A little history of the big jump

In every part, there have to be a primary time. Get began, strive. To see what it looks like! Nonetheless, here’s a self-discipline that doesn’t tolerate errors or little: “base-jump”. The precept is straightforward, it’s a query of leaping off a cliff with a parachute for less than means. There are actually a number of hundred practitioners in France. The gear is ideal, the method, honed for 3 many years now.

The pioneers, by definition, didn’t have entry to the well-known “expertise suggestions” and for good cause since they had been the primary. Amongst them is the Austrian Felbermayer. From his first identify Erich with an “H” – element issues. He was a dentist – one other vital element. In 1965, Erich Felbermayer had the nerve to leap from the “Spigolo Giallo” within the Dolomites with a hemispherical parachute. “Paralpinism” – or the artwork of climbing and leaping mountains – was born. However the Austrian is not going to go additional.

Carl Boenish the American

13 years later, a band of loopy individuals take up the torch on the opposite facet of the Atlantic. Their chief: Carl Boenish. The Yosemite Valley, the place the majestic wall of El Capitan stands, is their playground. Thereafter, Boenish and his associates will start to leap from antennas, buildings and bridges, creating a brand new self-discipline known as BASE- leap (BASE being the anagram in English of: constructing, antenna, bridge and cliff).

“Like on the pool!”

In France, it was not till July 1989 that somebody dared to leap off a cliff. The writer of this very first leap, on the Marteau within the chain of Fiz, known as Erich – with an “H” – Beaud. And he's … a dentist. “I had three parachutes, that's to say if I used to be optimistic”, smiles at this time the Haut-Savoyard exiled in Paris. On this episode of “La Folie des Hauteurs”, Erich Beaud remembers this very first leap … into the unknown. “There I bend my knees … like within the pool on the 5-meter diving board! We push flippantly and we go. And there’s this totally extraordinary fraction of a second the place the toes are nonetheless in touch with the rock however the place the physique has already began to tip over. We're on the verge of no return. We are able to't return. After which it goes. ”

At 59, Erich Beaud talks about this “first time” with intact emotion and enthusiasm. He definitively folded up the parachute in 2014, after 2,000 cliff jumps. “I’m sure of getting lived by extraordinary instances. I discovered myself in entrance of a completely clean, clean web page, and the entire story needed to be written. To have had the extraordinary probability to expertise all of this … is fabulous! “

Others after him have continued to put in writing this story, equivalent to François Gouy and Maël Baguet, who testify on this episode. The primary climbers conquered the primary peaks of the Alps between 1854 and 1865. 150 years after this golden age, paralpinists jumped from these identical peaks. A form of conquest of the Alps, however in reverse … within the path of the descent!

The six episodes of season 1

La Folie Des Hauteurs, the mountain podcast of France Bleu Isère in partnership with AlpineMag.Fr. The mountain is the scene of extraordinary tales the place actuality typically goes past fiction. La Folie des Hauteurs, the mountain podcast of France Bleu Isère in partnership with Alpine Mag, invitations you this summer season to fulfill uncommon characters.

• Story: Lionel Cariou
• Director: Simon Berthier