About ten years ago, a guy named Dean Potter and a friend, Graham Hunt, put on their wingsuits and jumped off a cliff. The wingsuits enabled them to soar in flying squirrel fashion. Potter, age forty-three, and Hunt, twenty-nine, were experienced BASE jumpers. The acronym stands for Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth, the locations jumpers jump from.
Both Potter and Hunt were expert jumpers, but Potter broke the record in 2009 for the longest BASE jump, at two minutes and fifty seconds, after jumping from Eiger North Face in Switzerland. By accomplishing this feat, he earned the title of Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic magazine.
