Even though I love winter there’s nothing like getting away to a warm nice place, preferably a tropical environment… I was glad to get an invitation to an indoor base jumping event in Berlin; The 1st Indoor Base World Cup. It was held in a dome which was built as a hangar for the Zeppelin airships, but since they didn’t resume the construction of these it was made into a tropical paradise with beaches, rainforest a constant temperature of 26 degrees Celsius, and 80 % humidity packed with Germans in Speedos!

The competition – accuracy landing on a small disk – was just to justify having the event. The point was to gather 58 jumpers from all over the world for three days of fun. Although the exit was situated at 100 meters it equalled 80 meters (260 feet) of air density due to the humidity, so not much time at all, guess we had about a ten second canopy ride. It was in itself an achievement to land safely on the beach and not in the crowd of sun bathing people or on one of the palm trees. There was not a lot of room for error as the landing was really tight with a lot of obstacles. But we managed to do around 400 jumps between us all with no serious injuries.

The hardest thing was probably the 10-minute climb to the exit, due to the heat everybody ended up dripping wet on top. And because we landed on the beach this meant sand sticking everywhere on your wet body. But this pain was very little compared to all the fun we gained! It was such a great time, already looking forward to the next event in two years time!

Images by: Konrad Donschen