Heather Loughlin had spent the last few months preparing for the possibility of dying here. Now, she worried instead about pain. The 36-year-old real estate developer from Vermont pressed her chest against the railing of the second-highest bridge in the United States, leaned forward and peered down. Almost 900 feet separated her from the bottom of the New River Gorge, where everything looked like a potential stage for disaster.
Whitewater rushed through the bottom of the chasm, sweeping over rocks and fallen oaks and maples. Boulders -- or, wait a second, were those boats? -- cluttered the shoreline. A canopy of red and yellow leaves obscured Loughlin's view of the designated landing area, a patch of uneven dirt on the west bank of the river. Eight medics waited there with headboards to carry the injured into nearby ambulances.
"Oh my God," Loughlin said, turning away from the bridge. "There's like a thousand ways to get mangled down there."
Loughlin stood about 20th in a line that dead-ended into still, Appalachian mountain air. When she reached the front, Loughlin was supposed to buckle her helmet and jump off the bridge, her life tethered to a rented parachute. It would be her first BASE jump, and she considered it the biggest risk of her life. Veterans of BASE jumping -- an acronym that stands for parachute free falls from buildings, antennae, spans or earth -- call their sport the most dangerous in the world, with only 1,200 experienced jumpers and at least 115 fatalities.
Read the whole thing, and watch a cool video slideshow.
I guess that'll be going on my Christmas list...)
