“A lot of people call this the Disneyland of BASE jumping,” said as he and Kat Donahue kneeled on a blue tarp and packed their parachutes last August. It was the heart of jumping season in , and after several days steeped in the scene—its beer-blurred nights, long hikes, and dizzying heights—I was beginning to understand his point.

The skies hummed with cable cars, wingsuits, and colorful canopies dropping like confetti from sheer 2,000-foot cliffs. On the ground, crashing waterfalls drowned out fleets of buses unloading tourists at the Stechelberg cable car station for a ride to Piz Gloria, a restaurant at 9,700 feet. Once the mountaintop lair of James Bond’s nemesis in the 1969 filmÌęOn Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the space-age building is now a rotating restaurant offering sweeping views of the Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau peaks, all icons of this BASE-jumper’s paradise.

“It’s culture shock for a lot of people here,” saidÌęMorgan, a compact, hyperkinetic 31-year-old who is as one of the world’s leading wingsuit pilots. (SeeÌę“.”) At the time, we were downing beers and burgers at the owned by a French jumper named Fabien Clerc, where wingsuit videos play on a flat-screen TVÌęand posters of the valley’s famous jump sites line the walls.

Whether you have built your entire life around BASE, like Morgan, or just aspire to, chances are you will make a pilgrimage to Lauterbrunnen eventually. Jumpers come from around the world for the cliffs and the cable cars and trams that carry them to scores of exit points, where they launch. (The local tourist office estimates that more than 20,000 jumps were made in the valley in 2016, up from 15,000 in 2010.) They come for the license to jump without breaking the law. ( and other territoriesÌęunder the National Park Service’s purview.) And in an often antisocial and clandestine sport, they come for fraternity. (There are now three bars and restaurants in town with a BASE theme.)

“If you’re feeling isolated at home, you come here to be part of the community,” said , a jumper from Twin Falls, Idaho.

Morgan and Donahue, a petite 35-year-old from Brooklyn who worked as a location scout for Hollywood productions, were among some 100 people who had come on August 1 for Swiss Day, a national holiday that jumpers have adopted as a hybrid between Halloween and the Fourth of July by combining costumes with fireworks. Taking place at a time of year when valley weather is most reliable for jumping, it is a highlight of the BASE calendarÌęand aÌęchance to see who is still participatingÌęin a notoriously perilous sport.

Visitors to Lauterbrunnen are reminded of how dangerous BASE can be by framed portraits of dozens of dead-but-not-forgotten jumpers hanging on the walls inside the . Up the valley, where Morgan and Donahue packed their chutes, flowers and votive candles surrounded a memorial boulder, plaques bolted to its sidesÌęin tribute to more of the deceased.

With their gear fixed, Morgan, Donahue, and I crammed into a cable car and disembarked at MĂŒrren, a fairytale village on the edge of a half-mile-high cliff. The destination: , a notorious exit point steps from the cable car station and the town’s tennis courts, cafĂ©s, and hotels.

Jumpers geared up, donning parachute harnesses, helmets, and GoPro cameras. A call on a small handheld radio, placed and maintained onsite by the , ensured that the , paragliders, and other jumpers wouldn’t be in the same air space. Mere feet from tourists clutching cell phone cameras, Morgan and Donahue made their way onto a metal grate platform extending from the ledge like a pirate ship’s plank, then plunged 2,360 feet to the valley below.

Morgan was a 23-year-old Marine Corps aerial combat photographer, on a two-week leave from a 13-month deployment in Iraq, when he first visited Lauterbrunnen in 2009. He headed straight for the Horner Pub, a BASE hangout with lodging upstairsÌęfor about $40 a night. Inexperienced, with fewer than 50 jumps, he introduced himself to , a respected jumper from Denver. “John basically convinced the group to take this kid that they’d never met to ,” recalled Morgan, describing a typical entrĂ©e for newcomers.

Jumpers discovered the Lauterbrunnen Valley and its big walls in the late-1980s. While it is legal to BASE jump in Switzerland, there are still rules. The Swiss BASE Association requires jumpers to buy a landing card for 25 Swiss francs (about $25), the majority of which helps compensate farmers for lost silage when grass gets trampled. In 2015, valley farmers split approximately $11,000, the equivalent of dues from more than 400 jumpers. Other rules require jumping only at marked exits,Ìęhaving an appropriate level of experience for each exit (which range in difficulty from intermediate to expert),Ìęand respecting the airspace of paragliders and Air Glaciers helicopters ferrying skydivers and sightseers to altitude.

Enforcement is lax, though, and jumpers rely mainly on self-policing. “The community is very tight worldwide,” said from Moab, Utah, who was in Lauterbrunnen for Swiss Day. “When people act out, people are good at putting them in their place.”

Konrad Suter, guard chief of Lauterbrunnen’s police force, told me,Ìę“We have no hippies, no criminals like in Yosemite where they run after them. We have no problems.”

Yet conflicts have flared. In 2011, newspapers Der Spiegel, in Germany, and Berner Zeitung, in Switzerland, published stories about landing in farmers’ fields, flying too close to cable cars, and falling screaming to their deaths in view of schoolchildren. A few locals even wanted the activity banned.

Tensions persist, according to who lives in Wengen and acts as a liaison between the BASE community and locals. He said cavalier attitudes toward safety and disrespect for the environment are the chief problems. “People don’t understand how lucky they are to be BASE-jumping here,” Douggs said. “We’re the scumbags of the valley.”

Although there are no reliable figures on the number of active jumpers worldwide, informal polling suggests between 500 and 2,000, a few hundred of whom fly wingsuits. Their increasingly robust presence in Lauterbrunnen has helped put the town of 2,500 on the map.

“They come in bunches,” said Mark Nolan, who owns the Hotel Oberland and a few restaurants in townÌęand employs several jumpers as wait staff, cooks, andÌęmaintenance workers. “They are good for business. They spend money. .”

More than 50 jumpers have been killed around Lauterbrunnen over the past 30 years. (Xaver Bongard, a Swiss climber world-renowned for his big-wall ascents, was first to die in 1994, the result of a parachute malfunction.)Ìę

Dr. Bruno Durrer is the valley doctor. He tends to fatalities and treats the injured. “BASE jumping is part of our tradition in the valley,” he explained. “You have seven to eight people dying in the valley from mountaineering [each year]. If you do outdoor sports, you have more risks than if you are collecting stamps.”

Still, 2016 had been shaping up as an especially deadly year worldwide. For Morgan, the carnage began in January, when his best friend, 29-year-old while flying his wingsuit among the spires and sandstone slots of northern Arizona’s Paria Canyon. In June, Van Horne—Morgan’s 42-year-old former mentor—plummeted to his death in a snowfield after launching with a wingsuit from . Both men were among the most experienced wingsuit BASE jumpers in the world.

No one risks their necks for the money. Morgan works as an itinerant skydiving and BASE instructor, stunt coordinator, and wingsuit test pilot. He keeps some belongings at a friend’s place in Irvine, California, and sleeps on couches or floors wherever he happens to be.Ìę

He confessed over mugs of RugenbrĂ€u that he has $2,000 in the bank from commercial work, enough to carry him around the jumping circuit for a few months. Bristling at the suggestion he might settle down someday, he told me BASE “is what I was born to do.” It’s his dharma, his life’s purpose, and the most fun he can imagine having. “People want to talk about death,” he said. “I like to talk about how we live. All my friends and I live every day.”

The plan called for parachuting into the party. Down they came, one at a time—Morgan;ÌęDonahue; Mosbaugh; Paul, their friend from Toronto; Cherie Clothier, from New Zealand; Liz Freeman and Hartman Rector from Salt Lake City, Utah; and a Canadian named Mike, whom everyone called TreehouseÌębecause he once lived in a treehouse in British Columbia. They had launched just before dusk from , touching down in a farmer’s field that was echoing with the slow clang of cowbells.Ìę

“Crazy!” said a startled German tourist walking his dog as they descended.

Morgan looked a little crazy. He wore a long purple wig and fat, white wraparound shades, a speaker stashed somewhere in his gear pumping dance music.Ìę

“You guys had a good day?” Mosbaugh called out.

“No,” said Clothier, in a voice thick with sarcasm. She had descended under a hot pink parachute, wearing fuzzy rainbow leg warmers and a rainbow feather headdress while lugging three cans of beer in a bag she took with her off the cliff. “Terrible!”

“Let’s go home and watch some TV,” Mosbaugh suggested, “about people living their lives.”

An insouciant platoon, they gathered their parachutes and strode together to a picnic pavilion, where a crowd of jumpers waited with cold beer and meat on the grill. Later, fireworks flashed and echoed off the big walls, and the celebration continued at the Horner with Douggs and two bandmates belting out a three-song tribute to Van Horne. Jumpers clambered into the rafters, and Morgan, still in his wig and shades, danced on a floor slick with spilled beer. The bash would not wind down until dawn, when both Morgan and Donahue crashed into bed.

The next afternoon, while Morgan slept, Mosbaugh and Donahue nursed coffeeÌęon a cafĂ© terrace and explained the appeal of Lauterbrunnen for practitioners of a decidedly individualistic sport.

“I showed up here two days ago, walked down the street and saw tenÌęreally good friends,” said Donahue, who was on a two-month international BASE odyssey while between work assignments. She had discovered jumping four years earlier, having graduated from snowboarding, surfing, and skydiving. “That was my happy place—outdoor adventure,” she said.

Why BASE? I asked her. “My mentor said we all have voices in our head,” she said. “We have different ways to quiet them.”

The voice in Mosbaugh’s head told him to “live your life now.” He was 21 when his father died from a heart attack. Several friends have since died from BASE, mainly while using wingsuits, which he considers too dangerous. “BASE jumping is a beautiful, amazing activity,” he said, “but I’m not going to do this my whole life.”

After more than 2,000 jumps, Morgan refused to consider quitting, but he did admit to doubts. The coordinates for BrĂ©vent, above Chamonix, are tattooed on his right forearm. But since Van Horne’s death there, he had been skeptical about returning. The exits are short, the terrain unforgiving. “I know someone is going to keep pushing the limit,” he said about flying the most challenging wingsuit lines. “Maybe my days of doing that are coming to an end.”

The next day, he led a crew on a two-and-a-half-hour drive to the south of Switzerland, to a mountain he asked me not to name above the RhĂŽne River valley, with views of the Matterhorn.

Reaching the exit required a cable-car ride and a 1,300-foot hike through scree. An exposed traverse sent rocks skittering down a 2,000-foot plunge. The jump was 4,800 feet from a breathtaking spit of rock. There were 12 on the load, and Rector, Donahue, and Morgan went off last, wearing tracking suits, which inflate like a wingsuit but with less surface area and glide, allowing more mobility and making it easier to deploy and control a parachute.

Everyone landed safely and briefly considered jumping a nearby bridge, but the wind had kicked up in the afternoon, making it too dangerous. Swiss Day was gone, so their time together was ending; real life called. Rector and Freeman were returning to Utah. Paul needed a lift to the ZĂŒrich airport. Morgan, Donahue, and Mosbaugh were headed to France.

Alex Edbom, a gargantuan 28-year-old Swede with “BASE” tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand, was headed to in Italy. He had driven down from Sweden in a Honda Civic, taking a leave from his job operating a crane on construction sites in Stockholm. “I want to get out of Sweden,” he said, describing a routine of 5 A.M.Ìęwake-ups and returning home in the dark at night to crash on the couch while watching TV. “It’s boring.”

Wistful about a year spent in Lauterbrunnen working as a bartender and jumping constantly, he explained the problem: he couldn’t afford to stay. Like most jumpers, he worked all year to save for a summer trip to the valley.

I never said goodbye to Morgan and Donahue. I had last seen them on the platform at High Ultimate. Morgan waddled off in his tracking suit and disappeared. I snapped a photo of Donahue on my phone. She wore a blue tracking suit and white helmet, her back arched and arms overhead as if giving two huge high-fives.

The following week, I read about three unnamed jumpers in France “going in,”Ìęas jumpers say when one of them has been killed in the act. I texted Morgan to see how he and Donahue were making out. He called immediately, sounding exhausted. Dispensing with preliminaries, he said he had bad news about Donahue.Ìę“Kat died.”Ìę

She had been with Mosbaugh and another jumper at , on the border with Italy. Attempting to fly her tracking suit through a notch, she impacted at high speed and died instantly.

“She went for something she probably shouldn’t have gone for, and it got her,” Morgan explained. “She was definitely a rad girl.”

Nursing his hurt in a Chamonix bar, Morgan blamed himself for failing to say more, for not teaching friends better. “That’s a poisonous way to think,” he admitted. He was headed home. “I’m done for work for the season.”

that month. , an Italian jumper who had Ìę(view the video below), would lose control of his wingsuit above Lauterbrunnen and crash into a cliff.Ìę from Norway, died when he struck a tree flying from BrĂ©vent. An Italian named in Switzerland on Facebook.

. One of them, a Russian who crashed his wingsuit into a house in Chamonix, promptedÌęthe mayor to ban wingsuit flightÌęto study the issue.

In September, Mosbaugh, Morgan, and about 40 other jumpers met at the in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. They wrote messages on a scrap of Mat Kenney’s wingsuit and tacked it up in the Temple, a wooden structure that is ceremonially burned at the festival. Mosbaugh added a message on the back of a photo of Donahue, too. In April, Freeman would break her back while jumping atÌęBrento. (She expects to make a full recovery.)ÌęMeanwhile, the ban in Chamonix continues while Lauterbrunnen remains open for business. “We don’t want to do it,” the president of the commune governing the valley told a newspaper about prohibiting BASE, “or we’d also have to ban climbing and hiking. Each person has to decide for himself if he wants to do this sport and should know his own limits.”

Come summertime, cows and wildflowers would return to the high pastures above theÌęLauterbrunnen Valley. And so would jumpers, to experience another season ofÌęups and downs.Ìę

Matt Higgins () is the author of .

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The mayor ofÌęChamonix, France, has Ìęfollowing the death of a Russian flier who died after crashing into a building earlier this week. This year has been a particularly bad one for the sport—a record 35 BASE jumpers have died so far, many of them in and aroundÌęChamonix, an epicenter of the sport. But that doesn't mean fatalities have been confined to just one area.

The first to die was Mat Kenney, who wasÌęwingsuitingÌęamong the steep sandstone slots and spires in northern Arizona’sÌęPariaÌęCanyon in January—an area suitable for only the most accomplished pilots—when he attempted to make a hard, technical turn through a notch in the rock, friends and investigators say. The 29-year-old Kenney, an experienced pilot, collided with a cliff.

“I don’t blame the activity,” says Scotty Bob Morgan, a leadingÌęwingsuitÌęBASE jumper, and Kenney’s best friend, while acknowledging that in an inherently risky sport, pushing the limits can be fatal.Ìę“There’s only so far you can go until you’re going to find a wall.”

Twenty-oneÌęof the jumping fatalities in 2016 involvedÌęwingsuitÌępilots—one shy of a high of 22 in 2013. “If you cut outÌęwingsuitÌęflying, the sport [of BASE jumping] would be very safe,” says Christopher McDougall, who runs an introductory BASE course from his home in Switzerland, and is known to jumpers worldwide as “Douggs.” The rash of deaths has left the BASE community,Ìęand plenty of outsiders,Ìęwondering what’s going on.Ìę

This is the second time a ban has been placed on wingsuiting in Chamonix. The first lasted a year,Ìęfrom the summer of 2012 to 2013,Ìęfollowing a death and another accident in one day on Le Brevent, an 8,000-foot peak. This time, Mayor Eric Fournier speculated that theÌęwingsuitersÌęwho have died simply didn't have enough experience.ÌęThere are undoubtedly more pilots than in the past—although figures are impossible to confirm, with estimates varying from hundreds to thousands—but this year's deaths have includedÌępilotsÌęwho were bothÌęexperienced and inexperienced. And the circumstances surrounding their fatal flights have varied greatly.

Even so, some pilots theorize that the latest spate of deaths is due to a common factor: advances inÌęwingsuitÌędesign that have allowed less experienced pilots to pursue terrain flying, where they skim sometimes feet from a mountain slope. Ìę

“Suits are so good, it’s scary,” saysÌęDouggs. “They are proper fighter planes.”

WingsuitsÌęoperate using air resistance: when a pilot jumps, vents on the wings inflate, creating an airfoil shape that increases forward motion while slowing descent. The best suits offer an optimal ratio of distance gained to verticality lost—meaning they allow pilots to glide farther. Recent design improvements allow even intermediate pilots to fly three feet forward for every foot of descent, a ratio once reserved for only the most experienced. Suits are also more comfortable and simpler to fly, which is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it enhances the skills of experienced pilots; on the other, it allows pilots to perform risky flights with less technique and training.Ìę

“You can fly a higher performance suit with less experience now because they are easier to use,” says MattÌęGerdes, an advanced pilotÌęand co-designer and chief test pilot atÌęSquirrel, a leadingÌęwingsuitÌęand BASE gear manufacturer.

The recommended progression for a BASE jumper requires first amassing hundreds of skydives.ÌęThen they can advance to BASE jumping—first fromÌębridges and antennas and later toÌębuildings and cliffs. FlyingÌęwingsuits requires training in skydiving, too. Only with years of experience in both jumping and piloting should a person combine the two and pursueÌęwingsuitÌęBASE.Ìę

For most of the history of BASE, the sport’s ranks were filled by already experienced skydivers who gained entrĂ©e by finding a mentor willing to teach the skills necessary for survival. The process was slow, personal, and clandestine.Ìę

But a recent proliferation of introductory BASE courses run for profit has lowered barriers to entry in the sport, meaning anyone with the money and minimum level of skydives can start training. With few standards and no oversight, Gerdes says instruction in some courses turns out poorly-prepared jumpers who unwittingly skip steps on their way to flying high-performance wingsuits. It’s like giving the keys to aÌęBugattiÌęto a 16-year-old with a fresh driver’s license.

One of the prerequisites to wingsuit BASE is a season or more spent jumping with a tracking suit, which inflates like aÌęwingsuitÌębut offers pilots more limb mobility—making it easier to deploy and control a parachute—and has less surface area and worse glide. Generally, tracking suits are safer to operate, although Gerdes, McDougall, and Morgan, suspect many newer pilots don’t put in the necessary time flying them.

“It’s up to people if they skip steps,” saysÌęGerdes. The path toÌęwingsuit BASEÌęhas becomeÌęquick and easy compared to, for instance,Ìębig-wave surfing and otherÌęsports that require years of physical training, and knowledge of the environment and weather, he says. “If people want to use that [advanced gear] to risk their lives more, it’s tough to combat that.”Ìę

Typically, a pilot should take into account a battery of variables before a flight, too, such as wind, barometric pressure, and other micrometeorological factors at play at a given location. But Gerdes and McDougall suspect that they aren’t. “They’re flying their suit like it works perfectly every time,” Douggs says.

Gerdes, McDougall, and Morgan, all say the sport would benefit from better education, a difficult task in an inherently individualistic activity without any central organizing body, or hard rulesÌęother than, “Don’t die.”ÌęGerdesÌęsuggests creating an institutionalized system of teaching that relies on ratings, similar to scuba diving or skydiving. “Everyone is friends. Nobody wants to be the guy who tells friends, ‘Don’t get on the jump!’” says Morgan, a skydivingÌęwingsuitÌęinstructor.Ìę

Some have witnessed the death toll and don’t need to be told.Ìę“Wingsuits scare the shit out of me,” says BrianÌęMosbaugh, a 31-year-old climber,Ìęhighliner, and jumper who lives in Moab, Utah, andÌęhas yet to graduate from a tracking suit to a wingsuit after three years in BASE. “Too many of my friends have diedÌęusing them.”

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[Editors’ Note: If you are having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 (TALK).]

When news broke that Dave Mirra, the most dominant and decorated BMX star in X Games history, had Ìęat age 41Ìęin his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina, on February 4, his friends thought it was an Internet hoax. A few even texted Mirra to let him in on the joke.

“That’s the last guy you would think, because he’s stronger than you,” says , a retired motorcycle racer who was Mirra’s triathlon training partner.

Mirra’s strength and determination were renowned. Driven and intense, heÌęhad won 24 X Games medals in two decades of competition, all but one of them in BMX. (He also won a bronze medal in rallycross in 2008.)ÌęBut heÌęwas humorous and sensitive, a devoted family man to his wife, Lauren, and daughters, Madison, 9, and Mackenzie, 8. Friends say it seemed like he had a lot going for him.

“We’ve got a good collage of misfit individuals in our community,” says BMX icon , 43. “He was the one who had it the most together out of all of us.”

Recently, the 41-year-old had surprised friends by telling them he was planning a comeback to the sport: he was building a new vert ramp for training;Ìęhe presented the Number One Rider Award (NORA Cup) at a September BMX awards ceremony in Las Vegas;Ìęand he was making arrangements to attend a reunion of older andÌęretired riders in California in March. “Everyone was getting real excited,” says Hoffman.

In the nearly two weeksÌęsince his death, some haveÌęspeculated that head trauma—Mirra, like many BMX riders, took multiple spills over his career—may beÌęto blame for his death.ÌęIndeed, those who suffer from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain condition currently plaguing football and other sports that involve significantÌęhead trauma,Ìęoften suffer from depression and exhibit impulsive behavior.ÌęNFL Hall of Fame linebacker Junior Seau, who in 2012 shot himself in the chest at age 43, had CTE; Greenville Mayor Allen Thomas, who was friends with Mirra, suggested that he might have had it as well. (UPDATE:ÌęIn late May, Mirra's widow, Lauren, announced that a study of her late husband's brain . The study was coordinated by Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati, a neuropathologist at the University of Toronto, and the Canadian Concussion Centre. The diagnosis was confirmed by neuropathologists in the U.S. and abroad, according to a release by a Mirra family spokesperson.)

But in more than a half-dozen interviews with friends, colleagues, competitors, and authorities, it became clear Mirra had lost direction,Ìęwhatever else he may have been suffering from. When he ended his BMX career in 2010, at age 35, he refocused his passion and commitment first on rally car racing, then on a budding interest in triathlons. But several setbacks last year caused his commitment to waver. Famous for his energy and work ethic, Mirra complained of fatigue and confessed that he was feeling down. Alarmed, some friends talked and said they needed to keep an eye on him.

Born in 1974 in Chittenango, New York, near Syracuse, Mirra stormed the BMX scene in 1987 when he was 13. (Even at that young age, he was already sponsored by Haro Bikes.) After dominatingÌęriders in his age group with a repertoire of the most advanced tricks, performed with uncanny consistency, he turned pro at 17.

“He had a young cocky persona, but it was done with humor,” recalls , 49,Ìęwho was an established pro when Mirra first arrived on the scene.

At the time, MatÌęHoffman was the dominant competitive rider. When he first saw Mirra, he realized that reign was over. “I was like, ‘I better start getting used to getting second,’” he says. “A lot of us specialize in different disciplines in the sport, but Dave could do all of it. He could do big, burly tricks, then lay down the most beautiful finesse on the ground.”

Mirra’s career nearly ended just as it was taking off, though. In 1993, when he was 19, he was hit by a drunk driver after leaving a club in Syracuse, fracturing his skull, dislocating his shoulder, and leaving him with a blood clot on his brain. He spent six months off his bike while recovering. In 1995 Mirra had his spleen removed following a slam at an event in Dallas. The injuries didn’t stall his ascent in the sport, though. When ESPN (then known as the Extreme Games), in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1995, Mirra capitalized on the increased visibility and commercial opportunities for what had been a fringe sport.

“He was exactly what we were looking for in terms of a marketing message about the X Games,” says Chris Stiepock, who spent nearly 20 years working on the X Games for ESPN, and now works at NBC Sports. “He was clean-cut. He was well-spoken. He was obviously very athletic, and he took it seriously.”

With the retirement of skateboarder Tony Hawk in 1999, Mirra emerged as the face of the X Games franchise. In 2000, he became the first BMX rider to in competition, and was soon featured in ads for Burger King and sponsored by Slim Jim and DC Shoe Co., which designedÌęa signature line of shoes for Mirra. His name even graced a video game franchise by Acclaim Entertainment.

Mirra once held the record for most X Games medals by any athleteÌęwith 24, including 14 golds (which was broken by skateboarder Bob Bunrquist in 2013). He won the Park and Vert competitions from 1997 toÌę1999. “Because he was so great, he was his worst critic,” Hoffman says. “Everybody else is praising how amazing he is, and in his mind he’s like that could be better and I’m going to make it better, and he did.”

He earned at least one BMX medal every year from 1995 until 2009, except for 2006. That was the year, while practicing on the Park course at the X Games in Los Angeles, Mirra fell 16 feet from a ramp onto his head, in what he described as his worst crash ever. He spent months recovering after a trip to the ICU.ÌęAlthough he returned to competition and won three more medals, his era of dominance was over. Mirra would never win gold again. In 2010, he missed the X Games while recovering from bacterial meningitis, which his wife, Lauren, said had nearly killed him. (Without a spleen, he was more susceptible to infection.)

He had also begun showing psychological effectsÌęfrom all of his injuries.

“There’s this term called pop-out-itis, whenever you’re going fast at a ramp and your brain switches where you can’t do this, and you jump out to the deck. He did that a couple times, and was like, ‘Man I’m getting this pop-out-itis,’” says Hoffman.

In a for X Games.com, Mirra explained his mindset leading to retirement. “For me, it came down to risk versus reward,” he explained. “My mental stance on it was that I always loved to progress, first and foremost. It was never going to be that fun for me to go on riding on a plateau level and not keep progressing, but by the same token, I got to a point where I really couldn’t take getting injured anymore in the name of progression.”

Rather than show up and fail to place, Mirra simply walked away from his bike. “I don’t really miss it,” he said in the interview.

BMX fans were upset about the abrupt retirement.Ìę,Ìęa BMX medalistÌęwho retired in 2010,Ìęremembers talking toÌęMirraÌęabout being the object of public ridicule.Ìę“People would talk shit about us [on social media and online] and it would hurt our feelings,”ÌęLavinÌęsays. “He was very, very, very sensitive, almost to a fault. He would say, ‘Oh,ÌęLavin, I don’t give a shit.’” But when pressed,ÌęMirraÌęwould admit that the criticism stung.

There comes a reckoning for every athlete when his skills diminish and his competitive career begins to wane. Faced with life-altering, disorienting decisions, he’s dogged by questions about himself: Who am I now? And where do I go from here?

“It is a big comedown,” says Lavin, whose career ended after he crashed while competing in a 2010 BMX dirt jumping event, sustained bleeding on his brain, and was placed in a medically-induced coma. “You see it with everybody, from baseball to football players and everybody else. They’re not in the pinnacle of their career anymore. It’s a hard pill to swallow.”

Retirement didn’t sit well with Mirra either, who friends say felt adrift without someplace to channel his inner drive. “He was the most fierce competitor I’ve ever known,” says Katie Moses Swope, Mirra’s publicist. As his BMX career wound down, Mirra tried to direct his substantial energies into another X Games sport: rally car racing.ÌęAt first, he was successful.ÌęHe won a bronze medal in the event at the 2008 X Games, and joined the Subaru racing team. But he struggled to continue thatÌęsuccess. In 2013, he was bounced from Subaru, and joined the Mini team, where he posted fast qualifying times, but was dogged by wrecks and false starts.

Then, in 2012, MirraÌęwatched a friend from Syracuse, Eric Hinman, compete in an Ironman in Lake Placid, New York. He recognized something that was both familiar (he had, after all, made a career riding a bike) and presented a new challenge. Mirra hired a coach and devoted himself to triathlon training in 2012.

“I saw his training, his intense dedication, and decided I needed something to fill a void,” Mirra about Hinman’s example. In March 2013 he competed at the 70.3-mile Bay Shore Triathlon, in Long Beach, California, placing fourth. “When I called my wife from the finish line I was almost in tears I felt so good,” he .

Mirra that he liked the heart and hard work required to get a good result. “I’ve never been a runner,” he said. “I’ve never been a swimmer and I never spent much time on a road bike, but I’m willing to put the work in and I’ve got some big personal goals for next year.”

He competed in the Raleigh Ironman 70.3 but was bogged down with the swim and run. He struggled to finish races in 2013 and switched coaches to improve his swimming.ÌęIn September of that year,Ìęhe qualified for the 2014Ìę70.3 World Championship inÌęMont-Tremblant,ÌęQuebec.ÌęHe finished in 4:36, good for 79th out of more than 300 in his age group.

As he trained, he began talking to Ben Bostrom, a pro motorcycle riderÌęwho he had metÌęon the 2014Ìę, a 3,000-mile road bike race from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic.ÌęWhen one of Bostrom's teammates got sick in the race and Bostrom had to log more miles,ÌęMirra offered to ride with Bostrom, even though Mirra had just completed his own ride. Their friendship was cemented in the grind of long days on the bike. The two made a pact to qualify for the 2015 Ironman World Championship, in Kona, Hawaii.

“I definitely didn’t have his work ethic,” says Bostrom. When other riders turned their bikes over to mechanics while they ateÌędinner and rested, Mirra would set to work on his own bike. “I’ve never seen anybody put so much into it.”

Mirra switched coaches again in preparation for a full Ironman’s longer distances (140.6 miles instead of the 70.3-mile half-Ironmans). “This is what scares me about the full distance,” Mirra told Triathlon Canada.Ìę“I just change as a person. It’s like a first relationship in high school, where not a second goes by in the day when you’re not thinking about the person.”

Ironman officials had previously offered Mirra a “media” qualifying exemption for the world championship. The same offer had been made toÌęÌęOlympic champion speed skater Apolo Ohno and retired Pittsburgh Steelers receiver Hines Ward, butÌęMirraÌęturned it down. He wanted to earn his way.

Because both Bostrom and MirraÌęwere 41, and every event has a limit on the number of qualifying slots for Kona in each age group, theyÌęregistered for separate competitions last year to avoid being in direct competition for a slot. Bostrom competed in Ironman Canada in Whistler, British Columbia, while Mirra signed up for Ironman Lake Placid, both heldÌęJuly 26.

Bostrom battled the conditions—becoming nearly hypothermic. While he crossed the finish line, he did not qualify. Meanwhile, Mirra struggled on the run, finishing in 11 hours, 54 seconds, good for 24th in his age group but not good enough for Kona. After the race, the tone ofÌęhis Instagram posts was overwhelmingly positive and triumphant. Yet Bostrom heard something else when they caught up by phone. “I could hear the letdown in his voice,” he says, “trying to figure out why he failed. He analyzed it. He broke it down.”

BostrumÌęsaid they could train together and try again in 2016. He said they would be stronger. At first,ÌęMirra seemed to agree.ÌęIn the coming days, however, heÌęchanged his mind—he wanted to attempt to earn a world championshipÌęslot at Ironman Mont-Tremblant on August 16, less than three weeks after theÌęLake Placid race. Rest and recovery from an Ironman is measured in months, not weeks. The psychological and physiological toll is depleting. Mirra disregarded that and went at another competition full bore. He completed the 2.4-mile swim in a personal best—one hour, seven minutes—but his legs simply stopped turning during the bike ride, and he did not finish. “Mirra went back for another go in just two weeks,” Bostrom says, “which the body can’t do.”

On September 17, Mirra was in Las Vegas—where both Bostrom and Lavin live—to attend the Number One Rider Award (NORA Cup) ceremony, an annual gathering of the tribe held by Ride BMX magazine. “No one had seen him in a while because he had been in his other worlds,” Hoffman says. “Everybody was so ecstatic that Dave was there. It was more like a Dave reunion than an awards show.”

Mirra stayed at Lavin’s house that week, and the two of them planned to join Bostrom to do some time trials. (Lavin isÌęaÌętriathlon competitor as well.) But the intense training never materialized: they rode bikes onlyÌęonce, and swam once in Bostrom’s pool. “It wasn’t the guy I was used to hearing push me,” says Bostrom. “Instead I was pushing him to try to train.”

One night Mirra replied by text. I’m sorry, Bostrom recalls him saying. I don’t mean to let you down. I just feel really low. I guess it’s just midlife crisis. The next day he sent another text saying he needed to get home to his girls. “He left just like that,” says Bostrom.

Lavin had his own cause for concern. A teetotaler, he had observed Mirra drinking more than usual that week. One night he sat Mirra down at a Starbucks at 4:30 a.m. “I was like, ‘Dave, you’ve developed some bad habits and it’s not a good look’,” Lavin recalls. “I wanted him to focus on being a great dad and a good person.”

The day Mirra left Las Vegas, Lavin phoned Bostrom. “We’ve got to watch that guy,” he said. “He’s pretty down.”

Both men periodically called to check up on Mirra. “I’m just tired, man,” he told Bostrom on one such phone call. “My body is just tired.”

On the afternoon of Thursday, FebruaryÌę4, Mirra was at home in GreenvilleÌęvisiting a friend across town. “They were making plans to go out again,” Greenville Police Chief Mark Holtzman would explain one day later. Around 4 p.m., Mirra left his friend’s house, climbed into the cab of his truck, which was parked in the driveway, and shot himselfÌęwith a handgun. He left no suicide note, but Holtzman said a police investigation concluded thatÌę“he had been struggling in some areas like [depression].”

After Mirra’s suicide, Bostrom got a call from Jimmie Johnson, the six-time Sprint Cup series champion, and another fitness fanatic. “Have you looked into head injury?” he asked. Bostrom hadn’t, though he had sustained a major blow in a motorcycle crash at Daytona International Speedway. Johnson explained that a football player friend of his had gone just like Mirra. “You guys should look out for each other,” he said.

To Lavin,ÌęCTE sounded plausible. “There’s no other explanation for why a guy with everything would do something like that,” he said.

Others were skeptical. Hoffman, who estimates he’s had at least 100 concussions, was among them.Ìę“It’s soÌęeasyÌęto go, ‘OK, that’s what’s wrong,’”Ìęhe says about CTE.Ìę“I don’t think it’s so simple.”

Many are baffled that a man with so much to look forward to—his wife and daughters, a return to BMX—would give that up.ÌęYet some friends wonder if his failure to reach new goals in new sports may have contributed to that moment. They knew that Mirra's success was due to an abiding drive to achieve more. At 41 years old, though, his days of performing at the highest levelÌęwere dwindling.ÌęHoffman was even wary aboutÌęMirra'sÌęreturn to BMX, though he says the two never discussed it. Hoffman didn't want to add to any pressure Mirra had already put on himself.Ìę

“The greatest athletes and artists are their worst critics,” Hoffman says. “The trick is being your worst critic while not driving yourself crazy.”Ìę

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Hollywood seldom portrays action sports in a way that makes practitioners proud. The 1980s, when a lot of action sports were in their infancies, include some of the worst offenses: Hot Dog (1984, skiing), Rad (1986, motocross), North Shore (1987, surfing), and Gleaming the Cube (1989, skateboarding). If you remember those movies, it’s probably for the wrong reasons.

“Big movie productions make something rad cheesy,” says pro skater Bob Burnquist. “It’s the opposite of what we do.”

Then in the summer of 1991, premiered. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty, The Hurt Locker) and starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, the plot concerned an FBI agent infiltrating a crew of surfers and skydivers who rob banks to finance their thrill-seeking lifestyle. No cinematic masterpiece—its sins include corny dialogue, dopey acting, and contrived scenarios—Point Break still got enough right about the spirit of action sports to create an enduring legacy. Scenes featuring progressive surfing and skydiving inspired not only a generation of athletes, but have led to a , which opens Christmas Day.

The reboot, directed by Ericson Core and starring Luke Bracey as FBI agent Johnny Utah and Edgar Ramirez as Bodhi, eschewed computer generated imagery in favor of real stunts from some of the most creative athletes in snowboarding, skateboarding, climbing, surfing, and wingsuit BASE jumping. I caught up with several of them to talk about the influence of the original, and how they believe their work in the latest Point Break could inspire a new generation of devotees.

James Boole

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In 1992, the year following the original film’s release, registrations to the , the national governing body for skydiving, shot up 29 percent. Coincidence?

“I was blown away by the amazing freefall sequences, and a seed was planted,” says Boole, a wingsuit pilot and aerial cameraman who first saw Point Break at age 15 in England, where he grew up. “Four years later, I made my first skydive and my life was changed forever. Nearly every skydiver has seen Point Break more than once, and many experienced jumpers of my generation cite the film as their inspiration.”

For the remake, Boole joined fellow wingsuit BASE jumpers and stunt doubles Mike Swanson (who doubles for Bodhi), Julian Boulle (Grommet), Noah Bahnson (Roach), and Jon Devore (Utah) on Hinderrugg Mountain above Walenstadt, Switzerland, in August 2014. They jumped at a place called Sputnik, which achieved notoriety in Jeb Corliss’s 2011 viral video, “.”

Boole and Jhonathan Florez (who in a wingsuit accident in Switzerland) served as aerial cameramen, filming the other fliers in formation through the narrow, twisting canyon. They made more than 100 jumps in five weeks while wearing eight-pound cameras mounted on their helmets.

“The unseen risk is the wake turbulence that trails behind each pilot, similar to a boat,” says Boole. “If you catch a burble, you lose control, risking a group collision. It tested all the skills I’ve learnt in the last two decades of jumping, and is by far the most elaborate BASE jumping sequence ever filmed.”

Ian Walsh

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A leading big-wave charger, Walsh, 32, of Maui, hasn’t seen the original Point Break in years, but what endures for him today are the actors’ classic lines.

“Pretty much all of Gary Busey,” he says about his favorites. Then he yells, “Utah, get me two!” in his best . “If you throw that out and someone you are hanging out with doesn’t know that’s from Point Break, there’s probably something wrong with them,” Walsh says.

Walsh received a call one night from one of the filmmakers in January 2014, asking him to pull together a crew and head out the following morning to Jaws, the iconic big-wave spot off Maui’s north shore. At 5 a.m., with cameras rolling, Walsh rode out in massive surf on jet skis with Billy Kemper, Makua Rothman, and Ahanu Tson-dru, taking turns towing into rolling walls of water.

“That was the biggest day we had in five years at Jaws,” Walsh says. “The waves were massive.”

Mike Basich

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An accomplished backcountry snowboarder, Basich, 43, was part of the first wave of professionals in his sport, competing on the World Cup and X Games circuits in the 1990s.

“Point Break had a core feeling to it,” says Basich, who watched the film multiple times at a dollar show in Sacramento when he was a teenager. “It was something you wanted to be a part of.”

For the remake, Basich rode with fellow stuntmen Xavier de la Rue, Ralph Backstrom, and Mitch Toelderer in the Italian Alps, near Chamonix. They were in avalanche territory, above 500-foot-tall cliffs, and in rocky couloirs, accompanied by a helicopter, cameras, and as many as 20 crewmembers and actors on site. “It was sketchy,” Basich says. “We set off avalanches every other run.”

The biggest challenge: four guys riding in line, with the Bodhi character in the lead, and Basich in the rear, struggling to see through all the powder kicked up by the others. Backcountry riders typically avoid groups due to avalanche danger. Taken together with the terrain Basich believes that footage depicting four riders in formation will look next-level. “All of us were excited about how progressive that felt.”

Bob Burnquist

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One of the world’s leading vert skaters (the guys on the half pipe), Burnquist, 38, is also a skydiver, BASE jumper, and airplane and helicopter pilot. He saw Point Break in Portuguese as a teenager at a movie theater in his native Brazil.

“When I watched the movie, it connected that dot” to his dream of flying, he said about the skydiving stunts.

For the reboot, Burnquist plays himself, hanging at a party on a yacht with fellow pro skater Jeff King, big-wave legend Laird Hamilton, and action sports commentator Sal Masekala, along with Utah and Bodhi. The yacht, anchored off the coast of Italy, came equipped with a mega-ramp on the deck, and Burnquist launched a few times into the water for the cameras.

“I can’t wait to watch it with my critical eye,” he says. “This better be good. Expectations are high!”

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For the past fewÌęmonths,ÌęÌęwas making practice flights for his latest stunt, tentatively called the Human Arrow. The plan was this:ÌęOn September 18, sometime between 9 and 11 p.m. EST on NBC, Corliss wouldÌędive from a helicopter wearing a wingsuit, accelerate to 120 miles per hour, and, if all went as planned, use the GoPro camera mounted on his helmet to hit an apple-size dot on a target positioned 60 feet above the Great Wall of China.

The flightÌęwould have been the latest feat in a career of such stunts for Corliss, whose 2011 “” video, in which he dives at a balloon-holding accomplice on a mountainside in Switzerland, has been viewed more than 29.6 million times on YouTube.

Though the Chinese authorities pulled approval for the flight before it could occur*,Ìęthese kinds of high-risk events have become an essential part of reaching audiences for television networks like Discovery and NBC, sponsors like GoPro and Red Bull, and, yes, media companies like șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű.Ìę

“The first thing people put on is their wingsuit, and the second is a helmet camera to shoot video of their jump,” says , a 34-year-old wingsuit pilot from Moab, Utah, who has nearly 500 flights under his belt. “Things have gotten more dangerous as the sport has become commercialized.”

In 2003, featured Loïc Jean-Albert flying as little as 15 feet off the ground. It was originally released on DVD, before YouTube even existed. Flash forward to this summer, when Uli Emanuele, a relatively unknown 29-year-old from Italy, in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. His 150-second video, another GoPro-sponsored jump, racked up more than four million views in the first month. These days, video clips of terrain flying—skimming perilously close to the ground, without room to maneuver if something goes wrong—are the best way to attract attention. And the closer the better.

“New people are getting into it, and that’s what they think the sport is,” says Steph Davis, a 42-year-old professional climber and wingsuit pilot from Moab, Utah. “I’ve been wingsuit BASE jumping for eight years, and flying with no margin for error is not smart.”Ìę

Visions of making it as a pro exert a powerful pull, but Corliss is one of only a few pilots who have the luxury of flying full-time. “People are chasing a dream,” Mitchard says. “The financial rewards are not that great.”

The costs, however, can be. Although a wingsuit pilot has yet to die on live TV, the sport has seen a tragic two years. Since 2013, more than 50 pilots have died while flying. In May, Dean Potter, 43, and Graham Hunt, 29, were killed in California’s Yosemite Valley. In July, Jhonathan Florez, a 32-year-old Colombian who held the record for the longest wingsuit flight, . If the most experienced pilots are dying, what happens when novices try complex flights?

“On a long enough timeline, wingsuit BASE jumping will kill you,” says Matt Gerdes, co-owner of , a wingsuit manufacturer in Seattle. But he and other pilots I talked to take a libertarian approach: they think that wingsuiters will chase risky flights whether people are watching or not—and that that’s OK. “If people want to kill themselves doing it, they should be able to,” Gerdes says.

And, sooner or later, you can bet viewers will be tuned in when they do.

*This article originally appeared in the October issue. Though the flight was still on at press time, a Corliss representative told șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű thatÌęChinese officials nixed the jump shortly before the article was posted online. The online version was revised to reflect that information.Ìę

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The first boat to sink in the Gulf Stream 100—the first government-sanctioned race from Key West to HavanaÌęsince the easing of diplomatic relations between the two countries—did so just 30 miles into the race. Buffeted by big seas, the rudder ripped from the starboard hull, which began taking on water. A towline soon damaged the other hull, and the little catamaran was hauled in pieces aboard the 72-foot Ocean Star, a lumbering gray salvage boat.

“If one Hobie Cat makes it, I’ll be surprised,” said Phil Shuff, captain of the fleet’s lead support boat, the 57-foot Bella Donna.Ìę

It’s Saturday, May 16.ÌęThree hours earlier, a crowd and news cameras gathered at the foot of Duval StreetÌęin Key WestÌęto witness the start of the race.ÌęThe boats had nearly 70Ìęmiles to go, and it seemed like only a miracle could get them Havana. “This all runs on adrenaline and optimism,” said Joe Weatherby, theÌę53-year-old former Wall Street trader who now builds artificial reefsÌęand helped organizeÌęthis race.Ìę

A mere six months earlier, it seemed impossible that five Hobie Cats and 14 support boats would have legal permission to make the trip. But things change. Sixty years ago, yachts cruised to Cuba from all over Florida—St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Miami. Key West even ran daily ferry service to Havana, then a destination more lurid than Las Vegas. The climate and a cosmopolitan, libertine atmosphere attracted Graham Greene, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and, most famously, Ernest Hemingway, who periodically lived in and around Havana forÌę20 years.

All of that ceased after the 1959 revolution that deposed strongman Fulgencio Batista and installed the Castros to power. In 1961, the United StatesÌębroke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. For the next 50 years, the only people crossing the straits were los balserosÌę(the rafters who risk everything for el norte), smugglers, and the occasional intrepid sailor or fisherman who defied the authorities.Ìę

Weatherby and his longtime friend George Bellenger, a sailor with thick silver hair that is the envy of any politician, fell into the latter group. As Weatherby says, “George has been thrown out of Cuba more times than Sloppy Joe’s,” a famously rowdy Key West bar. The two met at the University of Delaware in the early 1980s, came to Key West on spring break, and have remained, on and off, ever since.

In October 1996, the duo sailed a Hobie Cat to Cuba without Coast Guard approval, guidebooks, or a plan other than heading south. The crossing took nine hours, followed by a four-hour paddle to Marina Hemingway, west of Havana. “We were denied visas,” Bellenger says. “Turns out you needed a passport to visit Cuba.” But instead of staying at the marina complex as ordered, they snuck into Havana to eat and drink their way through the city’s old quarter. The harbormaster busted them on their return and ordered them to leave in the morning.

“The seas were 20-plus feet,” Bellenger recalls. “The boat was falling apart. We literally had to use some string to hold the mast up. All our navigation equipment broke except Joe’s wristwatch compass.”

When they returned, they vowed to make the trip again. Bellenger did so a dozen times over the next five years—five of them on a Hobie Cat—often accompanied by his wife, Carla, as well as WeatherbyÌęand other friends. But the threat of prosecution in the tense post-9/11 political atmosphere halted his adventures.

In April 2014, sensing that the political situation was in flux, the Bellengers and Weatherby launched a campaign to be the first to make a sanctioned crossing. The timing was fortuitous. In December, President Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro announced plans to normalize relations. In May, Cuba was removed from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. In July, the two countries reopened embassies. On August 14, Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Cuba to raise a U.S. flag at the embassy in Havana. It all appeared almost effortless.

Yet there were reasons Weatherby and the Bellengers called their expeditionÌęthe Havana Challenge—theyÌęspent a year navigating an array of federal offices,Ìęincluding the departments of commerce, defense, and state. Bellenger wrote a letter appealing for helpÌęto the office of Vice President Joe Biden, a fellow Delaware native. Key West mayor Craig Cates enlisted the city’s lobbyist inÌęWashington, DC. Pat Croce, a former owner of the Philadelphia 76ers—and proprietor of six Key West bars—leaned on friends in the federal government.Ìę

It took more than a year, but the event finally received its permits just hours before the May 15 departure. Across Key West, a scramble had been on for coveted spots in the fleet, which were advertised via what locals call “the coconut telegraph,” or word of mouth. Bellenger and Weatherby personally approved all the sailors and powerboat captains, most of whom were acquaintances, colleagues, and characters known for excellence on the water. “We’ve got a couple very rich people on this trip,” Weatherby said in a gravelly South Jersey accent, “and we’ve got the boys from the dock.”

At Schooner Wharf, a tavern thick with sticky sea air and nautical bric-a-brac, charter boat captains Wade Miller and Seth Salzmann formed their partnership over drinks, found a Hobie Cat on Craigslist for $1,200, and signed on. “Going to Cuba, getting in a 1950s car, talking Spanish—those are things I had never done before,” Miller said about the race’s appeal.

Tim Flanagan and Eric Youtz were pumping poop from a boat at Sebago Watersports when they agreed to team up. “For us, it was the forbidden fruit,” Flanagan explained. “You hear in the American media how it is to come from Cuba. We had to go see.” They bought a used Hobie Cat for $2,400Ìęand named it Goat Rodeo.Ìę

The problem with racing on Hobie Cats is that the crafts are better for day sailing than deep water. The 12-knot winds and 10-foot swells proved difficult as soon as the race began. When that first Hobie went down,Ìęthe boat’s captain, Rio O’Bryan, had to dive to untangle the towline from a propeller. “I thought a mako was going to come up on us,” O’Bryan said. “I was thinking for sure I was going to lose a leg.”

Ahead, Doug Conner, 59, and Jeff Stotts, 58, soon capsized in the middle of the Gulf Stream. The oldest sailors in the race, they had dubbed themselves Team AdvilÌębecause they required so much pain reliever. They drifted more than three miles before they finally gave up, climbed aboard a support boat, and watched their craft slip beneath the waves.Ìę

The other sailors fared scarcelyÌębetter as they chased first-place Wil Kinsey and John McCandless, a seaplane pilot known as Johnny Dread, and their Hobie,Ìęcalled WolbemÌę(an anagram of “blow me”). Miller and Salzmann were gaining ground when they struck something and their boat plunged underwater. From a support boat, Salzmann’s father screamed, “Shark!” A fin surfaced, followed by a geyser of air—they had hit a breaching whale. They righted the boat and sailed on, having lost precious time.

Behind them, Goat Rodeo surfed down a six-foot growler, buried its bows, and flipped, withÌęFlanagan falling on Youtz’s face and bloodying his nose. Swinging the mast back into the wind, they reached the sea buoy off Marina Hemingway an hour and a half later, at 6:30 p.m., to take third—out of three remaining boats.

The sailors were exhausted at customs, but there was little time to rest. They had three days to recover and repair their Hobies before sailing against members of Cuba’s national teams in a regatta off the Malecon, Havana’s seawall.

The list of repairs was long: Only two of the Hobies had completed the crossing entirely intact. But the Cuban competitors—most of them teenagers—were eager to help, scavenging parts from the wreckage of O’Connor and O’Bryan’s boat, employing ingenuity and repurposing practices prevalent in a country where American cars from the 1950s are still in service. With fiberglass and epoxy, they helped the Americans patch holes on the hulls. They sanded. They tightened the trampolines.

Meanwhile, the sailors toured the city. In the bars of Habana Vieja, they heard salsa, mambo, and, always, “Guantanamera.”Ìę(Weatherby, in his Tom Waits growl, changed its lyrics toÌę“One-ton-a-ganja.”) They pursued Hemingway, whose ghost is everywhere inÌęCuba. They cruised the long curve of the Malecon in an aqua 1953 Chevy Deluxe convertible, inhaling the sea and smoke from a Cohiba.

In timeÌęcapsule Cuba, they recorded change.

“One thing I noticed on this trip was the lack of large billboards espousing the party line,” said Bellenger. “You don’t see a lot of ‘socialism or death’Ìęor ‘capitalistic imperial pig’ billboards.”

Finally, on Tuesday, May 19, beneath brilliant nimbus skies, the survivingÌęrefitted Hobie fleet raced members of the Cuban national team on a course between the U.S. Special Interests Section building—which on Monday, July 20, was reestablished as the U.S. embassy after 54 years—and the grand Hotel Nacional, operated by the likes of Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano before the revolutionaries expelled the gangsters.Ìę

The Cuban sailors easily swept the regatta. After all, the Hobie captains were “a bunch of water kooks enjoying a beautiful day,” as Johnny Dread said.

After the race, Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, a former naval office and current commodore of the Hemingway International Yacht Club, led an awards ceremony. He favored double-breasted blue blazers and boat shoes and spoke in the stentorian tones of a Latin American military leader. “It was a real challenge to come here,” he said through a translator. “I think the people coming across, the Hobie Cat racers, their motivation to face strong wind and waves was amazing.”

“We are right in history!” he said, poking the air with his index finger. “We are riding in a boat of history between Key West and Havana, contributing to a relationship between the U.S. and CubaÌęto bring down a policy in which hatred has been the leader. Take down hatredÌęand put love instead!”

The next day, the commodore led the American fleet on a historic parade into Havana Harbor, where crowds of Habaneros yelledÌęfrom shore. The Bella Donna, he said, was the first boat under the American flag in Havana Harbor in some 50 years.

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“I’m a trial and error dude, not a mathematician,” tells me in a bright Cockney accent. It sounds harmless enough, until you consider that Uragallo, a short 61-year-old with thinning white hair, skin freckled by the sun, and a hitch in his gait from a skydiving accident decades ago, is the world’s preeminent wingsuit maker. His suits have been used to set world records for the longest, farthest, and fastest flights. If you’ve seen the 2011 YouTube video “” (29.4 million views and counting), in which dives from a cliff in Switzerland and flies directly over an accomplice who is holding a bunch of party balloons above his head, you’ve seen an Uragallo creation. Or maybe you’re familiar with Englishman Gary Connery’s jump from a helicopter in 2012, when he made a Ìęinto a pile of cardboard boxes. Connery was wearing an Uragallo suit, too.

While aviation engineers utilize wind tunnels and computer modeling, Uragallo spends most of his days hunched over a Juki sewing machine in the back room of his workshop in . His guiding lights: decades of sewing experience and what he’s read about Bernoulli’s principle, the scientific law explaining how fluid dynamics create lift. He never attended college and has no formal training in aeronautics, design, or even sewing. It’s mostly intuition. “He visualizes a shape in his mind, and he’s a genius about creating it with a sewing machine and thread,” says Corliss, a 39-year-old Californian and one of the world’s leading wingsuit pilots.

Uragallo is a bit more modest. “I just make prototypes,” he says. “Sometimes, before I’ve even finished one, I’ve got another idea.”

Once he has finished sewing a suit, he uses a leaf blower to inflate it, observes its shape, and examines how well the wings maintain air pressure, which is critical to good glide. Then he drives a few hundred yards down the road to , one of the busiest drop zones in Florida, performs a test flight, and returns to the shop to make more modifications. “It’s almost like a guy who spends his days folding paper airplanes,” says , a 40-year-old climber and wingsuit pilot. “Some might look like a glider, some might look like a rocket or an arrow. He’s always playing around with different folds.”

Long before the wingsuits, Uragallo was a skydiver. He learned in 1970, while serving as a gunner in the British army reserve, and he kept it up after he was discharged in 1972. This was in the early days of the sport, and everyone wore surplus military flight suits when they jumped. Then, one weekend in 1976, Uragallo spotted a skydiver who had a black jumpsuit with a rainbow design. He wanted one of his own, but the money he earned laying bricks and working in the family chip shop wasn’t enough for him to special-order one. So he biked across London, bought a quiver of cotton fabrics, and sewed it himself on his mother’s machine. “I broke a needle every foot,” he recalls.

The results were impressive enough that other skydivers commissioned him to make suits. His family wasn’t supportive of his new hobby, at least at first. “My old man hated the idea of men sewing,” Uragallo says. He persevered, though, buying a top-end sewing machine and cranking out 400 jumpsuits over the next two summers. His creations were popular for their wild designs—lots of stripes and abstract shapes—and loud colors. Increased sales funded travel to compete in international skydiving competitions, where his results—he won the 1978 Australian four-way formation championship—helped grow both his business and his reputation as a skydiver.

In 1979, Uragallo competed in Zephyrhills, a rural, conservative town an hour east of Tampa that had a burgeoning skydiving scene. When he realized that Florida’s warm, sunny weather meant he could skydive year-round, he sold his parachute and harness, got an apartment and car, and set to work.

“Everything was boring until Tony came along,” says , who owns local skydiving shop . Uragallo, who had chaotic red hair and thick glasses, “was always the life of the party,” Murphy says. “The city wasn’t thrilled with the wild and crazy, Hell’s Angels kind of image we had.” In a largely Christian town, the antics of free-spirited skydivers tended to clash with social norms. Uragallo was once evicted for having a child while unmarried.

Late nights and wild parties notwithstanding, by the mid-1990s, had more than 20 employees and distributed its wares in North America, Europe, and Australia. It was around then that a member of the French national skydive team, , took one of Uragallo’s suits and sewed wings under the arms and between the legs, incorporating principles of parachute design to create the modern wingsuit prototype. “He was everybody’s hero,” Uragallo says of Gayardon, who once exited a plane, caught up with it again in flight, and reentered it.

Wingsuits had been around since the earliest days of aviation, but without design standards or adequate training, they were frequently deadly, and most drop zones banned them outright. But Gayardon’s suit was safer and offered superior glide. Over the next decade, a number of other manufacturers began producing them.

Uragallo was wary of the dangers, especially after , but he kept an eye on the market. In 2006, after he sold off the parachute division of Tony Suits, Uragallo felt there was finally enough demand for him to make money on wingsuits. He took to it immediately. The creative problem-solving of making prototypes appealed to his restless mind, and piloting them made skydiving seem boring. “Flying a wingsuit is more like Peter Pan than skydiving ever was,” he says. “Flying around big clouds is the best fun of all.”

British BASE jumper Ìęand American Dean PotterÌęhad suggested that Uragallo create a suit for BASE jumping that incorporated a parachute container within the suit rather than outside of it, which can disrupt flight. Uragallo created one that featured more surface area than his competitors’. He called it the , and it allowed pilots to fly faster and farther than any suit previously developed, though many sneered at the square silhouette and thick profile. “People made fun of them for looking like flying carpets or dog beds,” says Ogwyn.

But Uragallo, and others flying his suits from cliffs, kept winning competitions. In Switzerland, a jumper approached Boole, who by then was working as a salesman for Tony Suits, and said, “If this suit can make that little fat guy win the fastest competition in the world, it must be really good.”

Uragallo’s new generation of suits transformed the BASE-jumping world. “That was the beginning of proximity flight,” says Ogwyn, referring to the technique in which pilots scream along mountain terrain just feet from the surface. Soon others were making suits with proportions that mimicked Uragallo’s. “They all bloody criticized it for years,” he says. “Now they’re fucking copying it.”

Today, Tony Suits makes approximately 1,500 jumpsuits (which sell for $300 to $500) and 500 wingsuits ($1,000 and up) per year. “I try to tell my employees, ‘You’re not making handbags here,’ ” Uragallo says. “Especially wingsuits. People can die if you mess it up.”

Uragallo has seen that kind of tragedy firsthand. In 1978, he was floating under his parachute when another skydiver in free fall collided with him. Uragallo broke his right leg in five places; the other man was killed. In August 2013, Uragallo was flying in the Swiss Alps with fellow Englishman Mark Sutton . And in May 2014, Ìęwhile flying in Florida. He opened his parachute low and couldn’t correct a malfunction in time to keep him from spinning to the ground. Most recently, in May, Uragallo’s longtime friend Dean Potter died with fellow pilot Graham HuntÌęin Yosemite National Park.

The added dangers with BASE—the proximity to objects, the lower altitude at the beginning of a flight—can result in tragedies that occasionally overwhelm Uragallo. “I’m sick of people dying,” he says. “You meet them and they’re dead the next week.” Combine that with the physical toll and there are times when Uragallo considers putting away the needle and thread for good. “At my age, it’s more fun to read or work in the garden,” he says.

Ogwyn has considered Uragallo’s absence; he decided it was best to stockpile every suit Uragallo had ever made for him. But retirement is probably years away. Tony’s bright blue eyes still flicker with fresh ideas, the kind that could make his suits even faster and more agile. Sometimes it seems he may never quit. “Trying something new is too exciting,” he says.Ìę

The Toll

Wingsuit flying is one of the most dangerous activities on earth. In the past year alone, at least nine pilots have died at jump spots around the world.

Dean Potter, 43
Yosemite National Park, California

Graham Hunt, 29
Yosemite National Park, California

JoshuaÌęSheppard, 31
Jackson, Michigan

Donald Zarda, 44
AnzĂšre, Switzerland

Ramon Rojas, 35
Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

Beau Weiher, 22
Glacier National Park, Montana

Alex Duncan, 26
Evionnaz, Switzerland

Shaun Otto, 33
Chamonix, France

Abraham Cubo LĂłpez, 38
Arco, Italy

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Thirty-six-year-old Jeb Corliss is the biggest name in BASE jumping, renowned for both his stunning accomplishments and his spectacular failures. He became a national story in 2006, when, as host of a Discovery Channel series called , he was arrested for attempting to leap off the Empire State Building after slipping past security with a parachute hidden under a fat suit. Corliss lost his job and was convicted of misdemeanor reckless endangerment, but he went on to pull off a number of breakthrough wingsuit flights, including two last year: one through a cave in the side of a mountain in China, and another through a ravine in Switzerland for “Grinding the Crack,” a clip that went viral on YouTube (13.5 million views and counting). Then in January came his biggest hit yet: a nearly fatal accident during a wingsuit flight down Cape Town, South Africa’s Table Mountain while filming for HBO. Corliss slammed into a granite ledge and cartwheeled through the air but still managed to open his chute. Video of the incident was broadcast on news outlets worldwide, and he spent five weeks in a hospital recovering from two broken ankles, a broken leg, and a gash that required skin grafts. In March, Matt Higgins reached the daredevil at his sister’s house in Palm Springs, California, where he was nursing his wounds and plotting his return.

What went through your mind when you crashed on Table Mountain?
I hit the wall—“Oh, my God”—and I’m tumbling, and the pain is really severe. I knew what it meant to impact: you’re dead. My brain split into two. One side was going, There’s no surviving this. Do you want a quick, painless death? Just don’t pull a parachute. Or do you want to friggin’ open your parachute and bleed out while you’re waiting for rescue? The other side was like, Pull now! Pull now! I remember pulling and landing and lying there and suffering. I thought I was dying.

All things considered, you escaped with relatively mild injuries.
When the doctor told me, it was the greatest news I’d ever received. I was ecstatic. I made the ultimate mistake—the one there’s no way you should walk away from. It turned out to be the greatest BASE jump of my entire life, the greatest experience of my entire life.

Really?
It changed me. Pain teaches you. I’ve learned a lot from it.Ìę

Like what?
It was a refresher course on what it is to be alive: don’t sweat the small shit. But more than anything, Table Mountain retrained me on that whole respect idea. It was like, Dude, have respect for what you’re doing. I don’t care how big you think you are. Don’t give yourself a one-inch margin for error. That’s dumb.Ìę

The accident also made you famous.
I’m doing a different TVÌęinterview every other day. I’m selling more footage now than ever. I could retire off this,Ìęprobably. But I won’t, because this is what I do. If I had known it would be such a good thing for my career, I would have done it sooner. [Laughs.]

You’ve been planning to become the first to land a wingsuit flight without a parachute. Now British stuntman Gary Connery says he’s about to do it. Is that frustrating?
I’ve been working on this for six years. I always had a feeling that eventually some raging psychopath would do it first. I just never expected that that person would use the boxÌęcatcher method.

Right, Connery plans to land on cardboard boxes. Your idea required millions of dollars to build a sophisticated landing runway.
Our first plan was also very low-tech and inexpensive. But we deemed it too dangerous. So when I heard this guy was going to do it, I was like, “Oooh, OK. Good luck.” Everyone’s like, “He’s going to do it before you!” Let’s see. Is he going to go for it? I believe he’s going to try. Is he going to succeed? Time will tell.

Say he pulls it off. Then what?
Put it this way: when Hillary climbed Everest, it wasn’t the last time it was climbed. Let’s say he flies and walks away from it. He’s the first person to land a wingsuit. It doesn’t change what I want to do. I still want to land in a major city. I still want to land on a runway. I still want to land at high speed. I won’t be first, but I can do it better.Ìę

When will you be recovered enough to jump again?
My first jumps will be at the end of June. Then I’ll probably go to Europe and do my usual cycle: jump all summer, shoot footage, test equipment, stay current. When winter comes, it’s time for knee reconstruction. I no longer have an ACL in my left knee.

Any other big projects in the works?
I want to start touching things during flights. I did it by accident on Table Mountain. Now I want to do it on purpose—trees, bushes. I’m just going to try to avoid touching solid granite from this point forward.

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IT'S AN EARLY MORNING in June, and Matterhorn Peak rises in front of Jeremy Jones's Ford Focus as we speed through the Sierra Nevada. “You ever read The Dharma Bums?” Jones asks from the driver's seat, adding that Kerouac visited the 12,264-foot California peak in 1955 to explore the relationship between mountaineering and spiritual awareness.

You don't usually expect to talk literature with a professional snowboarder, but Jones is no halfpipe punk. A circumspect 35-year-old who plays chess and paints, he is the world's foremost big-mountain rider, and over the past few years he's made a series of career moves that may well change popular notions of what a snowboarder can accomplish. In 2007, he launched an environmental nonprofit, Protect Our Winters (POW), which seeks to slow climate change—and thus safeguard powder days—through educational initiatives and grants for alternative-energy projects. In 2009, he ended a 19-year sponsorship with Rossignol to start his own company, Jones Snowboards, which has just released a line of Forest Stewardship Council–certified freeride decks. And early last year he swore off helicopters and snowcats, essential tools for any pro trying to drop backcountry peaks in places like Alaska and the Andes.

That last choice might seem insignificant—wanting to “earn your turns” is hardly new—but it's a curious stance for an athlete who made his name by choppering up and then charging down big mountains. It's like Laird Hamilton giving up his jet ski. It's also the kind of commitment that could make Jones the Yvon Chouinard of snowboarding, respected as much for his adventure cred as his personal ethos. Jones's latest film with Teton Gravity Research, Deeper, has him leading top riders up remote slopes on treks that feel more like mountaineering expeditions than snow-porn outings.

“I want to get back to the roots of it all—get dirty again,” says Jones, who slept in his car and subsisted on PB&J early in his career and these days sports a wild mane and scruffy beard. “I don't need sushi waiting for me when I get off the helicopter and dinner with some pompous …” He catches himself there, while steering us toward 13,053-foot Mount Dana, where we're planning to hike up and ride a glaciated couloir. Then he adds, “I've met great people along the way.”

A former racer, Jones began freeriding full-time after failing to make the 1998 U.S. Olym­pic team. Ever since, he's pulled off perilous descents on heli-missions all over the world, appearing in more than 45 movies, many by TGR, the production company co-founded by his brothers, Steve and Todd, in 1995.

“If he retired tomorrow, his place in snowboarding is guaranteed,” says Pat Bridges, editor of Snowboarder, where Jones has been voted Big Mountain Rider of the Year eight times by his peers. “He's done more for that genre of riding than anybody.”

But after a decade of first descents, Jones was burned out. “When I first went to Alaska, every day was the best of my life,” he tells me. “I'd get home and I'd be bouncing off walls. But it started to go away. It took so much for me to get that buzz that I needed to ride the most dangerous shit out there.”

At the same time, Jones was developing an environmental consciousness like so many others in the great green wake of An Inconvenient Truth. He started thinking about his abundant use of helicopters and snowcats and snowmobiles—and noticing melting glaciers in the mountains. He wanted to do something but hoped to play a supporting role. “I was like, 'Where do I send my check?” he says. He founded POW after a friend convinced him he had an opportunity to leverage his star power. Despite the group's success—they've signed on 10,000-plus members and Jones recently spoke to Congress about the need for climate-change legislation—he remains a reluctant hero, fretting about his lack of education (he never went to college) and the ingrained habits of his profession. (“We've all been gluttonous heli-patrons,” concedes brother Steve.)

Jeremy's status as a green icon should grow with the launch of his brand and the release of Deeper. His boards, which start at $400, are built by by Nidecker Snowboards, a Swiss company with a commitment to low-impact manufacturing. They have wood cores cut from sustainably managed forests, paper-film topsheets that eliminate a pound of plastic per board, and base materials made in part from reclaimed old boards.

The idea behind Deeper was kickstarted in 2008 when Jones hiked a couloir in the Sierra for another film shoot. The descent “paled in comparison to Alaska,” he says, but the slog up completely altered his take on the experience: “I got down and began screaming.” Here he was having fun again—and without the need for a gas-guzzling lift up the mountain. “You've been drooling over this sparkling line all morning on the climb,” he explains. “You're peaking on endorphins, then you chase those with adrenaline. It's the ultimate cocktail.”

Deeper features an all-star cast, including Travis Rice, Xavier de Le Rue, Jonaven Moore, Josh Dirksen, and Tom Burt, plus something you don't see in snowboard films: lots of hiking and climbing. On three continents, the riders ascend peaks on foot or splitboard—a snowboard that can be separated into ski-like lengths for skinning up a slope—sometimes starting up at 2 A.M. Jones had to spend more than 50 nights camping in the backcountry.

Jones, ever the cautious crusader, hastens to clarify that Deeper “is not an an environmental film. We're not trying to push environmental messages.”

Like most athletes, Jones is happiest making his point with actions, which is why he invited me to join him on Mount Dana, the second-highest peak in Yosemite National Park. “The climb is going to kick your ass,” he promised when I arrived at the modest Truckee, California, home he shares with his wife, Tiffany, and two kids, Mia and Cass.

He was right. Four hours after setting out, I catch up with Jones at the summit. We strap in and link turns down summer corn, then follow a stream back to the car. “That was a great day,” Jones says, beaming.

I'm feeling transformed, too. It's a prevailing sense of peace and satisfaction, something like a runner's high.

“That high is what I'm looking for,” says Jones. “Searching for it has been the catalyst for everything.”

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Halfway Round
Teenager Abby Sunderland was on track to become the youngest person to solo-circumnavigate the globe. the ocean had other plans.

I WAS 16 AND ALONE in the southern In­dian Ocean, exactly halfway into my attempt to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world. My brother Zac had set the record the previous year, when he was 17. And if he could do it, I definitely could, too.

When you're that far south, you expect bad weather. But my 40-foot racing yacht, Wild Eyes, was holding up against the swells, and I would stay below, tied into bed, reading books, listening to music. One of the best parts of the day was checking my e-mail.

About three weeks out of Cape Town, the storm hit. There were mountains of water all day. The boat was knocked down four times, but, with its heavy ballast, it always righted itself. Night falls really early down south. At 4 P.M. it was already dark, but by 5:30 the storm had died down, so I called home. I'd had some trouble with my engine, and my dad helped me get it running again. Then the call dropped. I set my sat phone down on the chart desk. While I was replacing the engine cover, a rogue wave struck.

I flew across the cabin and hit my head. Everything faded out for a second. When I came to, I was sitting on the ceiling in a foot and a half of water. Things were falling everywhere. It was pitch black. After 20 seconds, the boat slowly rolled back over.

The mast was gone. I could feel it missing as the boat righted. When you lose your mast, you immediately think, OK, I'm going to jury-rig that. I sliced through some lines that were blocking the door and went out to see if the hull was damaged. The carbon-fiber mast was dangling in the water; the boom, also carbon fiber, was snapped in half. There was nothing left for me to jury-rig. I sat outside on deck in my jeans and T-shirt for a few minutes thinking there was nothing else I could do. Waves were dumping over the boat. I was shaking from fear and cold.

Back inside, both of my Iridium phones were soaked and shorted out. I knew that activating my emergency beacon was going to trigger an all-out rescue effort back home. I was sitting there soaking, still kind of dizzy and nauseated from my fall, thinking about what would happen if I pushed that button. Finally, I did. It was like admitting defeat. Then I set off my little handheld EPIRB as well, so they'd know it wasn't an accident.

My most immediate concern was the dangling mast, which could have punched a hole in the side of the boat. But I knew that if I tried to cut it loose while dizzy, I'd end up in the water. I left it for the night.

I couldn't sleep. I was having nightmares. By morning the boom had started to wear a hole in the ballast tank. I found my saw and crawled out on deck. There wasn't a lot to hold on to, and the boat was rolling gunwale to gunwale. I tied myself to a broken stantion and started sawing. Every time I spied a big swell coming, I untied myself and got inside.

I sawed, and I prayed. Ten seconds after I started praying, a huge plane flew overhead. I ran down below and turned on the radio. The voice was really broken up. They were calling, “Wild Eyes … Wild Eyes.” I said, “This is Wild Eyes.” They told me a rescue ship was 24 hours away.

I finished cutting the mast loose. When the boom slid into the water, it smacked the VHF antenna. Twenty-four hours later, I turned the radio on, waiting for the ship to call. Three hours later: nothing. I was starting to worry, when another plane flew over. I could hear them calling, but they couldn't hear me. I started shooting off flares.

The rescue ship appeared out of nowhere. I had been outside maybe a minute before. I thought, Oh, my gosh, where did that come from? It was a 150-foot French fishing ship. They came alongside and lowered a dinghy to the water. I hopped into it and they brought me over. There was this long ladder I was supposed to climb, but just as I was about to step onto it, a big swell lifted the dinghy up to the rail of the boat, and the guys pulled me aboard.

One day I will sail around the world, solo, nonstop and unassisted. I don't need to do it straightaway. For now, I'll do high school and get a driver's license—all that normal stuff. I have to work hard to keep myself busy. I'm daydreaming when I'm supposed to be writing papers for school. I get bored, and my mind wanders off to the boat.

This article has been changed since publication. Originally it said that the mast and boom in Abby's boat were wooden. They were in fact both made of carbon fiber.

Fire in the Sky

WORST CASE: STRUCK

On July 21, just after noon, 17 climbers were caught in a lightning storm as they descended from Wyoming’s 13,770-foot Grand Teton. The ensuing epic required a record 83 rescuers. This is how one group of five unguided climbers, the Tyler party, was saved.

1. Summit, 9:15 A.M. The last of seven Exum Mountain Guides and their 15 clients top out. “There were big black clouds and lightning on the horizon,” says Exum co-owner Nat Patridge. By 10:30, all guided groups have descended.

2. 200 to 600 feet from the summit, 12:15 P.M. A series of strikes pummels the three unguided groups still on the mountain: the Tyler party, spread along the Owen Chimney; the Kline party, on the Exum Ridge route; and the Sparks party, at the Belly Roll, on the Owen-Spaulding route. Brandon Oldenkamp, a 21-year-old in the Sparks party, falls 2,500 feet to his death.

3. Owen Chimney,12:18 Steven Tyler, the leader of his group, resuscitates his son-in-law, Troy Smith, who hasn’t been breathing for 30 seconds. Meanwhile, Tyler’s younger son, Dan, is dangling unconscious in his harness 50 feet below. When he comes to, his legs don’t work, but he manages to rappel to the bottom of the chimney. Steven calls 911.

4. Lupine Meadows, 12:27 A page goes out to Grand Teton National Park rangers at Jenny Lake. They gear up for the rescue.

5. Lower Saddle, 11,650 feet, 2:02 The first rangers arrive at the Lower Saddle by helicopter. Ranger Jack McConnell and Exum guide Dan Corn begin their 100-minute ascent. “There were people all over that mountain,” says pilot Matthew Heart, who would fly rescue runs and recon flights for the next eight hours.

6. Bottom of the Owen Chimney, 3:40 McConnell and Corn reach Dan Tyler. He still has no use of his legs, his fellow climber Henry Appleton has no use of his right leg, and Troy Smith has regained consciousness. All are flown off the mountain in “screamer suits,” body harnesses that dangle by a rope beneath the chopper.

5:06 Another storm moves in. More lightning, snow. “The first bolt hit with this tremendous scream and roar,” says ranger Marty Vidak. Only Jack McConnell is zapped, when he touches a charged rock.

7:15 Steven Tyler is short-hauled to the Lower Saddle and flown to Lupine Meadow, where he joins his son Dan in an ambulance. “It’s not a terrible experience to ride on the end of a rope,” says Steven.

7:56 All 17 climbers are off the mountain. Seven are short-hauled out, while the rest are escorted to the Lower Saddle and flown to Lupine Meadow. Every climber bears the classic entry and exit wounds of a direct lightning strike. Five are admitted to St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, and one is taken to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. Climber Betsy Smith loses a finger in surgery.

Cutlass Supreme

When you go out looking for the Nigerian Taliban, bad things happen.

A HOT FRIDAY MORNING in August 2007 in the Nigerian trading town of Maiduguri. From the cramped backseat of a compact car, I squinted through the windshield, looking for a group of thugs who called themselves the Taliban. I’d come to Maiduguri, once a respected center of Islamic learning, to investigate the rise of a group of militants who terrorized locals for “protection” money and took their name from Afghanistan to try to shore up their power. I’d been here for three weeks with Irish photographer Seamus Murphy, but so far we’d struck out. All I saw through the windshield was hundreds of men teeming about, waiting for noon prayer to begin. I looked but couldn’t find a single woman.

Our translator, Mohamed, a soft-spoken English teacher, had brought us to the market to change U.S. dollars into Nigerian naira. It wasn’t a great idea to have two pink-skinned people in the market on a holy Friday, so we stayed in the car while Mohamed searched for the money changer. Seamus sat in the passenger seat, idly snapping photos. Having worked in Afghanistan for more than a decade, he was accustomed to throngs like the one surrounding our car, and so was I. Still, I felt claustrophobic as the midday sun rose.

I glanced out the window as Seamus took photos—click, click. What was he looking at? I saw nothing special.

Then, in the crowd, I noticed one man staring at our car. He strode up to the open passenger window. I glanced at our driver. He was half asleep, hunched over the wheel.

“Give me that film!” screamed the stranger, clad in his Friday whites. Seamus tried to explain that there was no film, but the man had never heard of digital cameras. He poked his head through the window. A crowd gathered behind him. Suddenly, six hands, then eight, reached into the car to snatch the camera; we held on against the tug of hands, gripping tightly as Seamus tried to reason with the men, murmuring quietly, as one might address a spooked animal.

That’s what the mob felt like—a beast turning more agitated with each second. People began to rock the car, and then, in an instant, every man was suddenly armed with the long machetes Nigerians call cutlasses. Through the window I saw a sea of knives.

We are dead, I thought. The mob rocked the car but couldn’t open the doors, because there were no exterior handles—a design flaw Seamus had been bitching about ten minutes earlier.

The crowd’s rage moved like water. The bloodlust periodically petered out, then rose again in a wave, cresting over the car roof. Each breath felt like it took an hour. Mohamed appeared in the crowd. Men grabbed him.

“Please use your fists, not the blades,” he pleaded before he disappeared beneath a hail of blows.

Our driver pushed his door open, climbed out, and ran away. But, perhaps in a twisted gesture of mercy, he left the keys in the ignition. Seamus grabbed them. The car swayed like a dinghy in a squall. Then, out of the crowd, a man in mirrored sunglasses appeared with a tiny, wizened elder.

“I’m a policeman!” Sunglasses screamed. The crowd continued to rock the car. Suddenly, another face appeared at the window.

“Move away from the car!” commanded a tall man in white. I could tell by his dress, by his small, white hat, that he had been on his way to the mosque.

Together, this religious teacher, the policeman, and the tiny old man—a community leader—pushed themselves against the windows, absorbing blows. It took all three to wrest our translator from his attackers. Then Seamus opened the door and all four men climbed into the car. The religious teacher took the wheel and nosed the car through the slowly dissolving mob.

We felt a bump in one of the front wheels as we drove off. When we reached a safe distance, we stopped to see what the problem was. One of our attackers had shoved a cutlass into the tire. The policeman told us we’d just met Nigeria’s Taliban.

Back in the Saddle

A brutal crash ended Jens Voigt's 2009 Tour de France. he wasn't looking for a repeat the next year.

AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, no cyclist likes to abandon the Tour de France. It leaves a terrible taste in your mouth. So, in 2009, when I was still lying in the hospital after my crash with a fractured cheekbone and concussion, I’m like, OK, this is not going to be the end of my Tour de France story. I want to finish with proper honor. Well, I think it was on the 16th stage again this year when my front tire blew up. When you’re doing 60 or 70 kilometers per hour, there’s not much you can do except think, Ooh, this is going to be bad. And then boomp, you’re down. So I’m lying there on the road, everything hurts, but nothing is broken. I have 20 patches of road rash. My arm is bleeding. Blood is running down my elbow to my fingertips and dripping to the ground. It’s like some bad horror movie. My bike’s front rim is broken. The derailleur has fallen off. The frame is shattered. Then I see everybody coming past. Five riders. Twenty. Thirty riders. Way back I see one guy all alone and I think, Fuck, he’s the last rider, and now I am. I’m just here bleeding. Then I start thinking, No, I’m not going to let this happen again. I’m going to make it. There’s nothing going to come between Paris and me. But at that moment there was no team car behind me, because they followed Andy Schleck, our captain. So I start saying to the doctor and a policemen nearby, “Hey, guys, I need a bike. Someone get me a bike!” Pretty soon a car pulls up with a spare from the juniors program. It was canary-bird yellow and the size of a little baby mountain goat. It had toe caps. As I’m getting on, the broom wagon stops next to me and the driver looks out like a damn vulture, saying, “Hey, you, want a ride?” I’m like, “No, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to make it.” After 15 or 20 kilometers, I get my normal spare, which my team director left with a policeman, and eventually I catch the last peloton group. A teammate looks at me and says, “Jens, what the hell happened to you?” I’m bleeding still. My jersey’s back is ripped off. But I’m so happy to be in the last group. I just could have kissed every single rider. I was like, Oh, my God, I love you all. It was such a relief knowing we’d make the stage finish. I’m going to be safe and make it to Paris!

Crash-Test Dummy

Brad Zeerip knows how risky it is to ski the backcountry alone. which is why he brought an air bag.

Avalanche

Zeerip in the slide's aftermath, “looking up at what I got flushed down”

ON MAY 3, 2010, I started skinning up Oscar Peak, near my home in Terrace, B.C. It’s a place that is rarely skied. I ski in the backcountry more than 120 days every year, 30 to 50 of those days by myself. It was spring. The conditions seemed perfect, since new snow had come on wet and heavy and then firmed up with some cold weather.

I dropped in and made three or four cuts. It felt stable, so I started skiing down. Ten turns in, I could see surface snow sloughing around me. I moved to my right, along a rock face, to get away from the slough. Then the snow started melting all around me like wax.

I tried to ski down and to the left, but I didn’t have the speed. The slide hit me at full force, pulling my skis out from under me. I pulled the cord on my Snowpulse, an avalanche pack with an integrated rescue air bag that I’ve skied with every day for the past two winters.

The bag inflated around my head like a giant pillow. It was a reassuring feeling. Then the slide took hold of me. I lost my view of the sky as snow boiled up over me. The slide built into a deafening, pulsing roar. I felt my left ski hit something and grab. I thought I was going to be split like a wishbone. But then my ski ripped apart and I pulled my feet together.

The torque of my ski catching flipped me around. I was still on my back, but now riding the slide at full speed upside down, when I hit something and started cartwheeling. I’m still convinced that if the air bag hadn’t been inflated around my head, it would have split my skull like a pumpkin. I was still hauling ass, but the bag had pulled me up to the surface. I must have slid a good 1,500 feet down a steep 45-degree-plus chute.

The slide started to slow down and set up. I knew this was the most dangerous part—when you can get buried. Another tongue of the slide came again all of sudden—like waves hitting a beach. It hit me hard, and I started swimming and kicking with the other ski to try to stay above it. I went back under, but the air bag pulled me back up. Then a third wave hit.

When it finally settled, I was buried on my side with my head and left shoulder above the snow. My right leg was buried and attached to a broken ski. My left leg and right ankle were definitely injured, but nothing seemed to be broken. I got my shovel out of my pack and dug myself out within a few minutes.

Getting back to my car was more difficult. I spent over six hours crawling, sliding on my one broken ski, using my poles as crutches, and stumbling out of what should have been a one-hour hike. I had a SPOT Personal Tracker and could have hit it for help, but I felt a strong sense of personal responsibility.

I’m embarrassed. I’m not proud that I was caught in a slide. But the air bag saved my life. I certainly will never ski without it.

In July, I went back and found my hat. Another big, wet slide had swept it down to the valley floor, and it had melted out in the snow.

SCENARIO NATURAL DISASTER STRIKES WHILE ABROAD
YOUR WAY OUT: Smart preparation, like packing a SPOT satellite messenger device () or signing up with Global Rescue (), will save you in most situations, especially in wilderness areas. Didn’t bother? Take down the phone number for the nearest American embassy (); they’ll get local authorities on your side or direct military personnel to pluck you from the rubble. Otherwise, head to the usual expat hangouts, like a famous hotel—even if they’re in shambles. Intact or not, those areas often see the first response from American authorities.

Huevos Fritos

Sometimes a man is his own worst enemy.

Jeans

“I felt like I had just ridden a rhino bare-assed for 30 miles.”

THIS IS A SMALL STORY, inhumanly cruel, and it ends with a terrible howl. It takes place in a dark forest on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the Russian Far East, an inhospitable place known for exploding volcanoes, mosquitoes that swarm like hornets, and, most fearsome, bears. The story itself contains a cosmonaut, more grizzlies than almost anywhere on earth, a criminally amused wife, and the unimaginable horror that befell its narrator, a pitiable soul named Poor Me.

So. Let’s get it over with.

I’d come to Kamchatka to connect with the Russian mafia, who had, in their ever-inspiring entrepreneurial spirit, begun stealing entire rivers, netting wild salmon, and shipping illegal caviar back to Moscow. My wife had come along; she was obsessed with catching one of Kamchatka’s legendary monster trout, something in the 20-plus-pound range. Which she would do, a bona fide Grade Two worst-case scenario: too much bragging.

We had an idle day before our expedition launched into the distant wild, so we piled into our fixer’s pickup and drove an hour north of Petropavlosk, the capital, to a national park at the base of a Mount Fuji–like volcano. The road ended at a cluster of dachas next to a frothing river. The park headquarters, clearly marked on our map, did not exist, and the park itself, on the far side of the river, was what it had always been—a vast, dense spruce-and-birch forest, accessed by a shabby cable-and-plank footbridge.

“Let’s cross over and go for a hike,” I suggested, and my wife said sure and our fixer, Rinat, said absolutely not. “We will absolutely be eaten by bears,” Rinat declared, and settled into the truck to await the eventual recovery of our chewed-upon corpses.

Because this story also contains a six-ounce can of pepper spray stuffed into the left front pocket of my jeans, I felt it was not irrational to be respectfully nonchalant about the bears.

My wife and I clambered across the rickety bridge and followed a primitive road leading deep into the sun-dappled forest. We hiked ahead, alone in the woods, enjoying the solitude, until suddenly a rusty blue Soviet-era van pulled alongside us. The driver, a lean, blond-haired man, wagged his head at us, frowning, and said something in Russian. His wife and teenage son nodded gravely.

“We don’t speak Russian,” I said, and the man switched to En­glish. “Go back,” he said. “Are you crazy? The bears will absolutely eat you. You cannot walk here without big gun, eh?”

“It’s OK,” I said. “I have pepper spray.”

“You have pepper spray?” he snorted. “What for? To make bear cry before he absolutely eat you? Turn back now.”

Ten minutes later we came upon them again, parked in a glade, each carrying a carbine and a bucket. Again, a lecture from the driver. Then he sighed and said, OK, as long as you are here, come with us. They were headed up to a meadow to pick berries.

“From this place,” the driver said, “you have excellent nice good view of volcano.” I asked him where he’d learned English, and he revealed that he was a cosmonaut on vacation with his family.

We followed them through the woods to a raging river spanned by a fallen tree, its wet trunk just wide enough to walk across, slowly, carefully, single file. My wife looked at the whitewater rapids below the log and said she wasn’t doing it. The cosmonaut said, “Come on, just up the top of bank you can see volcano.” I told my wife I’d be right back. But the opposite bank led to a treeless plateau overgrown with brush so high it was impossible to see anything at all. Just ten more minutes, said the cosmonaut, but I knew I couldn’t abandon my defenseless wife, so I headed back down the steep bank.

As soon as I took a couple of steps out onto the log, I lost my balance and instinctively crouched to steady myself. I have a permanent visual image of what happened next—my wife waiting on the bank, her quizzical expression turning to wide-eyed, jaw-dropping astonishment as she watched me, poised above the river, rear up from my crouch in a roar, digging frantically into my pocket, pulling out an object that resembled a smoke grenade, and hurling it into the rapids.

Bending over to regain my balance, I had triggered the can of pepper spray, its aerosol blast locked into an open position aimed directly at my crotch. Imagine a tiny jet engine in your boxer shorts. Imagine that engine throttled up to its white-hot afterburn. How to minister to such a grievous, potentially life-altering injury, how to relieve the suffering? Only the kindest, most selfless nurse would have a clue.

When I finally stopped howling, my wife had trouble keeping a straight face, eyeing my wincing, bowlegged gait back through the forest. Perhaps something about watching a guy self-immolate his nuts brings out the mirth in women. I felt like I had just ridden a rhino bare-assed for 30 miles. My wife kept reminding me that the afterscent of pepper spray, once its stinging properties have faded, is a bear attractant, smelling much like an order from Taco Bell.

That would be one overcooked burrito with a side of huevos fritos.

Thumb Sucker

In hitchhiking, there's a fine line between being open-minded and foolish.

Hitchhiking

There was no key in the ignition, just a rat's nest of wires. This was someone else's lowrider.

THERE ARE probably dozens of ways a hitchhiker could wind up riding in a stolen car, but I only know the stupid one. I’d been standing on the highway leading out of AbiquiĂș, a small town in northern New Mexico, for maybe 20 minutes. It was barely enough time to put Sharpie to cardboard—SANTA FE, ALBUQUERQUE, TEXAS—and certainly not enough to forget the first law of recreational thumbing: Don’t be a dumbass. That rule should hold until you’ve waited for hours, when heat and boredom and the fear of being stranded start affecting judgment. I’m afraid that wasn’t the case.

It was a morning in July 1996, and traffic was heavy. Most of the vehicles were small vans or sedans that slowed so kids inside could wave. Then a lowrider rolled into view, floating over the asphalt until the engine suddenly gunned and it swerved to hit me. I jumped into some weeds as it slid to a stop, then backed up, spraying gravel. The occupants were kids in bandannas and wife beaters, the driver in his twenties, the passenger at most 15, both laughing. When the younger guy rolled his window down, the elder said, “Get in.”

This idea struck me as imprudent. “Where are y’all headed?”

“Albuquerque.”

“Dang, fellas, I’m not going to Albuquerque,” I said.

The driver pointed at the cardboard still held to my chest. “Your sign says ‘Albuquerque.'”

I looked at their car, a long, two-door Monte Carlo from the seventies, painted glass-glitter royal blue like a drum kit, with a perfectly matched crushed-velvet interior. The next town, 20 miles away, was Española, the renowned Lowrider Capital of the World. This was an invite to the kind of cultural exchange that prompted me to hitch in the first place. I got in.

The ride got weird immediately. As I wedged myself behind the passenger—the front seat was tilted back so far the car was effectively a two-seater—he adjusted his mirror so it pointed straight at me. The driver did the same with the rearview. Once we were moving, they kept their eyes on me and talked in Spanish, which I didn’t understand. Then the driver addressed me. “You fucked up, man. We’re going to Kansas. And you’re going with us.” I opted not to believe him, perhaps as some self-preservation reflex. Or maybe it was because when he gave me a menacing look and turned up the stereo full-blast, “Vacation,” by the Go-Go’s, came on. He hit the eject button, then cussed and beat the dashboard. The cassette was stuck in the tape deck.

Which was when I realized that the tape wasn’t his, and neither was the car. There was no key in the ignition, just a rat’s nest of wires hanging from the steering column. This was someone else’s lowrider.

For the next 15 miles I reminded myself that the other reason to hitchhike was to get home with a story to tell. This would qualify. The guys went quiet as the tape played on, apparently a mix of eighties hits. “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” played as we passed roadside stands selling statuettes of Catholic saints.

When we hit Española I started to worry. The driver took a left and headed north, clearly not the way to Albuquerque. I decided that if we actually were going to Kansas, there’d be plenty of gas stops on the way and chances to bolt. But he turned into a neighborhood and stopped. I looked out the window at a row of adobes and started thinking about The Silence of the Lambs. I pictured two scenarios. In one I broke free as they led me to a house; in the other I got eaten.

We sat without talking for a long five minutes, the driver’s eyes never leaving the mirror. But he seemed to be looking past me. Finally he said, “A cop has been following us the past ten miles. I think he’s gone.” He turned the car around and rolled into town.

He stopped again, at a little rim shop. “I need to talk to a man who sold me some wheels,” he said. “They don’t fit. You can wait in the car or you can move on.”

I tried to look like I was mulling it over. That seemed gracious. “You know, you guys have been great. But I think I’ll try the highway.”

So There You Were…

We put out the call for your own worst-case scenarios—scary, dangerous, or just plain dumb. The winner was the only one that made us blush.

On a spring-break trip in the Florida Keys, eight of us decided to camp out on a barrier island. It was supposed to be a remote key, roughly two miles out. But after three hours of paddling, we realized the “island” was only a mangrove forest, and we had to paddle back. Daylight was fading fast. An hour into the return trip, cold and exhausted, we called search-and-rescue. But since there wasn’t a medical emergency, we were advised to contact a towing service. We couldn’t afford it, so we kept paddling. Soon a pontoon boat came sidling up. The captain yelled, “Need a lift?” It wasn’t until we were on board that we noticed the boat was labeled Couples Massage Trips. While explaining to the captain how we’d gotten stuck, we began hearing passengers down below—passengers in the throes of passion and not modest in the least. After 15 minutes, an attractive woman came up and told the captain he was needed below. She took the wheel, and he headed down. Within minutes, another “couples massage” had begun. When we reached land, we quietly drove to the nearest pizza place and ate in silence. It was the best pizza I’ve ever eaten. And, yes, it was the most beautiful silence I have ever heard.

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