This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

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BASE JUMPING: -1,000,000

This activity gets a Sober Fun rating from me of -1,000,000. These photos, along with whatever was recovered from the GoPro he was wearing on his head, are quite possibly some of the last photos ever taken of this man alive. I was originally just taking picture of him because I thought he was so dang cute, but that was before I learned what him and his friends were planning to do.

BASE Jumping is where you jump off the side of a cliff, into a canyon, with the plan to use the fabric of your special outfit to float on the air, much like a flying squirrel. While concentrating on your squirrel position and flying technique, you are trying to avoid smashing into the rocky sidewall of the canyon and going kersplat, all while waiting for the perfect moment to pull your parachute cord. As you can probably guess, so many things can go wrong with this plan.

And they regularly do.

The woman who hosted us in Chamonix was a local television news anchor. She had no idea where we had been that day, or who we had met, and when we got home that night, she offhandedly mentioned that earlier that morning, a young man had died BASE jumping. I showed her my photos of the man above in red, and she burst into tears. She told me that people die BASE jumping all the time in Chamonix, that she had lost several close friends to BASE jumping, and that she was part of a local coalition that was trying to make it illegal. I am pretty sure she knew the man in red, and in between sobs, she told me that it was important that this recreational sport get shut down before any more people needlessly die.

I have nothing to add to this, I agree completely, this “sport” seems flawed on a conceptual, base level.

Check out two other (much less fatal) dying arts HERE and HERE!