sails with him on most of his adventures.
Now, this is a subject (naval life) and a period (Napoleonic) that I did not feel particularly attracted to. But I am here to tell you that such is O’Brian’s genius that I could not put the books down until I had read the whole series, which took me about 5 months, a book a week. And even more, when I had finished, it wasn’t long before I felt withdrawal symptoms. More on this later.
What is O’Brian’s magic?

These novels are neither Forester nor Marryat, though O’Brian pays the respect due to both. There is adventure and there are battles. The historic furniture and vernacular you can trust absolutely because O’Brian is so steeped in his period but there is also something of his heroine, Jane Austen. He writes with her irony, humour and moral toughness, almost as she might have written of the adventures of her naval brothers. Above all, they are accessible novels, so well written that you settle into each as into a warm bath, knowing you are in good, considerate hands. In evoking so vividly what it was like to be alive then, O’Brian shows by reflection elements of what it is to be alive now, and of how we should live. He achieves that simultaneous dislocation and bridging that is the essence of all imaginative art, and is what distinguishes it from everything else.
From Alan Judd’s review ‘The Winning Post at Last’

From the first opening paragraphs of the first book, you know you are in the hands of a master. The themes are immediately evident: you know there will be authenticity and scholarship, elegance and adventure. You know there will be honour, duty, courage, and friendship. But what strikes you as the guiding light of these themes is O’Brian’s projection of the humanity of his characters in the way he uses humour. Humour is never far away, even in the midst of battle. Never a sarcastic, cynical, negative humour. Always the delightful humour of the portrayal of the characters’ sense of what is right and what is wrong, for the morality of the time. The very fact that they care what is right and what is wrong is endearing and nostalgic to us today, in our age of ‘my way or the highway,’ instant gratification, moral and philosophical poverty.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin’s initial meeting almost leads to a duel and the death of one of them. They are attending a musical evening and happen to be seated together. At the end of the first movement Jack turns to his neighbour with a smile:

The words ‘Very finely played, sir, I believe’ were formed in his gullet if not quite in his mouth when he caught the cold and indeed inimical look and heard the whisper, ‘If you really must beat the measure, sir, let me entreat you to do so in time, and not a half beat ahead’.
Jack Aubrey’s face instantly changed from friendly ingenuous communicative pleasure to an expression of somewhat baffled hostility: he could not but acknowledge he had been beating the time; and although he had certainly done so with perfect accuracy, in itself the thing was wrong. His colour mounted, he fixed his neighbour’s pale eye for a moment, said, ‘I trust…’, and the opening notes of the slow movement cut him short.

We are in the hands of a master but the scholarship and the authenticity never intrude, are always subordinated to the background. The flow of the action and the richness of the characters are ever in the forefront of our mind. We are in the hands of a master but the narrator never intrudes, never do we see his craft - oh here is a bit of character description, oh here we are setting up some tension with an antagonist, oh here is a bit of scholarly research. The narrator is forgotten, as if we are listening to an old, old friend, wise and true, knowledgeable and discerning, in whose presence we relax completely.

As we get to know the characters and life aboard ship, we settle into the surroundings and escape into this other world. That is the only way to describe the feeling, as insiders will agree. The captain’s cabin of HMS Surprise is for us almost a second home, a refuge that we can find when our real home becomes too wearing on the spirit.
It is a world closer to nature, before the industrial devolution. Ships were built by hand of wood and cordage and they were managed by hand and eye, always in a spirit of humility with regard to wind and tide. Great practical skill and knowledge of the sea and the weather were essential. The enemy could always be seen, was never anonymous, and had no great technological advantage. Skill, courage, and fortitude decided the day. And honour. Prisoners were taken and released on parole that they would not take part in the war again until exchanged with the enemies’ prisoners. They were not tortured. A man’s word of honour was everything, and so such practices were possible.

We see, indeed we almost participate in, the great friendship that develops between the main characters, a friendship based on shared hardships and dangers. They would risk their lives for each other and sometimes do. This feeling of comradeship is absent in my life at least, I don’t know about yours, and is another reason why I find a refuge in this old world, in their company.

I hope I have given you a taste of the books. There is such a wealth of beauty and delight to discover in them. I can only warn you of one thing: like all good things, they come to an end.

Image: cover of the second book of the series, a painting by Geoff Hunt

Integrity - the lesson of the swamp plant

The playing out of the underlying truths to be found in the I Ching are everywhere to be seen. But today we are witnessing a playing out of global proportions. In the US and elsewhere, financial institutions, some of them hundreds of years old, are awash in red ink, either filing for bankruptcy, being bought, or shopping themselves around for infusions of cash from abroad. They succumbed to the lure of easy gains today, lending money to unqualified homebuyers and then packaging and trading ‘securities’ backed by these high-risk mortgages. Now it is karmic payback time as house prices fall, homebuyers default and those institutions find themselves holding worthless paper.

53. Chien/Development (Gradual Progress)

THE IMAGE
On the mountain, a tree:
The image of DEVELOPMENT.
Thus the superior man abides in dignity and virtue,
In order to improve the mores.

The tree on the mountain is visible from afar, and its development influences the landscape of the entire region. It does not shoot up like a swamp plant; its growth proceeds gradually.

(From the Wilhelm/Baynes edition of the I Ching)

The swamp plant may grow prodigiously in a short period of time. But there is no inherent strength in it, it is based on muddy ground, its only goal is to outgrow those around it. It is here today, gone tomorrow. The tree on the other hand grows slowly, much more slowly. It is based on firmer ground.

A tree on the mountain develops slowly, according to the law of its being and consequently stands firmly rooted…within is tranquillity, which guards against precipitate action, and without is penetration, which makes development and progress possible.

Relationships that are not built on a basis of right and wrong, of integrity, are on muddy ground and cannot endure. Relationships built on integrity are on firm ground and will grow strong. They will endure and ‘influence the entire landscape’ long after the swamp plants have rotted away in the mud.

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Photo by Joakim Buchwald

In the garden

All gentlemen are gardeners

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite. Bertrand Russel

As soon as the plants and trees have withered, they show sprouts at the roots. Even though the order of the seasons brings freezing cold, eventually it brings back sunny energy. In the midst of purging and killing, the sense of continually renewing life is always in control. Thereby one can see the heart of heaven and earth. Huanchu Daoren

There is beauty in the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after the winter. Rachel Carson

Look deep into nature and then you will understand everything better. Albert Einstein

The earth has music for those who will listen. Shakespeare

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Lao Tzu

A trip to the sea

In 2003, I returned to England to visit my family. I had not seen my parents for a long time. I was also looking forward to visiting various historic sites, but especially I was looking forward to seeing the sea.
I had not seen the sea for a very long time. Not the water of a river, or even a big lake: I wanted to see The Sea, smell and taste the salt, see the waves, hear and feel the rollers crashing on the sand, pick shells on the beach, feel the breeze on my face. It was more than a desire. The more I thought about it, the more I needed to see the sea.
In the plane, looking at my Green Guide, my eye fell on Whitby, right on the coast of the North Sea. The North Sea: you can’t get more sea than that.
A few days later I was driving up a steep, curving road to the height of a hill on the northern side of Whitby that I thought would afford me a good view. I stepped out of the car and almost ran to the edge of the hill.
The vista opened, and I stood there transfixed.

Below, a small harbour protected by a mole, a headland opposite with an old monastery, the old fishing village huddled on both sides of the harbour and then, beyond, filling the horizon, the longed-for sea.
I don’t know how long I stood there, in a wondering daze, taking deep breaths of sea air.
I made my way down to harbour level. There was a pier, a big, old pier stretching out into the sea with a lighthouse in the middle.

I walked along the pier to a kind of round battlement made of immense blocks of stone with the lighthouse in the centre. It was a blustery September day and the sea was choppy. The waves came crashing against the battlements like the furious assaults of some unknown enemy, only to recede before trying again.

I looked up at the lighthouse. A metal wire, a lightning conductor perhaps, led from the summit to the pier. I saw a little, old sign next to it. I had to step closer to read what it said.

See also Whitby revisited and find more about England by clicking the England label.