A Heightened Chance of Death

"This is crazy," she said. "I'm not really sure I can do this."

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From the moment they checked into their Holiday Inn near Fayetteville, W.Va., on Oct. 18, Loughlin and her four friends from Vermont were bombarded with reasons to pack their gear, turn around and drive home. To get to the front counter of their hotel, they zigzagged around other jumpers who drank beer and watched videos of BASE jumping bloopers. Two large televisions in the hotel lobby showed people in flight, yanked like rag dolls at the end of their parachutes. Some smacked into walls or buildings. Others struggled to open their parachutes in midair or snapped bones while landing.

Loughlin and her friends set down their bags and walked into a conference room for BASE jumper registration, where they posed for the head shots on their jumper ID cards. They signed a series of waivers, scribbling their initials next to 26 legal statements. When Loughlin finished, a Bridge Day employee ushered her into a corner of the room and asked her to stand in front of a video camera.

The employee told Loughlin to lean against a whitewashed brick wall and read from the gigantic legal form posted behind the camera. First, Loughlin stated her name and her desire to jump at Bridge Day. As she continued to read, her voice stalled. Loughlin had yet to tell any of her family members about her plan to jump because she didn't want to worry them. Now, she wondered if that was a mistake. What if her parents somehow found out like this, by watching Loughlin read her own death sentence in a posthumous, grainy video?

"I know that BASE jumping is an extreme sport, which involves a high risk of injury or death," Loughlin read, trying to project for the camera. "I agree that this release will apply even if my injury or death is caused by negligence, gross negligence, recklessness or the willful and wanton conduct of Vertical Visions or anyone associated with the Bridge Day event."

In the past year, Loughlin had made more than 100 sky dives -- the minimum required for a first-time BASE jumper to participate at Bridge Day. She had leapt out of Cessnas, jets and helicopters, but those experiences hardly compared to what she planned to try here. BASE jumping and sky diving, often confused in the public consciousness, actually differ by what some sky divers refer to as the line between sanity and insanity. John Hawley, 64, had completed more than 2,000 sky dives before he decided to try a BASE jump at Bridge Day this year. When he told sky-diving friends about his plan, some called him suicidal. "They said one BASE jump is more dangerous than 2,000 sky dives," Hawley said.

Sky divers jump with two parachutes in case one of them malfunctions, and usually they have several minutes in the air to establish a safe body position for free fall. BASE jumpers use only one parachute. As for midair corrections and adjustments? Loughlin's research on the Internet had dead-ended into a simple conclusion.

"By the time I even know something is going wrong," she said, "I'll basically be hitting the ground."

Loughlin had decided to make her first jump at Bridge Day because of its reputation as the relatively safe gateway to an addictive sport. She could make a legal jump into the New River Gorge with medics and rescue boats waiting nearby. Then, if she liked it, she could follow the progression of most BASE jumpers: on to illegal jumps -- off landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and high-rise hotels of New York City -- executed in darkness to avoid capture.

For clearance to participate at Bridge Day, Loughlin and about 75 other first-time jumpers were required to complete an introductory course the day before. Loughlin, eyes still bloodshot from the long drive, took a seat in the front row of a basement room in the Holiday Inn at 8 a.m. The chairs around her filled mostly with men, some heavily tattooed, ranging in age from their late teens to their early 60s.

Tom Aiello wheeled a big-screen television to the front of the room and distributed two handouts. Aiello had flown in from his BASE jumping academy in Twin Falls, Idaho, to teach this class. His hair was tousled, and he wore a wrinkled T-shirt. Ten years and 50 pounds ago, he had been an avid rock climber. Then he watched two people free-fall down a cliff he was climbing and decided to switch sports. At the height of his own jumping career, Aiello had made more than 500 jumps in a 30-month span, enduring 12 surgeries after a botched jump in September 2000. He believed he had two responsibilities as a BASE jumping instructor: to warn students about the dangers of the sport, and then to teach them how to survive.