Skydiving
From sky to steel: Sean MacCormac skysurfs the San Francisco Bay Bridge
Pioneer of skysurfing and Red Bull Air Force legend Sean MacCormac skysurfs from 5,000 feet and rides San Francisco’s iconic Bay Bridge before landing on a floating barge
Since the beginning of time, humans’ athletic progression has been marked by monumental moments in the history of sport. And on August 23rd, adventure sports officially experienced one of those moments, as skysurfing innovator Sean MacCormac made history when he dove 5,000 feet out of a helicopter, skysurfed for nearly three minutes and rode down the suspension cables of one of the nation’s most iconic bridges: the San Francisco Bay Bridge. He then turned a hard right and floated down to a barge in the Bay where he landed safely. This endeavor was the brainchild of MacCormac, and he had been working arm-in-arm for eighteen months with the Red Bull team to make his dream a reality.
Sean MacCormac skysurfs the San Francisco Bay Bridge
© Michael Clark / Red Bull Content Pool
MacCormac is one of the skysurfing’s foremost pioneers, and a stalwart proponent of progression. And that progression is always on his mind, as he explained the origin of this bridge riding idea. MacCormac says, “I was shooting a base jumping commercial in LA, and we had a lunch break and I was looking out over LA, daydreaming about skysurfing, and I just imagined this impossible grind where you could use the canopy to grind a rooftop or something. Seeing lines with this equipment that I wouldn’t have imagined otherwise. From there, it just kind of percolated into this.”
The Stats
With two X Games skysurfing medals, 22,000 skydives spanning 25 years in the sport, MacCormac is more than just a forefather of skysurfing. He’s a CIA civilian trainer, Hollywood stuntmansuntman and a US Navy and Air Force civilian trainer. There are less than a handful of human beings on planet earth that could pull this world-first off, let alone come up with the idea, which, to many, might seem crazy, but to MacCormac, was pretty simple. Sean’s idea was to load up in a helicopter with his skysurfing board—think of a snowboard mixed with an aircraft wing—and when reaching an altitude of around 5,000 feet, Sean would jump out. Once he was within range of the Bay Bridge, he would deploy his parachute and adjust his flight path. From there, MacCormac would grind the cables of the bridge before pulling off an exit maneuver and safely coast down to a landing pad on a floating barge.
Sounds easy enough, yeah? Think again.
The preparation, skill and precision of this top-secret project fine-tuned over hundreds, if not thousands of hours of logistical meetings, practice runs, safety briefs and visualization of this feat cannot be understated. This is basically a real-life Mission Impossible movie scene that required a dedicated and highly-qualified group of pilots, cinematographers, photographers, logistics ops, ground crew and mission support. In early July, MacCormac and his crew went out to Lake Elsinore, California at the renowned Skydive Elsinore. There, they set up a training facility with a 182-foot crane with a descending wire that mirrored what Sean would encounter on the Bay Bridge. According to MacCormac, “We have a giant crane with two anchoring forklifts and with Eric, our math magician, we’ve been able to come pretty darn close to emulating the schematics of the bridge, so what we’re able to do is get some repetition and figure out what the best flightlines are and go through this whole process. It’s been really incredible and confidence-building, so we’ve crossed the rubicon of the unknown.”
Sean MacCormac skysurfing
© Chris Tedesco / Red Bull Content Pool
That was one of the most technical things I’ve ever done. It was wildly dangerous and extremely high stakes. There’s about a dozen disaster points that you’re cruising through.
All the hours of concepting, practicing and preparing played in their favor in this quest for excellence, and it all came to fruition on a crisp (and early) summer morning. A light wind was coming off the Bay, the bridge was shrouded in a yellow haze from the lights dotting the cables and illuminating their curvature. Perhaps a beacon of what’s to come. Cars, trucks and semis are already humming east and west on the bridge. The crew of nearly 70 people assembled at Red’s Java House, an iconic San Francisco staple at 5:30am for the morning safety briefing and run of show. Nearly an hour later, all positions were set when weather holds stymied the jump, until the clouds parted and the sun shone through and golden rays of sunshine began to illuminate the massive columns of the bridge, right as a Red Bull helicopter with MacCormac inside circled above. And then, it was officially go time. MacCormac jumps from the helicopter, a feeling he describes as “Dropping into a 2,000 foot vert ramp” and begins his divebomb to history. He deploys his parachute shortly after his skysurf and he begins his flight path to the cables of the bridge. At 9:36am, Sean’s board connects with the cables and he rides it, before turning hard right and descending down the remaining 200 feet to the floating barge below. The crowd that had assembled along the Embarcadero due to the mass amount of media awaiting the jump clapped, hooted and hollered, as they had just witnessed something that they had never before seen. Nor had anyone else documented this monumental feat.
Once MacCormac was back on land, and when asked what he felt upon landing successfully on the barge after riding the Bay Bridge, he replied, “[It’s] just an incredible sense of relief. It’s funny, with the flying part, I feel awkwardly comfortable and confident. I didn’t have fear with the feat of it, but I had extreme anxiety in wanting to make sure to perform and stick every aspect of this. I have my whole family here. My team, my pilots, I mean, they’re my family. My Red Bull second family, too. I wanted so bad to stick it for all of them. There really is no I in team, and it was such a cathartic feeling to have everybody here and powersliding onto the [barge] felt like coming home.”
The Bay Bridge was originally constructed in 1936 as a necessary means to expand the Bay Area during the great California Gold Rush, a pivotal moment in this country’s evolution. That precious metal underneath the soil helped establish the state of California as the place where one could find not just the great American Dream, but great adventure, also. And it’s hard to believe that nearly 100 years later, MacCormac and the incredible team at Red Bull utilized an iconic staple of San Francisco in the Bay Bridge to tell the world that out here, that great adventure can still be found, only the precious metal used in this evolution of action sports was steel, and rather than sitting underground, it sat nearly 500 feet above sea level.
Sean MacCormac skysurfing over the San Francisco Bay Bridge
© Michael Clark / Red Bull Content Pool
