Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  “Are you kidding? That sounds amazing. And it would also be great to earn some money right now.” That was the understatement of the century. “When do we go?”

  “It’ll be next week. Will you still be here?” Chris asked.

  “I still want to do another climb or two up on the Diamond, and I’m close to a hundred jumps. I’m not leaving for a few more weeks.”

  “Jimmy and Marta’s jump course is in October, right? So you could get plenty of packing practice by then, maybe a hundred pack jobs too,” Chris said, smiling.

  “But you probably wouldn’t want to jump them.” I laughed.

  Chris got serious. “Sometimes I’m at an exit point and I remember that I was kind of in a hurry when I packed, and I sit down and review the whole process I did in my head.”

  “You can actually remember doing each step of the last pack job you did, every time?” I was amazed.

  “Yeah. I’ve even repacked a rig without jumping it because I just got doubtful about the pack job. Everything needs to feel right,” Chris said, his gray eyes intense. “You need to make sure you’ve done everything right that you can. When you’re at the exit point, you want to feel warm and fuzzy about your gear. So I’ll talk to you later about the Arizona trip. I’m on this load.”

  Chris took off toward the trailer, his small rig hanging off one shoulder, hopping up with his camera helmet in hand just as the truck started to roll off.

  Everything seemed to be happening so fast now, one good thing after another, as though things were spiraling up as fast as they had spiraled down before. It made sense. What goes down must come up. But now I was liking the down as much as the up, and everything had changed completely. I picked up my rig just as Emily’s melodic voice filled the hangar: “Otter load nine, this is your fifteen-minute call, fifteen minutes!”

  Chapter Six

  Base Simulator

  Triax: Kenyon, Blake, Chris, and Damian

  The Little Colorado Canyon is an enormous side spur of the Grand Canyon, controlled by the Navajo Nation, rather than by the National Park Service. Chris had heard of it through rumors from local Arizona jumpers, who were keeping the area on the down low. With enough money, permits could be obtained to fly a helicopter in and out of the canyon. The walls were fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet tall, some of the biggest jumpable cliffs in the States free from NPS restriction, though the Navajos were particular about use and flip-flopped between allowing base jumping and prohibiting it without any explanation. They especially didn’t like people coming there and dying, because it was impossible to restore the good energy—they were permanently upset about a German hiker who had disappeared into the canyon some years back and had never been found. Travis Pastrana, a famous daredevil stuntman, had ridden a motorcycle off the edge somewhere out here, using a parachute to soften the crash of his landing while the motorcycle shattered to pieces in the rocks and sand below.

  It was hard to imagine the sequence of events that had led this mega-company to essentially finance a Triax heli base trip to the Navajo lands of Arizona, but it was actually happening. Apparently Intel’s budget for the short base jumping clip they wanted was nearly limitless. With this much money going into it, I’d assumed they were planning to make a global TV ad at the least. I was shocked to learn that they merely intended to use it for a minute or two at the opening of an internal sales meeting. It reminded me yet again of how out of touch with the “normal” world I was. Still, as always when confronted with the so-called normal world, I couldn’t understand how spending money on this gargantuan scale for something so disposable was normal. They’d even commissioned brand-new, custom-logo base canopies, which I couldn’t imagine having any use beyond this shoot, unless they were planning to use them as souvenir $10,000 car covers.

  Damian and Kenyon stood at the Southwest Airlines counter with their IDs out. Brad and Chris stacked duffel bags into a mountain as I scrawled our names on paper luggage tags. Brad had been added to the crew as an additional cameraman, which I hoped was a little bit of payback for the month I’d squatted in his living room. As the safety rigger, my job would either be ridiculously easy or ridiculously hard and possibly traumatic, depending on whether any of the jumpers got hurt. Though I hadn’t yet met Blake, I knew that all four were highly respected and experienced jumpers, all deeply immersed in the jumping world. Chris worked as a skydiving cameraman, Damian was a high-angle rigger and free flier, Kenyon was a tandem master, and Blake flew jump planes for the military. Between them, they’d done hundreds and probably even thousands of base jumps around the world, and none of them had ever been injured base jumping. I figured it was a pretty safe bet.

  I had one enormous overweight bag filled with a thousand feet of static line, which I’d borrowed from Jay. It was part of his rescue and first-aid kit for the base trips he liked to organize, in case a jumper got hung up on the wall. I hoped a thousand feet of rope would be enough to get me down to anyone who might be hung up. I hoped even more that nobody would get hung up, especially since I liked them.

  I pulled my other bag of climbing gear out of the pile and noticed another familiar-looking bag next to it. I pulled the zipper down a few inches and saw the telltale red and purple. Somehow in the unloading at the parking lot this morning, my skydiving rig had gotten mixed into the big pile of bags. I couldn’t believe it. That was the last thing I’d need on this trip as a climbing rigger at a base-jumping site. Since my skydiving gear was worth about as much as my vehicle, I didn’t want to cart it around unnecessarily, but I couldn’t leave it here now that we were a shuttle ride away from the parking lot and a half hour away from boarding. It was ridiculous to carry it back and forth to Arizona, but I had no choice, and anyway, Intel was paying for all the travel costs, including the overweight baggage. A little unsettled, I put two extra ID tags on it and handed it over with the rest.

  In Phoenix, we loaded everything into two SUVs. We were headed to Flagstaff to meet Blake, and we’d join the rest of the crew in Cameron, Arizona, a tiny outpost near the canyon. Suddenly it felt like a road trip as we drove north, talking and listening to music. Strip malls and palm trees gave way to steep hillsides legioned with saguaros, as we drove higher into the thick pine forests near Flagstaff.

  Blake, gruff and good-natured, met us at a small café in Flagstaff. We continued north, with the mountains behind us, dropping back to desert. As we lost elevation, descending toward the Grand Canyon, the hills became dotted with dry grass and green juniper bushes. Creased, skirted mesas spread out in the distance on each side of the straight, flat, two-lane highway. Small round hogans appeared, scattered among broken-down trailer houses with old tires on the roofs. Sheep, horses, and dogs wandered on the strip between the road shoulder and the fence lines, and more horses grazed inside. Sand stretched along the roadway, changing tone with the miles—tan, gray, brown, beige, and pink—the only vegetation scrubby, squat bushes, dry mounds of grass, and tumbleweeds caught in slanted wire fences.

  Hawks soared. The sky intensified from nearly white above the mesas to deep azure straight overhead. The sand was heaped in mounds of muted gray and mauve and yellow, changing to dark piles scattered with crusts of rough rock, and then sudden jumbles of smooth sandstone boulders leaned up against short cliff bands.

  We passed the main turnoff to the Grand Canyon and drove farther, along clusters of identical new houses, Quonset huts, and structures in various stages of disintegration.

  A tall, historic suspension bridge stretched high over a short rock canyon beside the newer, much less impressive roadway bridge. Below, scrubby tamarisks clustered next to the riverbed, flat sand braided with muddy water and hemmed in by hunks of dark sandstone.

  The Cameron Trading Post was a surprisingly full-blown concession operating here in the middle of nowhere beside the two bridges and a historic stone post office. It boasted several stone-faced two-story motel wings, a restaurant, and a labyrinthine gift shop. The hotel rooms looked out over
the canyon riverbed, surrounded by miles of open desert. It seemed random and isolated, but this was a turnoff to the Grand Canyon itself, which fed into the Little Colorado less than an hour’s drive ahead.

  We turned at the trading post and drove west on a flat dirt road, leaving Cameron behind. Everything looked the same, just miles of open desert as far as I could see. If I didn’t know where we were, I would swear the earth was solid and flat everywhere around us. We pulled into a dirt turnaround to find a group of cars, trucks, and E-Z UP shade shelters. A local ambulance team sat in the shade, drinking water and snacking on chips. A small helicopter waited near a fuel truck. Various Intel executives wandered around in shorts and sandals at a cautious distance from the edge of the canyon.

  The illusion of flat, sealed earth stopped right there. The earth cracked open into enormous gashes that stretched out and around for endless miles in dark corridors. Towers of stone formed ominous-looking walls and twisted around corners and islands of looming cliffs. The canyon was startling, breath-stopping, like an M. C. Escher drawing painted by Picasso.

  The rim was capped with a layer of unusually pale, sharp rock, as pocketed and rough as coral or limestone. It would shred clothing, skin, or rope without much trouble. I wandered around the edge, looking across at the steep sandstone walls. They were richly colored, with horizontal striped bands, and they were impressively high, maybe taller than fifteen hundred feet. There was definitely no climbing here, from what I was seeing. The rock was steep and loose and looked adventurous at best, from a climber’s perspective. From a jumper’s perspective, it looked awesome.

  The rimrock was sharp but solid, perfect for building climbing anchors, with cracks that would accept my climbing gear and boulders I could wrap with rope. I could see with just a glance that I would have plenty of ways to rig ropes for the cameramen at the rim, and in the event I had to drop down a wall to reach someone, which was good. The guys were talking and pointing at the island directly across from us, intently discussing wind directions and camera angles.

  Way down below I saw patches of flat sand in the canyon bottom among jumbled boulders, rock ledges, and pools of water. I wanted to go down there. It was a base jumping dream site, miles of jumpable walls. But because there was no way to climb back out of the canyon or to get across to the islands that rose like fantastic cityscapes inside the widest parts of the gash, the addition of the helicopter to the equation turned it into a base jumper’s fantasy come true.

  I turned to see two dark-haired guys approaching, clearly not Intel executives.

  “Hi, please be careful near the edge,” I said. “I can rig up a safety leash for you if you want to scramble around close here.”

  “We just wanted to take a look. I’m Jeff, I’m the helicopter mechanic, and Dave is the pilot,” said the taller, lankier of the two.

  Dave had a more compact build and looked remarkably like a soap-opera star. This impression struck me as bizarrely random, since I’d never even owned a TV, until I learned later that Dave’s brother actually was a soap star.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m sure you guys will be fine here, and it’s pretty flat at the edge. But let me know if you want a rope to get closer and check it out.” From my perspective it seemed truly impossible for someone to be standing at the edge of a canyon and just spontaneously fall in. But I always had to remind myself that not everyone was as comfortable at the edges of cliffs as my climber and jumper friends.

  “Well, I’d like to get closer to the edge, and I wouldn’t mind having a rope,” Jeff said comfortably. I helped him step into a climbing harness and buckle it. Safely rigged to a fifteen-foot leash of rope tied off to a boulder, Jeff carefully climbed down a short step and walked to the very edge.

  “This is amazing,” he said, gazing over the deep space of rock and chasm.

  “It is. From the road I couldn’t even tell it was here. I bet it’s going to be unbelievable flying a helicopter down in there,” I said.

  Dave had followed us over to the edge, without a rope. “Oh, yeah, this is some fun flying,” he said. “It’s a cool site. It’s going to be wild to watch these guys jumping in here.”

  We scrambled back from the edge and Jeff unbuckled the harness and handed it back to me. “Thanks a lot,” he said, “that was great.”

  “No problem!” I smiled. “See you guys later. I hope I get to ride in the helicopter.”

  “Really?” Dave asked.

  “Are you kidding? I’m dying to fly down in that canyon!”

  “That’s funny, most people are scared to get in the chopper. Especially this small one.”

  “Huh. I think I really need to see the walls up close and the landing areas for, um, you know, rigging. Safety reasons,” I said with a smile.

  “Well, if you really want to go, there will be times when I drop them across or pick them up from the bottom and there will be an extra space you could take,” Dave said. “They’re talking about going over to jump off that island across from us, and they’d need you over there to set ropes for the camera guys at the top.”

  “Awesome, thanks!”

  Dave and Jeff walked back to the helicopter, and the air filled with the loud beat of the blades. Damian, Chris, and Kenyon scurried in, bending low and wedging their base rigs in with their legs. The blades beat louder and the chopper lifted straight off the hard-packed dirt, raising a cloud of dust as they turned over the gaping canyon. I watched them cross the air, enthralled by the flight of the chopper, straight as an arrow, growing smaller and quieter across the canyon. The helicopter settled down on the island mesa like a bird on a nest, directly across from me, then levitated back into the air, becoming louder again as it drew close.

  Flying that chopper had to be the coolest thing ever. I was totally captivated by its absolute efficiency, the ability to carry people and equipment up and across thousands of feet in mere seconds.

  Blake, Brad, and the other cameraman ran over for the next ferry. I was waiting, with my pack and the heavy duffel bag full of rescue line, when Dave touched down again on our side. Jeff helped me load the gear into the back, and I climbed into the front seat next to Dave. He handed me a headset. I cupped the soft muffs over my ears into sudden silence.

  “Buckle that seat belt, please.” Dave’s voice entered directly into my ear canals through the absolute quiet, like thoughts in my brain.

  “Wow, this is amazing!” I couldn’t help but be carried away by my enthusiasm. The helicopter was small, with space for only three passengers, one up front and two in the back. Dave and I sat in a clear sphere of windshield, side doors, and a glass floor. As he maneuvered the foot pedals, the helicopter rocked up from the ground like a soap bubble. The ground fell away below our feet. Jeff watched us from the ground. I waved at him as he grew rapidly smaller. Dave steered out over the canyon rim and the walls dropped away below us. “This is so cool! I love this!”

  “So you’re a climber. Are you a jumper too?” Dave asked.

  “I just started skydiving, and I climb a lot. I want to start base jumping soon, though.”

  Flying around the Little Colorado Canyon

  “Yeah, I really like these guys. Blake’s a pilot over at Eloy, and I’m thinking about learning to skydive there. My brother jumps.”

  “Mine too!”

  We hovered over the mesa, whipping the small clumps of dry glass below us.

  “Okay, I’m going to set it down,” Dave said. I stayed quiet as he worked the pedals, expertly sashaying the chopper into a flat spot dotted with cactus patches and small, sharp rocks. “Watch the blades when you get your stuff out.”

  “Thanks!” I took the headset off and laid it on the seat, and my ears instantly filled with noise. The quiet space with only our voices inside it seemed like another world. I gave Dave a quick smile, jumped down, and hauled my bags out, turning my head from the blast as he spooled up and away.

  The guys were already gearing up, putting on their rigs and checking on
e another’s helmet camera sights from behind to make sure they were aligned.

  I knew Damian from the drop zone, but I’d heard his name mentioned long before that among climbers and then base jumpers. His stepfather was a legendary climber who’d gone into high-angle rigging, and Damian had followed in his footsteps. Unlike many base jumpers, Damian was as committed to skydiving as base jumping and spent every weekend jumping with the crowd of good free fliers at Mile-Hi. He was simultaneously reserved and disarmingly candid, and gave off an air of almost catlike competence even when he was just walking around.

  Blake on the other hand was amiable and solid. He seemed to notice everything but generally kept his opinions to himself. Though I’d just met him, I noticed that, as with Damian, his mere presence was confidence-inspiring.

  Among the four, Kenyon struck me as the foil for Damian’s and Blake’s more self-contained style. I occasionally saw him at the drop zone too, working as a tandem master. He was easy to talk to and unfailingly enthusiastic, making each jump fun and memorable for his customers. Like several base jumpers I’d met, Kenyon seemed to get a kick out of taking on a dubious attitude instead of the stereotypically stoic approach to jumping. It wasn’t something I would have expected, having believed in the image of macho adrenaline junkies before I actually got to know real jumpers, almost none of whom turned out to be like that at all. I liked that unpretentious style of acknowledging the nerves in undeniably scary moments and had to laugh as I heard Kenyon joke about giving himself a pep talk before the first jump into the canyon.