Sunshine Superman Page #3

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of North America.

A group of professional parachuters

traveled to this unique spot

to experience flight.

When I organized the first load

to go to El Capitan,

we spent nearly all summer there,

four or five trips,

scouting of the geography, finding,

hopefully, places suitable to jump.

Then we stumbled upon

this really idyllic place

that's about 3,000 feet tall

with an overhang

of a couple hundred feet.

And as soon as I saw it I yelled,

"Eureka!"

The pioneers of this remarkable

attempt

are skydivers Kent Lane and Tom Stark.

Along with Kenny Gosselin, Mike Sherrin

and helper Sally Wenlzel.

Expedition leader Carl Boenish

with Dave Blattell.

Carl, on his own, was doing

a lot of research on El Cap.

He then asked me

to help him with the filming of it.

I wanted to figure out a way,

if possible,

to film a person running off a cliff.

But from a vantage point

looking back toward the cliff.

The first jumps were going to be made

off El Cap

and Carl wanted to get

motion-picture footage

of the first jumpers running towards him

jumping off the cliff

and then that way he could then follow

them down as they were in free fall.

Actually, I made a homemade ladder

that's about 20 feet long

out of aluminum.

I perched on the end of this ladder

so I could film toward the cliff.

It was a long pole.

And it had some crosspieces on it

to kind of make it like

a little bit of a ladder.

When it was set up

by the rock climbers on El Cap,

it was just this rod sticking out

from the mountain

with a little bicycle seat.

And if you were going to sit on

that bicycle seat,

there's nothing between you

and 3,000 feet below you.

I mean, it was just nothing.

He would go out there...

and then he'd have to get up the nerve

and swing 180

so that he could sit on that seat.

He was nuts.

He was absolutely nuts.

Then you would hear his laugh

and you were guaranteed

that he was nuts.

And he talked us into jumping off

this thing.

So we're all nuts.

We were all young and not knowing

any better. We're ready to go.

Kent Lane,

first jumper off of the first trip.

Two and a half years' jumping,

600 jumps.

My name is Kent Lane.

The first time I heard about it,

it sounded like really a neat thing

to do.

I was scared to death.

When I was out on this ladder,

I'd make sure everyone was ready.

And I would start the countdown.

Five, four, three, two, one, go!

I saw a wall, a huge granite wall,

accelerating right next to me.

When you exit off of a cliff,

there's no wind to work with.

And so how you go off

is how you're going to stay

for the next four or five seconds.

Can't wait to do it again.

And so once we got down

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