At 28,200ft nobody can here you smile, but you are

Skydive Everest is only partly about the trip to Nepal. Half of this journey is the training. When I signed up at the end of last year it was like signing up to run a marathon when you are only running 2 miles a few times a week, if that. But you set yourself a plan and one day you are doing an 18 mile long run and you realize "hey, I can pull this off now, I just need to not screw up". That's how I feel after this last weekend. I am almost at 200 jumps, I have crossed the Grand Canyon, spent time in an altitude chamber, dialed in my landings and now I have jumped with full HALO gear from 28,000ft.....twice. It isn't time to relax, but I sure as heck can feel decent about my progress.
Caught a flight last Friday down to Gulfport, MS....to catch a car to Lumberton, MS. The first dropzone in a dry county I have visited, the home of Gold Coast Skydivers. What a friendly bunch of folks that is. I did a couple of solo belly and high pulls to get comfortable with the DZ prior to my planned HALO attempts on Sunday. I caught some flack about jumping alone from the locals and ended up on a Speed Star, love em.

This stuff is serious.  As they say, "this ain't no normal skydive".  You add some extra, complex, critical equipment to the mix.  A bailout bottle, mask, helmet and O2 fittings.  All the hoses and fittings sure make you need to ta

ke your time in an emergency.  Then you have to land with an extra 20lbs of weight.  

It took right about 45 minutes for the Otter to climb to 28,200.  Got up to 20k pretty quickly but things slow down form there.  You have to get out of the plane quickly, so you just don't get to think about things much but getting out, it is THEN that you get the view!  And then...you get the view.....about a minute later you get the view....then you go to pull and check your altitude....ah, at 19000....lets check out the view some more passing next to clouds for 3000ft.....you get the view for over another minute!  Eventually the sight pic

ture and altimeter add up and it is time to pull.  You pass through temperature layers where you feel things get warmer.  You pass through pressure layers where your brain hurts from pressure, and then it releases.  It is something else.

Truly a Skydive to remember and very hard to describe.

Kevin Holbrook was just an awesome guy running an admirable operation.  You can just tell that this guy has seen a lot.  Now I need to get them up to Colorado to get the Rockies in the backdrop!