Jumping into the Lost World

The experienced Argentine parachutist Nicolás López has added another feat to his long list of athletic achievements, while also becoming the first to perform a BASE jump from the flat top of the Sarisariñama, a “Tepui” or mesa located in the Venezuelan Amazon.

The jump only lasted a few seconds, 5 in freefall and between 15 and 20 seconds of just flying - time during which the parachutist covered over 350 meters of the hole’s depth to land safe and sound at the bottom. Nicolás López has also jumped from the obelisk of Buenos Aires (63 m), one of the shortest jumps ever performed, and from Merida’s Cable Railway System in Venezuela, the highest and longest in the world located at 4,180 meters above sea level - making it the highest-altitude BASE jump ever performed. “This has been the most difficult jump I’ve done yet,” López commented after a few intensely humid hours of reflection amidst the Amazonian vegetation. The location’s features made it very technical in nature, and he was forced to fly for the first 5 seconds with a slider in order to detach from the rock wall - which was very close to him during the first seconds of his freefall. After the parachute opened, he had to fly slalom in order to avoid the big trees at the bottom of the mantle and finally land in the only spot he could: an area more or less one-by-three meters large, between rocks piled up high as a house. In addition to the precision required by this jump, the mental stress stemming from the necessity to avoid all mistakes - whether fatal or merely dangerous - was the most difficult thing. “It was a very important challenge in terms of the psychological demands of even just thinking that you’re in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest - in the middle of nowhere, and a two-and-a-half-hour flight from the nearest town.” This project was initially born in the mind of the athlete, who had heard about the place during his visit to Venezuela to jump from a cabin of the Merida Cable Railway System. Following that trip, Nicolás López became obsessed with the idea of jumping from such an inhospitable, dangerous, remote and yet-unconquered place as the mantle of the Sarisariñama Tepui. This project required months of preparation, including the design and construction of a parachute with specific characteristics that would allow a successful flight and, of course, a perfect landing. “We built a hybrid parachute, mixing characteristics of various models, so that I would have a better chance at getting close to the landing area and - once there - landing at very low speed, as slowly as possible”, explained López, who tested the new parachute at the APEX factory (where he works as a test pilot) around 30 times before performing his feat.