Team Geared Up

This is absolutely incredible. Valeri Rozov has many other accomplishments to his name having won Russia’s, Europe’s and World’s championships in parachuting. He has been driving along the Russian extreme B.A.S.E. climbing project. The acronym B.A.S.E. stands for Buildings, Antennas, Spans and Earth; the four types of platforms used in BASE jumping.

“Nobody believes it, but we did it,” Russian X-gamer Valeri Rozov declared earlier this month, shortly after making the first BASE-jump from the Alps’ Grandes Jorasses. The news were stirring for sure: The Jorasses had been deemed impossible; experts said the huge wall lacked a single spot safe enough to launch a free-fall jump. But here they are, the breath-taking images of the jump that followed a climb on one of the face’s hardest routes: The Croz Spur.

“This first BASE jump from the Grandess Jorasses has been both meritable and pleasant,” is Rozov’s crisp comment now. For four days, he led fellow Russian climbers Denis Provalov, Maxim Malanchuk, and Dimitry Lifanov up the Croz Spur on the wall. Then he jumped.

The Russian climber and BASE jumper exited the wall at 3800m, from the central buttress of the spur, right by the northeast face. Wearing a wing-suit, Valeri took advantage of a 230-250 meters clean vertical section just below the jump-off spot. The jump saved a total of 1200 meters – Rozov free-fell for 50 seconds before opening the parachute.

“I almost crashed a hut,” he laughed after landing.

‘Fortune favors the bold’ the saying goes and it proved true in Valeri’s case: He jumped in beautiful weather conditions. The rest of the team instead, were caught in a storm on their two-day descent.