Outside Magazine

On a warm, breezy February day in 2000, Jeb Corliss strapped on a parachute and stepped to the edge of a 310-foot sandstone cliff in South Africa.

To Corliss’s left, the Umgeni River poured green and clear off the cliff to become Howick Falls, a gargantuan shaft of water that crashed off rock ledges and thundered into a deep pool below. Straight ahead, in the direction Corliss intended to soar after opening his parachute, whitewater rapids flowed into a forested valley. 

Corliss knew that big waterfalls can create enough air turbulence to destabilize a parachute, but he was 23 years old at the time, relatively new to the sport and driven by hungers and agonies he hadn’t begun to name. Corliss had not yet honed his judgment through two decades as the international face of professional BASE jumping—of seemingly crazy leaps from the world’s tallest bridges and skyscrapers, violent deaths of fellow jumpers, and gruesome injuries of his own.