Finding Freedom

Marcus Ellison performing a static line BASE jump from an undisclosed location in central West Virginia.

Harness.
Leg straps.
Chest straps.
Extraction device.

This is the checklist Marcus Ellison goes through in his mind before leaping off a 332-foot cell tower in central West Virginia.

“It’s sort of like a pilot would do on an airplane, like a pre-flight inspection. I’m just going through all that stuff in my mind cause that’s the last [thing] you wanna be thinking about when you’re standing on the exit point.”

We approach the tower from the West, nearing sunset, winding down backroads toward the edge of Fayette County where Marcus grew up. “It’s a nice little spot cause it’s [too far] for the Fayette County authorities to get here. By the time somebody called and they had the time to respond, we’re f****n’ gone.” Despite his nonchalance, Marcus’s demeanor is not that of a lawless criminal and more like a professional athlete before a primetime game.

View from our dashboard on approach to the cell tower.

“At this point it’s time to perform, not worry about the gear. . . . I’ve been to this tower a bunch of times. I don’t know how many jumps I’ve done off of it, but — it’s just one of those things [where] every object is different. . . . This one has a set of requirements that it takes to jump safely, and I’m just sort of reminding myself of all those things when we get here.”

Still, I can’t help but think there’s an irony to it all; the Fayette County authorities Marcus is avoiding are the same authorities he partners with to coordinate Bridge Day, West Virginia’s largest single-day festival and a sanctioned event for upwards of 300 BASE jumpers every year. As the BASE Adviser to the Bridge Day Commission, Marcus’s role is to facilitate a safe environment for jumpers of all experience levels, up to and on the day of the event.

In fact, it was Bridge Day itself that inspired Marcus to become a BASE jumper. “I was 5 years old when I first saw someone BASE jump there at Bridge Day. I had this hat and the hat fell off [the bridge] and it made me think, ‘Well, hey, I wanna go get my hat. If I had a parachute, I could do that.’” But it wasn’t just a falling hat that spurred Marcus’s pursuit of airborne feats. “A very close friend of mine who is no longer with us, he and I had always sort of had this dream. We talked about it a lot. We were always watching videos, you know, stuff on the internet about BASE jumping and skydiving. He passed away in 2005 due to a motorcycle crash, and it sort of became a promise to fulfill this thing he and I had always talked about.”

The New River Gorge Bridge on what should have been Bridge Day 2021.

Soon after his 21st birthday and following a brief deployment with the Air Force, Marcus began to seek out information about skydiving as a means to enter the world of BASE jumping.

“I had friends who had made some jumps here and there, so I just began doing some research and [found] a place near Virginia Beach called Skydive Suffolk. I went down there and handed them my money and said, ‘Let’s do this thing.’

And so I learned how to skydive and went through that whole process with every intention to be able to go to the New River Gorge Bridge and jump off that bridge in my hometown. And, you know, one of the warning signs to skydivers is when someone shows up and says they just want to BASE jump. There’s a lot of steps between your first skydive and your first BASE. Most first BASE jump courses require each student have at least 200 [skydives] prior to enrolling.”

Not one to cut corners, but always one to push the limits, Marcus made a total of 195 skydives in the first nine months of his jumping career. At the time he enrolled, one of, if not the only first BASE jump course available was at Snake River BASE Academy in a small midwestern town called Twin Falls, Idaho. “Twin Falls has a bridge there called the Perrine Bridge, and it’s the only structure of its kind that is legal to jump from 24 hours a day, 365, no matter what. . . . At the time, there was only two people who were teaching courses like this in the whole country, and they both lived there at the bridge in Twin Falls. One of the names you might recognize — Miles Dasher, who’s a Red Bull [Air Force Member].”

Marcus opted to enroll with the second instructor, Tom Aiello, because of his reputation among fellow skydivers in Virginia. “I went there to learn because that’s what you do. This community’s small, and if you sneak around and learn sort of in weird ways or ways that aren’t really recognized as appropriate, then people know. But if you go and put your time in and take a course, you’ll be more respected and a more wellrounded jumper, in my opinion.” As in many apprenticeships of this kind, pedigree matters, but so, too, does proper instruction. “The biggest difference between skydiving and BASE jumping is, when you’re in an airplane, you’re already moving forward at around 120 miles per hour. BASE jumping is the act of jumping from fixed objects that don’t move, so there’s a huge difference in flying your body on a BASE jump versus a skydive.” After initial orientation, the trainees arrive at the bridge to discuss the next steps. They also attend “ground school” where participants learn about and practice emergency procedures. After demonstrating that knowledge on the ground, trainees have the opportunity to practice in a designated area. As training progresses, participants filter through the steps of stowing the pilot chute, practicing different jump techniques, floating sideways, and object avoidance training. “[Eventually,] you go out there and demonstrate to not only your instructor but to yourself that you can do this, you can make your own way. And ultimately, that’s what BASE is; it’s a path of solitude in a lot of ways.”

The first time Marcus returned to Bridge Day, now as an experienced BASE jumper, he was anything but alone. “My first Bridge Day [as a jumper] was October 2008 and it was on my 24th birthday. Most of the time, Bridge Day is about this one day a year arrival of these bright-color wearing ‘crazy people.’ They come to town and jump off the bridge and nobody knows any of them. But now, for the first time ever, everyone here knew somebody who was doing it, and that was me. There was this scene out there on the bridge — I’m walking from the Fayetteville end of the bridge out to the center, and I looked back at one point and there’s this mob following me out there. It was a bunch of my family and friends and a bunch of other people from town. I get out there and get up on the platform and people are cheering. [It was like] a football game or something, or a concert, and they announced my name and the place goes crazy. . . . That was it, man. That was incredible.”

Marcus Ellison, before and after suiting up for a sunset BASE jump.

That sensation Marcus felt his first day on the bridge is one he hopes to share with other aspiring BASE jumpers. Bill Chouinard is a Canadian expat and one of Marcus’s most loyal converts. “I’ve known Marcus a long time. I was flying airplanes and paragliders and — most people get into BASE jumping via skydiving and I don’t have any real skydiving experience. . . . All my canopy skills come from the paragliding world and basically Marcus [said], ‘I’ll help you. I’ll mentor you into the BASE world. I think we can do it safely and there’s some objects [to jump] around here that are fairly safe.’”

There was a catch, though. Marcus, in return, wanted Bill’s help learning to be a pilot. In Bill’s words, “There’s a lot of crossover of concepts and understanding, whether it’s a parachute or an airplane. Things like a landing pattern, landing into the wind — it’s very similar if not almost the same, and so your ability to cross over from one flying discipline to another is certainly helped by your experience. . . . [Marcus is] already superseding what most people do in similar hours.”

Bill, like many of the people I met in Fayetteville, has an entrepreneurial spirit and no shortage of extracurriculars. On top of his day job as a flight nurse, he and his wife own Wild Blue Adventure Company, a scenic flight charter offering sweeping views of the New River Gorge and optional aerobatic stunts mid-flight. I pointed out to Bill the obvious through-line with all these activities he is involved in, asking what the draw for him was to these high-adrenaline hobbies.

Bill Chouinard — co-owner of Wild Blue Adventure Company and a BASE enthusiast — and his 1940 Stearman Biplane.

“I think it really comes back — for me personally, and I think for a lot of people — to two things. One, it takes a bunch of discipline. It takes a high level of mental focus and [two,] it puts you into — I hate to use the phrase because it’s almost overplayed a little bit — but almost that flow state. It is very demanding and will pretty much shut off your concern for everything else. Much like flying, doing aerobatics. I love flying, but if I had to pick one thing to do it would be flying upside down. It’s by far the most fun and people are like, ‘Yes, you’re addicted to adrenaline, you’re addicted to this.’ It’s almost the opposite. It’s [that] you’re so focused that you’re ultra calm. You’re tuned in at a level that really, it’s hard to find in the everyday world. All these things, for different reasons, require [that focus].”

~ ~ ~

When I first meet Marcus, it’s at his new home just outside Fayetteville, on a clear but muggy October morning. The house is tucked far into the West Virginia woods, every turn seemingly your last until another dirt path emerges. When I arrive, he introduces me to his friend, JD — an arborist by trade — who is helping Marcus trim branches from a tree over the house. Another of Marcus’s friends, Pat, is helping to refinish the hardwood floors inside. Marcus and I stand out back by the skeleton of a newly framed deck, his kitten, Billie, playing in the grass, as he expounds on what I perceive to be the adrenaline rush he must feel from jumping: “It’s hard to describe, really, but I wouldn’t say I’m chasing an adrenaline rush. . . . Pretend this cinderblock is the exit point. The moment my foot leaves that point, everything else, all your problems — work, relationships, family — nothing else matters except what you’re doing in that moment. I call it freedom. That moment, that release, is freedom.”

Marcus and his kitten, Billie, at Marcus’s new home just outside Fayetteville, West Virginia.

The alignment between this feeling Marcus and Bill describe leading up to a jump strikes me as a direct parallel with what others describe after intense meditation. I asked Bill if he had ever practiced mindfulness or meditation, or if it was simply the nature of a deathdefying sport like BASE jumping that keeps him locked in prior to a jump. “All through high school I was really into martial arts, and I spent some time at the National Training Center for the Martial Arts. I adapted that training philosophy in climbing and pretty much everything else I’ve ever done. Certainly visualization, meditation, all those things can be applied to all our disciplines in life.”

Bill referenced the 2014 book The Rise of Superman, in which Steven Kotler explores this very relationship between action sports and flow. “In that book [they] talk about extreme sports and how — because they expose you to danger — they require a high level of focus and automatically snap people into a flow state almost as a mode or mechanism of survival. . . . [Kotler] talks a lot about a rock climber and BASE jumper named Dean Potter. Dean was really into meditation and [in the book he says], ‘Listen, I can spend two hours [meditating] to get a glimpse of that state of mind, or I can go jump off a rock and be there in a second.’”

An important fact that I haven’t mentioned about Bill: He is a 47-year-old father of three. It begs the question, why risk everything for a moment of bliss? “Some people would just say, ‘No, he’s crazy. There’s nothing deeply rewarding enough to risk all that.’ For them, that may be true, but I’m certainly of the mindset [that] we only live once. I think I live a higher quality of life because I regularly participate in things that make me question the value of everything in my life. I try not to waste time doing things that don’t matter to me because if I know, hey, I’m going to go fly airplanes tomorrow or BASE jump tomorrow, or whatever that activity is and it poses a risk. I think, ‘I might die tomorrow, so what am I going to do today that I love?’”

If BASE jumping is in fact the Zen artform that Bill makes it out to be, that makes Marcus his spiritual guide. The problem being, theirs is a forbidden practice in National Park territory by regulations Marcus says are outdated and hypocritical.

“Right now as it stands, I can’t invite 10 of my BASE jumping friends to come hang out in Fayetteville and sit down at a restaurant in town and openly talk about BASE jumping, because it’s not accepted here. . . . Let me tell you a story about a guy I know in Cincinnati: these boys have been jumping for years. They know the drill. They don’t need to call me when they come to town because they already know the protocol. They came to town one morning [and] were sitting in Cathedral Cafe having breakfast. They were talking about BASE jumping and somebody in Cathedral overheard them talking and called the [National Park Service] and told them. The Park Service [went] out that night and busted them on the bridge.”

The violation, according to Marcus, falls under an antiquated law born out of the creation of the national parks themselves. “The aerial delivery by parachute rule was put in place initially when the national parks were created because there were people living in the backcountry, and the only way they could get their s**t was by people dropping it to them via airplane. . . . The original rule was [meant] to force people out of the backcountry, from living in the sticks. It [was] modified to later prohibit skydiving and BASE jumping as part of the same aerial delivery rule.”

A district court ruling from 1998 confirms this theory, citing the arrest of Mark Albers and 11 others for BASE jumping in Arizona’s Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Court documents accuse Albers and his cohort of violating a provision which prohibits “[d] elivering or retrieving a person or object by parachute, helicopter, or other airborne means, except in emergencies involving public safety or serious property loss, or pursuant to the terms and conditions of a permit” (36 C.F.R. § 2.17(a)(3)). An appellate judge upheld the ruling, stating that “The safety threat implicated in BASE jumping is most often the potential harm to the jumper due to the fatalities and injuries characterizing the extreme sport. We do not, however, discount the safety risks of BASE jumping posed to members of the public, particularly in areas where people are likely to congregate.”

While it cannot be argued that Albers and so many others charged with these violations are, in fact, breaking the law, the question remains why such a law stands in the first place. The legal discussion around Albers’ conviction is but one in a series of events that seems to infantilize BASE jumpers in a way that does not occur in other extreme sports.

Marcus’s friend, Pat Goodman — the same Pat helping Marcus to refinish his new hardwood floors — was previously a dedicated big wall climber in the Yosemite Valley. “I do think that jumping in the Gorge should be as readily available to people who are certified to jump as [climbing is now]. At what point [did somebody say], “I can’t let people jump off these cliffs, but we can let them climb them. [And] without ropes. To me, that’s a skewed thing. And I’m not trying to shut climbing down in the Valley, trust me.”

Marcus speaking with his friend, Pat (left), and girlfriend, Ashton (right), after a successful sunset jump.

“Me neither,” Marcus added. “It’s them trying to protect a user group from themselves [when they know nothing] about it. Climbing’s been around for such a long time that it’s more known, right? It’s more normal. . . . I deserve to be here and be able to operate openly in any way that I choose. Just like any other user group is. Also, I want my opportunity to run and operate a business here just like everybody else is, but I can’t because of an antiquated federal rule that has no place here.”

Marcus’s hope is that he can take what he has learned from his years of jumping to open his own BASE academy, similar to where he went through training at Snake River. “Fayetteville has a very big bridge here. It’d be an awesome place to be able to teach people how to BASE jump, if it were legal to do so. . . . What that would afford me to do would be to go ahead and start a business here in my hometown, provide a couple of jobs, probably end up opening a parachute rigging shop that sells gear, [and could then] customize and deliver parachute equipment to the people whom we were teaching. For the first time in the history of anything, [there] would be a full-time legal jump in the Eastern United States, and specifically here at the New River.

Marcus eyeing his landing at the base of the cell tower.

Number two, it would allow people who live in the East the opportunity to not have to travel [to the] West to learn how to BASE jump. [It would provide] something that would add to our outdoor recreation economy, which is what this entire area is built on now. [It would also] afford this town of Fayetteville security — it has a problem in the winter sustaining its population, because that’s the off-season for the tourism industry here, and a legal BASE jumping school would operate almost predominantly in the fall and winter. [We would have] limited operations in the spring and summer because of the existing whitewater rafting industry who occupy the main landing area we would use as well. . . . There’s some coordination and logistics stuff that has to take place there, but ultimately what that would do is allow me to own and operate a business here and completely sustain my life, and provide what I believe would be a huge economic impact to this region in the fall and winter months.”

~ ~ ~

2021 is now the second year in a row that Bridge Day has been cancelled due to COVID pressures. While the implications for the sport and the impact on the local economy remain unclear, one thing is for certain: Legalizing BASE in the New River Gorge will bring nothing but good things to Fayetteville and the surrounding area. With proper regulation and supervision, BASE jumping as a sport will only become safer and has the potential to be the single largest draw for the outdoor recreation community in the New River Gorge. If the Park Service continues to treat this sport with an abstinence-based approach, enthusiasts will continue to operate under the cover of night, without proper instruction or proper safeguards for EMS, leading to more and worsening injuries over time. The time is now to look at BASE jumping with the same lens we approach other outdoor recreation like rock climbing and whitewater rafting. Until that time, Marcus Ellison will, in his own words, just continue to be another hillbilly doing gangster s**t.