Wingsuits first caught our eye when the extreme sports professional Jon DeVore released this video of himself soaring through the mountains in Monterrey, Mexico (Surprisingly, this is not the same Jon DeVore as the father of FNO founder Chris DeVore). We were just a tad impressed when we saw them gliding feet away from rock faces with nothing to control them but a little extra fabric between their inner arms and outer legs.
What does it entail? Nothing more than jumping 5000+ foot cliff in China’s Zhangjiajie National Forest Park and navigating your way to a landing pad 2,600 feet below. The following diagram from Outside Magazine gives you a little more perspective.
2. 90 degree turn around a tennis court size platform at 120mph
3. Fly under cables and a tramway. Failure to do so, well….most likely death
4. Finally open parachute and land on some solid ground
Seems simple enough right? Well it was for South African Julian Boulle who completed the 3/4 mile race in just over 23 seconds for the win.
How does one even get started in a sport like this? The only activities we can think of is skydiving and base-jumping , but this makes those two look like a bunny slope. For that reason we at FNO take our hats off to WWL, one of TIME magazines best inventions of the year 2012.