Born Survivor and Wingsuit Flyer Jeb Corliss
Sandra and Sandy are back and today they welcome professional adventurer, Jeb Corliss, to the podcast for a truly fascinating conversation. Jeb has dedicated his life to BASE jumping, and wingsuit proximity flying, and our hosts begin by reviewing some of his impressive accomplishments in these areas. They also chat with Jeb about his childhood, how he became interested in skydiving and base jumping, and the mindset required for these activities. Jeb reveals that he lost his dreams during his teenage years, which led him to become depressed and suicidal, and details how he discovered his passion for base jumping which has been pursuing ever since.
Together with our hosts, Jeb discusses how the drive to push boundaries and evolve our capabilities as human beings can be seen in these sports, with technology enabling us to do this at a much faster rate. He goes on to recount his adrenaline filled experiences as a base jumper and wingsuit pilot, and shares his passion for flying over landmarks and iconic objects, describing some of his most impressive feats, such as flying down both of the great pyramids in Egypt. He also explains the technical difficulties and challenges of these jumps and his love for photography and videography. Noting that his passion for these extreme sports has given him a unique perspective on life and a willingness to sacrifice everything for them, today’s special guest provides interesting insights not only into the logistics and challenges of these sports but also the existential revelations they can generate.
NOTE: this conversation contains in-depth discussion on suicidal ideation.
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Transcript:
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It lies somewhere between the pit of your stomach, your racing heart, and your brain, somehow trying to keep it all together. It's an area we call The Adrenaline Zone. I'm retired astronaut Dr. Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm retired Navy fighter pilot Admiral Sandy Winnefeld. We're two adrenaline junkies who love spending time with people who are really passionate about pushing their boundaries as far as possible. While most people are content to have a certain amount of security in their lives, successful entrepreneurs have to not only be creative and work hard to turn their ideas into operating businesses, they often have to lay it all on the line to get it done.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: When we think of flying, most of us picture an airplane or maybe even a helicopter. Those who are adventurous might imagine skydiving, drifting silently and gracefully to the ground under a multicolored canopy.
Sandy Winnefeld: Our guest today, Jeb Corliss, takes the art of flying a step further. He's a professional wingsuit flier and BASE jumper. He's jumped from helicopters, buildings, bridges, gliding hundreds or thousands of feet to the ground, including in close proximity to obstacles.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: He is the author of Memoirs from the Edge: Exploring the Line Between Life and Death.
Sandy Winnefeld: Today, we chat with Jeb about what motivates him to tackle such a risky activity and how he manages that risk.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: And we caught up with Jeb at his home in California.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Jeb, welcome to The Adrenaline Zone. We're really excited to talk to you today.
Jeb Corliss: Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you guys. It's rare that I get to talk to people who are so awesome.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, I can't imagine a more appropriate guest. The Adrenaline Zone is about people who take risks, and I think you've pretty much hit that pinnacle.
Jeb Corliss: That’s for sure.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But we like to start at the beginning with how people got into the things that they're interested in. And so, for you, what was it about your childhood that drew you to skydiving and BASE jumping, which is where you started your adventures?
Jeb Corliss: Oh, man, it sounds like such a simple question, but it's really complicated. I literally wrote a 180,000-word book about that subject, so it gives you an idea of how big that is. I'll try to boil it down into a smaller description, but it's very complicated because you don't just start BASE jumping. That doesn't happen. It takes a long time to get to something like that, and it takes a certain type of mentality and a certain mindset to want to jump off buildings. I mean, that's not a normal thing for people to want to do.
Sandy Winnefeld: I have never considered it.
Jeb Corliss: Most people don't. And honestly, I always tell people, if you can find happiness in your life doing anything else, do anything else, like, whatever anything else is, you do that because this is not for– It's almost unjustifiably dangerous. It's on a level that's hard to even comprehend. But to answer your question, I guess I can boil it down to when I was around five, I was sitting in the back seat of my aunt's car, and I remember it clearly. I had my hands pressed against the window, and I was looking out, and I saw birds on a telephone pole. And I remember watching the bird step off the telephone pole and kind of start falling towards the ground, then open its wings and start soaring. And the five year olds are just fascinated by that. And I verbally said, “I'm going to do that. When I get older, I'm doing that.” And my aunt, she kind of looked back at me, and she looked out the window and saw what I was looking at, and she—I don't think adults do this on purpose, but she's just like, “That's impossible. Humans can't do that.” And as a five year old, I looked at her, and I'm like, “Maybe you can't, so I'm doing it. I'm going to make that happen.” And it's a fascinating thing because adults are constantly—I think it's their job, obviously, to teach children about the world and what you can and cannot do. And I don't think they purposely step on dreams. I don't think it's done on purpose, but it's a byproduct of an adult who's grown up and sees something like that, and in their mind, it can't be done. She didn't think that was a realistic thing.
And when I was—I got my dreams stepped on throughout my childhood, up into my teen years. And by the time I was a teenager, I no longer had dreams. It was something bizarre that had happened to me, and that dream was so stomped out that I had forgotten it even existed. Like, it wasn't even there anymore. And I became very depressed. It's partially probably hormones like you're going through puberty. You're kind of in this period, I think I'm not the only person to go through this in their teen years. A lot of people go through kind of a dark stage where I became very depressed, and I became somewhat suicidal, and I became very dark, like, a very dark person and very unhappy. And a lot of that came from the fact that I had lost any desire for almost anything. Like, I didn't want anything. I didn't care about anything. Nothing really mattered to me at all. And I was going to kill myself 100%. Like, I was going to kill myself. It was going to happen.
And I was around 16, and I was in probably the darkest point of my existence, really, where I just would wake up and just not want to be here anymore, just absolutely suffering. Like, suffering. And I was sitting on the couch, and I was just, like, flicking through channels, and all of a sudden, I saw a person standing on the edge of a cliff. And it instantly kind of just made me pay attention. I'm like, ‘What's this guy doing? Why would anyone do that?” And then, all of a sudden, I saw him step off the cliff and start to fly like he went into a BASE jump. And it just instantly struck me like lightning. It was almost like this energy just entered my body. And this memory from when I was young, being told that that couldn't be done, that that was physically impossible, all of a sudden was like, they were lying. This is possible. Humans can do this. There's someone doing it. There is someone doing what I've always– That's what I was talking about. And it became this overwhelming desire.
And it was strange for me because I had no desire, right? So, all of a sudden, there was this thing that I wanted, right? And depression is a funny thing. It doesn't just go away. It's not like all of a sudden, bang, I'm not depressed anymore. But what it did is it gave me a desire, something off in the future that mattered, something that meant something, a direction, a place I wanted to get, a place I wanted to go. And whenever I would get into a very dark place mentally, and I would be on the verge of ending my life, I would instantly come to that vision, that kind of light at the end of this dark tunnel, and be like, no, I'm not going to waste it. I mean, anyone can just shoot themselves. Anyone can just hang themselves. I'm not going to die like that. If I'm going to die anyways, I'm going to do something special with my death. I want to do something interesting with my death. I'm going to do that. And that's what helped me kind of hang on during this incredibly dark moment. And it lasted like I was super depressed until I was around 19.
What's fascinating, and this is interesting to me, I don't know if anyone else cares, but for me, it was somewhat interesting, is I didn't start BASE jumping until I was 21. So, by the time I actually started BASE jumping, I no longer wanted to die. I actually wanted to live. But it was a weird kind of like this Catch-22 paradox that the thing that saved my life and made me continue to live is something that can very easily take your life. And it was a very terrifying thing to start doing something that can kill you very easily when you really want to continue living. So the suicidal kind of thoughts and ideas as a young kind of adolescent are what drove me there. But once I got there, I had become a different human being, and I no longer wanted to die. So it was reconciling that was challenging for me.
Sandy Winnefeld: So I imagine that you don't just decide to go jumping off buildings and pulling your parachute. There's a little bit of a work up to that.
Jeb Corliss: Oh, huge work. Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: So tell us a little bit about how you learned the craft, I guess before you actually jumped off your first building.
Jeb Corliss: It started when I was 16. Obviously, I saw it, and I'm like, “I want to do that. How do I do that?” At the time, the Internet wasn't quite where it is now, and there wasn't the information. And BASE jumping was very underground, almost like you have to be inducted like vampires. It's a really challenging thing to get into. You have to meet one, and then they have to kind of take you under their wing to train you. At that time, that's what it was like. So at as a 16-year-old, there was no real way for me to learn much about it. So I started calling drop zones to start learning about skydiving because I knew skydiving was kind of the first step. If I wanted to get into BASE jumping, skydiving is what I'd have to kind of start doing. So I called the drop zone nearest to where I lived at the time, and I said, "Hey, I'm really interested in BASE jumping." And the person at the end of the line just started laughing. They're like, "Huh?” That's your first statement. They're like, “Oh, no. Okay, you're one of those. All right.”
Sandy Winnefeld: Run away.
Jeb Corliss: Yeah. They're like, “Uh-oh. We got danger. Danger.” Anyways, they're like, ”How old are you?” And I'm like, “I'm 16.” And they're like, “Okay, let's just explain how this works. First, you can't even start skydiving until you're 18. In California, you have to be 18 years old to even begin skydiving. So that's the first thing. So between now and then, just hang in there, and on your 18th birthday, start learning to skydive. Get your A license, and you'll probably have to do hundreds of skydives. And then, in your process of skydiving, you will most likely meet someone who BASE jumps. And if you can convince them to teach you, that's kind of the stage, right?”
At that time, it was really difficult because there weren't courses or classes. Nothing was regulated. It was completely underground. In most places, it was considered—I hate using the word illegal, but let's just say not allowed. A lot of places don't really want people jumping off their buildings and cliffs. So it was challenging. It was a tricky thing to get into.
And for my process, at 16, I learned that. So I was focused on my 18th birthday, and then I just had to hang in there, right? I just had to hold on for those two years to get to my skydiving. On my 18th birthday, my grandparents took me for my first skydives. I did two on my first day. They were actually pretty excited about it for me because they all kind of saw that I was kind of dark and sad, and they thought this was something I was excited about, so they were all excited for me to do something that made me happy. And then I started skydiving.
Then I didn't have a lot of money at the time. I was going to college, and I was working in a movie theater as a projectionist. So I was making minimum wage, which I think was like $3.25 at the time. I didn't have the money to really skydive. So what I would do is I'd have to save up my money and then go do a jump. And then save up my money, go do a jump. And it took years. So from 18 to 21, that's how long it took me to get my license, which was actually a good thing. It was really important that this got stretched out over time because that time helped me regulate psychologically. I started becoming more stable mentally, which I think is very important. You can't be like I was at 16 and survive. You're not going to make it, right? If you have this kind of death-wish mentality, well, you're going to get what you're wishing for. If you really want to die, you're going to die. If that's what your goal is, it's over for you very quickly. So, in BASE jumping, if you're going to be successful, you have to have some kind of longevity or even have a chance at longevity. You have to have a stable mental state. Because these people who come into it who are suicidal and are looking for that rush, like adrenaline junkie people, I don't think, last very long, genuinely.
I mean, what's funny, and this is what's kind of, I think, fascinating, is I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I don't like adrenaline at all, and I never have. I don't enjoy the way it feels to be scared. I don't enjoy the way it feels to get all amped up and terrified. I don't like that at all. And it's funny because I equate myself to an astronaut like you, but not in the sense that what I do is as important as an astronaut. It's not. I think astronauts are actually doing really big things. We're taking people off this planet. I mean, that's much bigger than what I do, but I think it's more of a mentality, right? An astronaut's trying to accomplish a very difficult task. They're trying to actually force human evolution and get us off this planet and find other worlds to inhabit, which means the survival of all of us into the distant future. It's a much bigger thing than, “Oh, I'm going to go get a rush today.” And I think that you would never look at an astronaut and call them an adrenaline junkie ever. Now, do they get adrenaline from putting themselves in a rocket ship and blasting themselves into space? Of course you do. Of course, you're going to get an adrenaline rush, but that's more of a negative byproduct of what you're doing. I guarantee if you could do it without an adrenaline rush, you probably would. If I could do this without getting all freaked out and scared, if we could get this to zero danger and make it 100% safe, I can guarantee that's how you do it.
Sandy Winnefeld: You have people lining up on top of buildings to jump off of buildings.
Jeb Corliss: Exactly. But that's the point, right? The point is I look at myself, at least the mentality behind what I do, more like an astronaut mentality, more than like an adrenaline junkie mentality. My goal is not how it makes me feel—that's not why I'm doing this. My goal is to try to push the boundaries of what human beings are capable of doing. It's like an evolutionary step. How long did it take flying squirrels to turn from squirrels into flying squirrels? How many millions of years, or hundreds of thousands of years, did it take for that squirrel to morph its body into having the ability to fly from trees? And I think that's what makes human beings very fascinating, is that we evolve differently. We evolve through technology in our minds and developing the ability to do these things much more rapidly. Think about the time people have looked at the sky and seen things flying—they've gone, "Wow, wouldn't that be amazing?" And then, in only 100 years, you have to think like the Wright brothers.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Actually, less than a hundred.
Jeb Corliss: Less than a hundred. But I mean, I'm talking about till now, flying wingsuits, and–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, yeah.
Jeb Corliss: But if you really look at getting to the moon, that was like, what, 65, 69 years, or something like that? Sixty-some years ago—
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Amazingly fast.
Jeb Corliss: Incredible. It's remarkable how human beings are. Anyways, that gives you a very long-winded explanation of how I got here and how I see it.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: So, once you got into BASE jumping, you had to translate it yet one more time to the wingsuits. So, how much of your BASE jumping and your skydiving actually translated? And how many BASE jumps did you have to go do until you got to that next leap because it’s sort of an evolution?
Jeb Corliss: It's complicated because you need these foundations. So, the first foundation for wingsuits is you need a skydiving foundation. So, you need at least between 200 to 500 skydives before you put a wingsuit on and start training in a wingsuit. All right. In that same time frame, though, you can also be learning to BASE jump simultaneously, even though they're separate skills. So, at 200 skydives, you can also begin your BASE jumping training. It just so happened I started my BASE jumping training right before the modern wingsuits came into existence.
So, the first modern wingsuits—I mean, wingsuits—the very first wingsuits were built in the ‘30s, and they were called themselves Birdmen, and they all died, basically, because the technology just wasn't there. And they were putting broomsticks into fabric and killing themselves all over the place. So it didn't work out so well between the ‘30s and the ‘70s. There were groups of people building these kinds of homemade wingsuits, and most of them died. Most of them didn't live because the technology just wasn't there. So, in the early ‘90s, a man by the name of Patrick de Gayardon—a Frenchman—he developed and designed the first modern wingsuit, which was ram-air technology. The same technology our parachutes use in order to hold a shape in a form to turn you into a semi-rigid wing that actually could fly and work. And that kind of came into existence right as I was learning to BASE jump.
And then again, I also didn't do this the right way. We now know better how to do this properly. But at the time, I was new, and I got the very first commercially available wingsuit in California. It was shipped to me from Croatia, and it showed up at my house. I went to the drop zone. No one knew what to do with it. I only had 150 skydives at the time. And I talked to the manifest, and I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm going to fly a wingsuit." And they were just like, "What? What are you talking about?" And I'm like, "Yeah." And I showed it to them, and they're just like, "Oh, where do you think you should get out of the plane?" And they're asking me, a person with 150 skydives, totally, "I don't know. How about I get out after tandems?" They're like, "Okay." So then we started jumping out after tandems, and that's kind of where that started.
And then I started flying wingsuits and skydiving because that's where you train it. And I was BASE jumping simultaneously, like learning to BASE jump. And then after, I think I did my first wingsuit BASE jump after around 100 BASE jumps and probably around 300 skydives. But now, we would never suggest doing that. You want more skydiving. It's much more training you need than what I was doing. But I was kind of new, and no one really had rules. There were no books. We just were figuring it out.
Sandy Winnefeld: When you are a fully proficient wingsuit pilot, or whatever you want to call it, wingsuit, are you landing with a parachute or are you landing–
Jeb Corliss: Yes.
Sandy Winnefeld: Were you stalling out the wingsuit?
Jeb Corliss: No. As of right now, we use parachutes to land wingsuits always. Okay. There have been two people who've accidentally landed in trees.
Sandy Winnefeld: I hate when that happens.
Jeb Corliss: It's not good. It usually equals death, but two people survived. Where they've come in, they misjudged their flight pattern. They were coming in with a stall, basically, didn't have the drive to get over the trees, hit the trees, went through the trees, stopped in the trees, woke up in the trees. And one of them had a broken leg, and one had a broken arm. Both survived. Aside from just a few little broken bones, they were fine.
Sandy Winnefeld: Wow.
Jeb Corliss: Which is surprising. Which is shocking.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah. They were lucky.
Jeb Corliss: Yeah. And we had one woman land on a snow slope accidentally. She was coming in, picked her glide wrong, hit a snow embankment. And luckily for her, it was thick snow, and just punched through it because she thought she was going into a rock. And she ended up hitting the snow, punching through the snow, coming out the other side, and then just tomahawking down the mountain. And when they went to land next to her with the chopper, they thought they were coming to a dead body, but she sat up and was like, "Hey guys!" And she was fine. She broke her nose really bad and kind of had a concussion. But she walked out of the hospital that day, which was fascinating.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No concussion or blow.
Jeb Corliss: No concussion or blow. So what that tells us is it's possible– you can land wingsuits under the right conditions. We know it can be done. We also have a man who landed in a big pile of boxes. So he jumped out of a helicopter, like 2500 ft and just did a header into boxes like a stuntman. And he survived as well. Completely unscathed, no scratches, totally fine. So it is doable. But that right now is, like I said, those are four instances. But, really, in general, we use parachutes and you have to deploy your parachute at above safely 500 ft. But I've deployed as low as 200 ft in a wingsuit and survived.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Do you have instrumentation along that tells you all that? Or is that part of the training where you just visually know how to measure that kind of glide path or wind speed?
Jeb Corliss: That's part of BASE jumping. Skydiving, you have instrumentation. You have altimeters that tell you altitudes, and you pull it like 3000ft is like the bottom, and you have a reserve, and there's all this stuff because skydiving is the safe place. That's where you learn and train, and it's the regulated place. BASE jumping, you're pulling too low for those things. Altimeters aren't functional. You don't have time for them. If you're pulling at 200ft, you've got less than a second to make decisions. Your body wouldn't even be able to respond to an altimeter telling you something at that altitude. It happens so fast. So it is visual. You need to be able to see the ground, know where you are, know what altitude you're at, know how it can deploy. There's a lot that's involved. But again, that comes from the thousands and thousands of wingsuit flights that build up that knowledge.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, after 1000 regular wingsuit flights, and after a whole bunch of BASE jumping with parachute flights, you now get to the point where you're going to BASE jump in the suit. Talk to us about that. What are the parameters? You have to have some sort of distance over altitude, I would think. And you're calculating that you want to make sure it's somewhat safe.
Jeb Corliss: Yes.
Sandy Winnefeld: Tell us about the high end of the pinnacle here.
Jeb Corliss: Okay, so in the beginning, when you're doing your first wingsuit BASE jumps– do you want me to talk about when I was doing it back when nobody knew anything? Or do you want to talk about now when we actually know something about how it's done? Because they're two choices. I'll talk about how we know it's done now because that's probably more relevant and means more because what I was doing was obviously insane and doesn't relate to anything today. But what happens now is we know certain cliffs, certain places in the world that are good for training wingsuit pilots. We know the altitudes. Because what's really important in the beginning when you're learning to fly a wingsuit is having a very large cliff. So you have time. The more altitude you have, the more time you have for making mistakes. So someone who's really new makes mistakes - that's just all there is to it. They don't know yet how to fly a wingsuit off of a cliff. They don't know what it's going to be like jumping off into dead air with all that fabric.
So, ordinarily, how you would begin that is you would first take them to a hot air balloon, okay? Because they're used to flying a wingsuit now out of an airplane, let's just say you've got someone who's got 1000 wingsuit skydives. They're proficient in a wingsuit. They know how a wingsuit flies, they know how to flare a wingsuit, they know how to deploy the parachute properly. All of that's in the bag. They've got that. Now the new thing that they don't have is what is it like to jump with a wingsuit into dead air, where you don't have– Because when you get out of an airplane, you already have 100 miles an hour of wind. So you're jumping out; you're already good. You've got air to control the suit. When you're jumping into dead air, there's no air to control, and you can basically tumble. If people don't do it properly, they can go head down, which then forces them where the wind hits the back and pushes them back into the mountain. So that's bad - you want to avoid that.
So what happens is you first take them to a balloon jump. So same thing. You go 4000 ft. So it's kind of a skydive. They've got the altitude, they've got the time, they can make a mistake and still deploy a parachute. They still can use your reserve, right? So it's still safe-ish, relatively safe. It's relatively safe. So then they exit, and then, basically, that's where you do your first training. Then when you see from the hot air balloon that they've got their exit nailed and that they're going to be safe-ish, then you can take them to a cliff. There are multiple cliffs around the world that are really good for your first wingsuit BASE jump. One is in Italy, called Arco. One is in Norway, called Kjerag. Those are the two best locations on planet Earth to take a student wingsuit pilot for their first jumps because you have 3000-foot cliffs with massive time to make little mistakes and still survive.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: What about the weather and the wind and things like that? Those are factors, aren't they?
Jeb Corliss: Oh, absolutely. They're some of the most important factors. And as many variables, as you can eliminate as possible, you do. So for one, if winds are gusting above 10 miles an hour, you don't jump. That's simple. The winds are a thing you can't see once they get over 10 miles an hour, they become dangerous. For proximity flyers, I will not jump in the wind that's stronger than 10 miles an hour, period. And I'm talking the gusts. So the averages are in the fives, and it gusts up to ten. I'm good to go on BASE jumps, right? That's certain types of BASE jumps. And again, it varies depending on are you doing a slider-down BASE jump. Are you doing a slider-up BASE jump, where you can actually track and get distance, or are you in a wingsuit and get lots of distance? Because your wind tolerances change based upon the type of jumps you're doing. So in an actual wingsuit with a really good landing area, I will go up to 15 miles an hour gusting.
So, again, there's a lot of data and a lot of information and a lot of things you need to know, and every single object everywhere in the world is different. And luckily now, we have a network of BASE jumpers who have been learning all of this information for 25 years. And in that 25 years, there's a huge VAT of knowledge that we've now gathered. And just like in aviation - you've done a lot in that - there's incident reports. So every single year, people make mistakes flying, and then they crash and die, and then we learn from those accidents. We do the same thing in BASE jumping. We have an incident report every single year. Anyone who has an accident, anyone who gets a fatality occurs. We analyze these fatalities. We find out why they happened, how they happened, and we try to educate the jumpers who are alive to not make the same mistakes again.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, that sounds familiar.
Jeb Corliss: Yeah, well, I mean, human beings have become a hive mind. I mean, that's what we are. We all now are connected through technology that we all can learn the same information as the other ones have already learned before us, which I think is one of the things that make human beings so fascinating, is our ability to not have to necessarily experience it ourselves. We can learn from other people's experiences, which is powerful. It's one of the things, I think, that's made us the dominant species on this planet is our ability to learn from past generations and not make the same mistakes that they made. Hopefully.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: You personally have jumped from some pretty interesting places. We won't talk about the Eiffel Tower but the Seattle Space Needle.
Jeb Corliss: We can talk about Eiffel Tower all day long. I love the Eiffel Tower. We can't talk about Empire.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, the Empire State. That’s right. Anyway, so how did you pick all these places? Was it just the simple height, or was it the terrain?
Jeb Corliss: No. What's fascinating is, early in my career, I've always been very interested in landmarks, like iconic objects that actually symbolize a nation or symbolize a region. So I became very fascinated with doing things like flying by the Christ statue, like flying under the Christ statue's arm in Rio. I hit a target the size of an apple suspended over the Great wall of China. I did a double reverse flip through the center of the Eiffel tower. I did a triple reverse flip off the Golden Gate Bridge. I flew down the Matterhorn in Switzerland. I’ve flown out mount Fuji in Japan. So these kinds of things are fascinating to me. I literally, just a few months ago, flew down both of the great pyramids in Egypt.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Oh, cool.
Jeb Corliss: It was an incredible project because it involved all the years of training that I've done to make it happen. The pyramid, both of them, there's Khafre, and there's Khufu. And Khufu was the tallest man-made structure for like 3800 years, but it's only 480 ft tall. So in the skydiving world, to kind of put it into perspective of what that means in skydiving, the safe deployment altitude is 3000 ft. That's where you're opening your parachute. So I would have to begin my proximity line on the pyramid at 480 ft. In order to fly across the pyramid and then get enough distance to be safe, so I don't hit the pyramid, I would have to be deploying at around 200ft, which is really low when you're doing your deploying parachutes from the terminal like you're flying a wingsuit at terminal velocity, 120 miles an hour. Because the time when you're going that fast, things happen very fast. So it was a jump that, for me, was a culmination of my entire career in life. And to be able to see the Great Pyramids from that perspective, for me, was just absolutely amazing. And that's something I love. I love going to these– I'm not a very good tourist, so I don't just go places to just kind of hang out and look at stuff. I really have to do something when I get there. And that's what I love about BASE jumping, is it's forced me to get up off my couch, go out in the world, and experience these truly remarkable places in a unique way from a bird's eye perspective. And there's just something for me that's super special.
So, as funny as we talked about earlier, like how dangerous the sport is, it's really given me a life in a way that I can't even express. And it's made me a very happy person. And it's very special to me because I've gotten to see things from such a special way, and it's given me a life. I mean, it's given me my life. So if for some reason, in the next whatever jumps, it gets taken from me, then it was worth it. It's all worth it because I'm willing to sacrifice everything because it's given me everything.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I totally understand that viewpoint. Totally understand. That's exactly what the answer I gave to people when they're like, "Oh, weren't you afraid?" It's like, "No, you don't understand." So, was the pyramid jump the hardest jump you've ever done, or was there one?
Jeb Corliss: No, I've done a lot harder jumps. That one's just technically very dangerous because of all of the small margins for error because you're pulling so low, and you're going so fast. And when I flew across Khafre, I actually specifically angled myself at the pyramid. And by doing that, it forced me to then bank out of the pyramid. So, as I'm flying, I'm not flying across it with my wing tip. I'm flying with my chest against it. So, not only is it not my wingtip that's like 3 ft away, it's my chest that's 3 ft away from the pyramid as I'm literally sliding across the pyramid. The images, because I'm always thinking as far as– I love photography and–
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah, I was going to say take a camera.
Jeb Corliss: So, I'm always thinking about the best way to capture the image of doing these things on top of everything else. So, for me, the combination of the jump, the altitude, the complexity, the lighting, I literally waited for the light because there were clouds. And I'm sitting there, and they're like, "Are you going to go on this load?" I'm like, "No. Next load." And then the next load comes, they're like, "You're going to go on this load?" I'm like, "No. Next one." Just waiting for the perfect light because I wanted my shadow against the pyramid. And if there's a cloud, there's no shadow. Without the shadow, you can't tell how far the person is away from the pyramid. So, I needed these. I'm kind of a perfectionist in everything that I do, and not just in the fact of doing it, but also in the fact of capturing it so I can share it with everybody else. I want other people to be able to see what's been done, especially on something historic like the pyramids. Those are important.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Jeb, I noticed that you are talking kind of like a fighter pilot with your hands, so I can now start to relate even better. Let me ask you, what is in your mind? You said you're always trying to advance the art of the possible here.
So what is next in the state of the art for you? What are you thinking of next that will challenge this interesting thing called BASE jumping in a wingsuit? What can you tell us?
Jeb Corliss: I shouldn’t tell you because people are always trying to steal my ideas, but I will tell you anyway because this one is a big deal, and it's really complicated, and it's super. To me, it's something I've been working on since around 2004, and it's to land a wingsuit on purpose, like, not accidentally, not hitting trees. But now what happened is I've been working on this project for over two decades. And I told you a man landed in a bunch of boxes, right? So he beat me to it. And you can only summon Everest once, right? I'm like, you can only be first summoning Everest the first time. So I thought my project was over, and I kind of gave up on it for a little while. And then a lovely man by the name of Luke Aikins did something spectacular, and he jumped from 25,000 ft without a parachute and landed in a net. I don't know if you ever saw that, but this man did this.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: No.
Jeb Corliss: Yes, it was probably the single greatest stunt that's ever– No, it is the greatest stunt that's ever been done by a human being, period. It was absolutely fascinating. But what he did is he created a bar, a record to be broken. So 25,000 ft is lovely. I'd like to go to 50,000 ft. So I want to get from 50,000 ft, exit an aircraft, obviously, oxygen, partial pressure suit, and then land on a snow slope in Alaska without deploying a parachute. So it will be the first wingsuit landing or just landing without a parachute, basically, period. Without any man-made contraptions, no nets, no boxes, just man in nature, period. And that, for me, will be the culmination of my entire life. I mean, everything I've done. So, one, I break his record. The goal is to double it, like to do twice the amount of altitude, which is hard. I mean, you know about altitudes, and it gets tricky. We can get to 46,000 ft pretty easy. We have skydiving aircraft that can take us there. It's been done. 50,000 is tough. That extra 4000 is really hard to get. And then you're getting into military-type aircraft.
Sandy Winnefeld: So, Jeb, I got to ask you, this is the theory that you now will slow the suit down, try to stall the suit out at just the right time. So you're actually slow, you're not descending very fast, and you do it just in the right place.
Jeb Corliss: I can actually slow down to 68 miles an hour and sustain 68 miles an hour. This is forward speed. So my forward speed is 68. My fall rate is around 23, 24. And I can sustain that for almost 2 miles. So I can literally just put on air brakes, think of them. I can put air brakes on, just basically just slowly come in. And if you think about landing on a snow slope, as long as I match the angle properly, I'm sitting down at speeds of skiers.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, I mean, I see it 50 miles an hour. If you are able to sustain that, I would think that you pull up and actually get that last bit off. Now you can't control flight from there, but you are stalled.
Jeb Corliss: But you're going into powder. So the goal is the powder will stabilize and stop you. But this is the kind of thing, too, is I'm actually not worried about the landing. Honestly, the landing now I'm 100% we can do the landing safely. I'm more concerned with the 50,000 ft, honestly, just knowing a little bit about jumping out of an aircraft from that altitude, the oxygen system, partial pressure suits, those are the things where it gets sketchy. The actual dangerous part of this stunt, don't get me wrong, there's danger in landing on the snow slope, but I think that we have that basically nailed. Like, I'm not that worried about it, honestly. The exiting from 50,000 ft that's the real genuine gnarly part. And that will be the real science, the science that goes into making that happen and surviving it. I think that's the interesting component. To me, that's what's interesting because I have never jumped from that altitude. That will be a massive altitude to leave with a wingsuit. I believe it will be the highest altitude everyone's ever jumped with a wingsuit, which is–
Sandy Winnefeld: Thin air.
Jeb Corliss: Super thin air.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: It’s very thin air, and getting out of an aircraft because that aircraft is going to be going very fast. So in order for an aircraft, as you know, to stay at 50,000 ft, it's going to be hauling, like it's going to be going very fast to stay there.
Sandy Winnefeld: But the indicated airspeed will be no different. I mean, if it's going 250 or 100 knots indicated airspeed, that may be a high Mach number, and it may be fast over the ground, but you won't feel any difference because of the thinness of the air.
Jeb Corliss: Oh, really? Oh, you’re educating me. I didn't even think– I thought it’d be going like 200 miles an hour and going like ahh!
Sandy Winnefeld: What would be really interesting is to calculate your Mach number when you do that.
Jeb Corliss: Well, hey, if you want to get involved, I need all the brains I can get. Because honestly, for me, like I said, the wingsuit flying part, once I get below 25,000 ft, I feel I'll be in my world, no problem. Over 25,000 ft, I'm in a world that I don't know, and that's the world that scares me because I don't have the information. But that's the kind of stunts I love working on because that's where I grow and I learn, and I get to work with people like you guys that help me basically evolve as a person, which then hopefully helps everything else evolve as well.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, not to digress the conversation, but you should look at the system they installed in the shuttle after the Challenger accident to help us jump out, bail out at that level. We had a carabiner on our harnesses, and there was a big pole that was extended out the hatch, and we connected the carabiner to the pole and kind of let the pole guide our initial trajectory out of the hatch, and we kind of rolled out. And they kept telling us, “Oh, you got a 50% chance of not hitting the wing as you go out. But, hey, it's that or crack.
Jeb Corliss: Hey, 50% is better than 100%, right? I mean, 100% death or 50% life. You take 50% life for sure.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: But that's kind of been looked at before, so that might be an area.
Jeb Corliss: Did anyone ever actually do it on a training or practice that's just all theoretical?
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Probably. I bet somebody in the military tested it.
Jeb Corliss: I would love to get footage of that. I think that would be fascinating footage to look at. Because anyone who tests something like that– Because the theoretical is okay, but the actual people who do it, that's like, wow, I love test pilots. That's kind of in my world. That's how I really love the test pilot who goes and fires inside the ejection seats. Like the guys who actually ride those ejection seats to test them out, you're like, bravo. That's like, wow, dude, that's hardcore. I mean, that's a hardcore thing to do. I think it's amazing.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Well, we've been talking about talking around a little bit, the risk of this, and you talked a little bit about how you approach jumps and trying to manage it safely, but you have been involved in accidents in the past, including one in South Africa. That was quite serious. Can you just share us that experience with us a little and tell us how you recovered?
Jeb Corliss: Well, I've had two really serious accidents in South Africa. My first one was in 1999, where I jumped a 300-foot waterfall and got sucked into it, breaking my back in three places. All of my ribs, left foot, right knee. I was eaten alive by animals for 3 hours while I waited for rescue. Rescue took 9 hours. I spent a month and a half laying on my back in a South African hospital. I had to learn to walk again. That was a pretty bad one. That was at the beginning of my career. Actually, my career began with a career-ending injury. And any normal person would have been like, “This is dumb. We're not doing this anymore. Why would you do this?” It was funny because the doctor who was in the emergency room with me, he walked up to me, and he was kind of talking to me and he said, “I bet you're never going to do that again, right?” I just looked at him, I'm like, “I'm going to tell you what, man, there's only two things in this world that are going to prevent me from BASE jumping.” And he's like, “What's that?” “I'm a quadriplegic or death.” And he's just like, “Wow.” He's like, “All right, well, I guess you're going to be jumping again because you're not quadriplegic, and you're okay.” So that was kind of my mentality at the time.
But the accident you're talking about was when I was flying a wingsuit, and I was actually doing it for Real Sports on HBO. We were filming a production and I'd been doing quite a few jumps. I probably did 15, 20 jumps up to that point, just like getting shots from different angles and stuff, and I was becoming complacent. I was starting to get a little too overconfident, and I felt like I owned this place and that I wasn't scared anymore. And that's a big problem. Fear is super important with what we do. You need it. A lot of people don't realize they think that fearless people are courageous, but that's not true. You can't have courage without fear. Literally, by definition, courage is doing things that scare you. That's what it is. If you're not scared, you're not being courageous; you're being crazy. I had kind of lost fear, which was very bad with what I do, and I got cocky, and I made a very serious mistake. And I am one of the only people in the world to have a terminal bounce off flat, solid granite. I hit flat, solid granite at 122.3 miles an hour, I believe, is what the GPS said. So we know that I hit hard and fast. And the only reason it didn't kill me and just shred me into bits is because I skipped off the rock like a stone on water. So as I came in, what was happening was I had people, a cameraman set up a target for me of a black balloon. And the black balloon was set on top of a ledge. And what happened is the wind had blown the balloon to a lower ledge and hooked on it. So there was another ledge below this ledge. And what happened is it created an optical illusion so I couldn't see it.
And that's the thing, humans, we feel like our eyes work really well. But sometimes, when you're coming over stacked ground, your visual is not as good as you think it is, especially when you're doing 120 plus miles an hour, and you have very small margins of error, and I don't have power to give more thrust. But I didn't even know that I thought I was good. I knew I was going to hit the balloon. You get target fixation. I don't know if you guys work with that.
Sandy Winnefeld: Yeah, very much so.
Jeb Corliss: Yeah, you look at what you're going to hit. If you want to shoot something, you're looking at what you want to shoot, right? Well, we're the same thing. I'm looking at my target, and everything just goes tunnel vision to my target. And I'm on that target, I'm like, I'm going to get it. But in order to hit that target, I had to hit the first ledge. So I end up hitting the first ledge just right, basically at the waist, directly below my parts, and I basically impact. And as I hit, I bounce. And as I bounce, I start to tumble. And luckily, in my BASE jumping career, my earlier part was all acrobatics, so I did a lot of high diving training, so I was very comfortable with being unstable, so I was able to regain control with only one and a half flips. Usually, when you're in a wingsuit and you end up on your back, it can take thousands of feet to recover that. You get into what's called a flat spin, which I don't know if you guys have dealt with that in flying aircraft.
Sandy Winnefeld: I've actually been in one. That was a parachute jump for me.
Jeb Corliss: We're going to talk about that because that's super interesting. That's interesting. But so you get it. So for me, I've been on flat spins on my back that have taken thousands of feet to recover. Like it can take thousands of feet. If it had taken me even 100 ft to recover on this one, I would have died instantly. So as I impacted, I end up on my back, flat spin. I'm able to recover it, in a wingsuit that's been shredded. And the wingsuit because it's shredded, is trying to pull me back into the mountain. And what I have to do is I actually have to lean in a very unnatural way to keep it from pulling me back in the mountain. And I had to clear a series of ledges, so I couldn't just pull my parachute. I had to actually continue to fly to pull my parachute. And I had to do that with two completely crushed and destroyed ledges.
And it was a fascinating experience because what happened to me psychologically was strange. And it's kind of hard to even describe it. You guys, I know you've experienced this because you've been in these kinds of situations, but you get something called time distortion, where time stretches, and a second can feel like a minute. Basically, just everything opens up and everything starts moving in what seems like slow motion. And my brain actually broke into two parts, which was really weird. Like there were two completely separate thought processes happening simultaneously. And one of the thought processes was the calculations, the math, okay, you're tumbling, regain control. Ledge, have to get over that ledge, second ledge, third ledge, and calculating altitudes for deployment. That's what was happening on one side of my brain. The other side of my brain was more of a philosophical kind of conversation. And that conversation was, you've gone in. You have just impacted, flat, solid granite at 120 miles per hour. This is an unsurvivable accident. You cannot survive this. You are going to die. Like that's, just straight up. I mean, you're dead, no question. You're not going to survive. So you have two choices in this moment. One, you can pull, you can pull at some altitude, hit the ground, be shattered, bleed to death while you're waiting for rescue. You might get ten minutes, you might get a half hour. You're not going to get that much time, but you're going to suffer during it. So you can have a slow, agonizing, painful death. Or don't pull, do a header into the ground, and just be done with this like, just make it over.
And it was a fascinating thought process because I knew I couldn't make it. Like, there's no way you could hit ground at that speed and survive. I knew my legs were done. I knew I was done. And it's strange because all of a sudden, the part of my brain that was doing calculations is like, okay, you pull now or you die. This is it, right this second. And the part of my brain and I consciously thought this, I was like, well, it's a good thing pain doesn't bother you. Let's see how much time you can get. I all of a sudden decided, you know what? If I only get five more seconds, I want them. If it's ten more minutes, I want them. If it's a half an hour, I want it. All of a sudden, it kind of boiled life down to what was important, which was time. That's all that mattered. Nothing else meant anything. All I wanted was the seconds I could get. Whatever they were, I didn't care if they were going to be in pain. I didn't care what they were. I just wanted time. That's all that meant anything.
And I pulled. And then all of a sudden, I'm laying there, and I'm shattered. It was 123 degrees that day. I think it was breaking world records for South Africa for temperatures. I'm all in black. I'm being cooked alive. I'm slowly dying. My kidneys, apparently, were processing the crushed muscle in my legs, and they were shutting down. And it was pain on a level that– I had thought I knew pain. I thought I understood what pain was. I had no idea how bad it could get. Pain can become so vast and so overwhelming that it literally is all there is in your mind. There is nothing else but pain. The suffering is indescribable. I couldn't describe it if I tried. It's so powerful. But it was funny. I was happy to be alive. It was strange. In that most gruesome, horrible suffering, I was just happy to still exist.
And what I kind of realized, especially since I didn't die, I survived it, I kind of came to this realization that, you know what? As long as you're alive, there's endless possibilities of what can happen, anything can happen. When you're dead, that's quite literally the end of all possibilities. So going from a person, like a teenager who is suicidal and just wanted to end my life, to someone who fought that hard to survive, like someone who would fight and do take any amount of pain, any amount of suffering, just to stay here for a couple more seconds was very powerful for me. And it's what BASE jumping gave me. It's funny because I don't even like to call BASE jumping a sport. Anyone who's like, “Oh, BASE jumping is not a sport.” You're exactly right. Sports are games that people play with each other, with made up rules. This is not a game. This is life and death. This is literal philosophy. This is understanding mortality. This is a person who's willing to accept the consequences for their actions, which is what I love about the two of you because you get it. Because you both have worked in fields and done things that are the same when it comes to the mentality of what you have to be willing to give, what you have to be willing to sacrifice. A lot of people don't understand how important sacrifice is when you're doing such big things, such vast things, such life and death things. You have to be willing to sacrifice your life; otherwise you cannot do it. Or you can live in delusion, but delusional people don't make it long.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, Jeb, we're running a little bit short on time, but I have to tell you what a phenomenal discussion this was.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: I really enjoyed this.
Sandy Winnefeld: Everything from the technology and sort of the thrill and the process that you did growing up, but to the sort of more philosophical thing at the end, which was really cool to hear.
Jeb Corliss: Well, thank you, man. I wish I could have heard more from you guys, though, because you guys are so interesting. I hate talking all the time. It's like I feel like I talk too much.
Sandy Winnefeld: Well, if you're a listener and you want to read more about Jeb and his adventures, make sure you look up his autobiography, Memoirs from the Edge: Exploring the line Between Life and Death, which I think we just got a little bit of taste of. But again, Memoirs from the Edge, what a great read. I have to go out and get that.
Jeb Corliss: Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it.
Sandy Winnefeld: Thanks so much.
Jeb Corliss: No, it's awesome talking to you guys. And if you ever want to talk again, I love talking to you as much as possible.
Sandy Winnefeld: maybe after your 50,000-foot jump.
Jeb Corliss: Let's see if I can get it financed. It's so expensive.
Sandy Winnefeld: There you go.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: Yeah. Jeb, it's been a pleasure.
Jeb Corliss: Thanks, guys. This is fun.
Dr. Sandra Magnus: That was BASE jumper and wingsuit flier Jeb Corliss. I'm Sandra Magnus.
Sandy Winnefeld: And I'm Sandy Winnefeld. Check us out on social media, including a short video of our interview with Jeb on TikTok. Our handle is very simple @theadrenalinezone.
