After shuffling his feet gingerly towards the edge of a 1,000m drop, Tim Howell hurls himself forward and spreads his arms.
Footage of his leap from Aconcagua, the tallest peak in the Americas, shows the former member of the armed forces becoming the first person to do a base jump from the Argentinian mountain.
A camera mounted on his helmet recorded him falling from a “finger of rock” near Camp 2, about 900m below the summit, before spreading his arms to inflate his wingsuit.
Although Howell made detailed calculations to prevent himself from crashing into the mountainside, there was a moment of uncertainty as he felt how his wings reacted to the thin air at altitude.
“At 6,000m it’s 50 per cent less pressure, so I had to allow a huge margin of error for that,” he told The Times. “The actual edge of the cliff was pretty crumbly. It was a finger of rock and you’re going to fall all the way down if you slip.”
Advertisement
Recalling the moment of pushing himself away from the edge, he said: “I put my feet on the exact position I want to jump off from because if my feet slip, that’s a disaster.”
While the initial drop from the precipice to the side of the mountain was 300m, Howell’s total fall to his landing site was 1km.
Howell, 33, whose ten-year career of parachuting from mountains includes leaps from Ben Nevis and the Matterhorn, said that he had constant doubts about his exploits.
“There is constantly the thought: what the hell am I doing? There’s no need to be doing this. I do sometimes think: I wish I could enjoy a round of golf. But I can’t.”
He plotted four possible landing places depending on the “glide ratio” he could achieve in the thin air. With his wings inflated, he expected to glide between 2.2m and 2.6m horizontally for every metre of altitude lost.
Advertisement
The landing was more fraught than he had hoped because he expected more wind to come off the glacier. “It wasn’t a disaster. I had to slide in a bit. I got a few rips in my wingsuit so I’m going to have to get them fixed.”
Howell said that his wife, Ewa Kalisiewicz, a fellow base jumper and mountaineer, approved his leaps and was standing near by on the mountain. “She helps me think. She said: ‘Only jump if you’re 100 per cent sure.’ She was very happy with all the variables.”
He described the landscape as relatively easy for jumping if it were at a lower altitude.
Howell, who has made about 990 jumps, said that his next destination would be Laila Peak in the Himalayas, where he hopes to do a simultaneous jump with three other people in wingsuits.
He completed the six north faces of the Alps last year, which included jumps from the Eiger, Cima Grande di Lavaredo, Petit Dru, Piz Badile and Grandes Jorasses as well as the Matterhorn.
Advertisement
He would like to jump from the world’s tallest peaks, but not all mountains have viable “exits” from which to leap.
He would also like to return to Aconcagua to reach the summit, from which he was 200m when his party had to turn back because of bad weather. For his most recent trip it took him eight days to go up but only three minutes to come down.
Asked whether adrenaline gave him an addiction, he said: “I’m sure it must do.”
