Gelande jumping is one of those things that you really don’t want to do. Never heard of it? Good, because it makes as much sense as going over a waterfall in a barrel.
Gelande jumping is going off a huge ski jump with normal ski equipment. I dated a Norwegian ski jumper briefly in college, so I’ve never minded other people going off big jumps so long as they’re using the proper equipment: giant seven to eight foot skis with a free heel.
This is a normal ski jumper.
Gelande jumpers are out of their minds, because they can’t pose their jump.
The jump at the ski area is a natural jump, not a ramp. It’s 70 meters high, which is considered smallish.
The ski jump itself starts at the big rock and goes about 70 meters before the lip that propels those poor guys into the air. The chute is the landing zone.
The first line marks a 200 foot jump, the second line is 250 and the third line is 300 feet. The dark speckles on the slope are the scattering of pine needles that allows the jumpers to see the contours of the snow. Sprinkling the slope with pine needles is standard for many ski events, not just gelande.
You can’t really see how incredibly steep this is. I tried to climb up it, but had to give up half way because I had soft boots on. With ski boots, you can jam the toe into the snow and climb very steep terrain, but with soft boots it was hopeless.
Here the jumpers are climbing up to the top of the take-off,
and this is the person who had the longest jump on the first round.
He’s off
Looks OK right now
and he’s getting some altitude, but with a fixed heel his form can’t hold.
you can see from his shadow how vertical he is
and he lands it
barely.
That’s gelande jumping. My real question for these guys is: how do you fit those gigantic cojones into that skin-tight speed suit???
but I didn’t ask.
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