On the afternoon of 6 February 2014, a BASE jumper forced open the doors of a moving Peak 2 Peak gondola cabin at Whistler, British Columbia, and leapt out above Fitzsimmons Creek, at the point where the cabins hang 436 metres above the valley floor. He opened his parachute, landed safely and posted the GoPro footage online, where it spread around the world within days.
The Peak 2 Peak Gondola: a record-breaking lift
The Peak 2 Peak Gondola links the alpine areas of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains. Built by Doppelmayr Garaventa for about CAD 51 million, it carried its first cabins on 19 September 2008 and opened to the public in December 2008. It was the first Doppelmayr “3S” tri-cable lift in North America.
- Length: about 4.4 km, crossed in roughly 11 minutes.
- Longest free span: 3.03 km between towers, a world record until Germany’s Eibsee cable car beat it in 2017.
- Highest point: 436 m above the ground over Fitzsimmons Creek.
- Cabins: 28, each holding 28 people; two of them have glass floors.
- Capacity: 4,100 people per hour at 7.5 m per second.
Check Tourism Whistler for current operating dates and sightseeing tickets, and wait for one of the glass-floor cabins for the best view straight down.
The February 2014 BASE jump
According to Whistler Blackcomb, the man boarded at around 3:45 pm on 6 February and jumped at the highest point of the crossing. A woman travelling with him filmed from inside the cabin. The pair had pried open the doors, and Whistler Blackcomb put the damage to the doors and locking mechanisms at about CAD 10,000.
Video: McConkey Reborn (published by Len Ovo).
The clips were posted on 8 and 9 February under the names “Graham Dickinson” and “Graham D.” and quickly went viral. Whistler RCMP arrested the woman about a week after the jump; she was released on a promise to appear in court in North Vancouver, with police recommending charges of mischief over $5,000 and obstruction. Police said they had identified the jumper, a 25-year-old man believed to have left the province, and prepared a warrant for mischief. Whistler Blackcomb said he faced a lifetime ban from the mountains.
Shane McConkey and the 2008 sanctioned jump
The upload’s title, McConkey Reborn, recalls an earlier, legal jump. When the gondola opened in 2008, ski-BASE pioneers Shane McConkey and Miles Daisher made a sanctioned jump from the Peak 2 Peak. McConkey, born in Vancouver and famous for skiing off cliffs straight into BASE jumps, including one from the Eiger, died on 26 March 2009 during a ski-BASE jump from Sass Pordoi in Italy’s Dolomites.
The 2014 jump was a different matter: an unauthorised exit from a public lift that left a damaged cabin behind. Whistler RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve LeClair called it “irresponsible and potentially dangerous to people.”
More lift and jump stories
For a very different lift incident, read about a teenager who survived a 45-foot fall from a chairlift, and for BASE jumping filmed on a helmet camera, see a 6,000-foot jump captured on a GoPro.
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