The scene was surreal. Right there, in broad daylight on the Royal Gorge Bridge, a man scaled a fence and leapt 1,053 feet to the river below.

A few minutes later, another man flung himself off the world’s highest suspension bridge.

And then another.

Jumping from a bridge used to be suicide. Now it’s an adventure, at least to the daredevils who gather every summer for the Go Fast Games, turning Royal Gorge Bridge and Park into the lollapalooza for the do-or-die set.

“It’s extremely dangerous,” said former Western State College student Max Kuszaj, who has made several BASE jumps there. “Sheer walls everywhere. Power lines. A tiny landing area. Raging white water. You see the fear.”

The activities hardly ended with BASE jumping (the acronym stands for building, antenna, span, Earth — the typical launching points). For three days, wingsuit flyers, highliners, bungee jumpers and other free spirits took calculated gambles with sudden disaster, hungry for thrills that once seemed strange and pointless.

What is it about Coloradans and those who come to the state seeking their thrills?

Greedy about risk, they ski with parachutes off 500-foot cliffs and vault from roof to roof in downtown Denver, running without breaking stride like Matt Damon’s character in The Bourne Ultimatum.

Without ropes, they climb hundreds of feet up granite cliffs, hanging by their fingertips, and tiptoe along taut wires hundreds of feet above canyon floors.

They hurtle kayaks over the edge of mountain flumes, plummeting to lakes below, and they ski through rock-strewn chutes and off cliffs in avalanche-prone backcountry.

They zip a few feet above ground at 90 mph in pint-sized parachutes, and they fling themselves off cliffs, bridges, towers and skyscrapers — sometimes to their death.

“Sometimes it doesn’t even click,” Kuszaj said of the fatalities. “It doesn’t make me question why I’m into this or whether or not I should get out of it. It doesn’t make me question it at all. I hate that saying, ‘At least he died doing what he loves.’ But it’s kind of a good way to look at it.”

Deadly consequences

Colorado, and the Rocky Mountain West, long has been a haven for extreme athletes, the go-to place for the X Games, Gravity Games, U.S. Extreme Skiing Championships and U.S. Canopy Piloting Championships.

But corporate sponsors swooped in years ago, co-opting extreme sports lingo and taming sports such as snowboarding, which once was the domain of renegades.

Somebody, though, always seems to fill the void. Maybe it’s a footloose, screw-loose spirit embedded in the DNA of Coloradans and those who come here for sports that venture beyond the edge.

Or adventurous newcomers such as the men of the 10th Mountain Division, who trained in Colorado for World War II and then returned to build the ski industry.

“You can’t help but be an adrenaline junkie here in Colorado because of all that this state has to offer,” said Denver native Troy Widgery, founder and CEO of Go Fast Sports Inc. and Go Fast Beverage Co. “For most extreme sports, you don’t need to leave the state of Colorado.”

Of course, with high risk comes great danger.

A year ago, Billy Poole, a former Snowmass resident, jumped off a big cliff in the backcountry of Utah, missed his landing and cartwheeled through a pile of rocks. He died at 28.

Coloradan John Nicoletta died during the 2008 Freeskiing World Championships in Alaska when he skied off a band of rocks and cartwheeled hundreds of feet. He was 27.

In 1993, free solo rock-climbing legend Derek Hersey fell to his death after coming upon a rain-slick rock, high on the face of Sentinel Rock in Yosemite National Park. He was 39 and lived in Boulder.

At the 2003 Go Fast Games, wingsuit flyer Dwain Weston died after slamming into the Royal Gorge Bridge. Accompanying him on that jump was Jeb Corliss, who broke his back in three places, and several ribs, during a jump in South Africa.

Unable to move, he sat in freezing water for an hour while crabs ate the flesh around his back wounds.

“That was my worst injury, but I’ve had way closer calls as far as death is concerned,” Corliss said. “Dude, I’ve had so many close calls, I could talk to you for months.

“I’m an adventurer. I love climbing. I love riding motorcycles. I love mountain biking and love surfing. I love diving with sharks, I love filming sharks without being in a cage. I love all of them, because it gives your life so much more meaning.

“I don’t know if it was the way I was raised or the environment or my genetics or the combination of all. All I know is that I will not stop until I die. I don’t know why I should stop. Its kind of the whole point of life. Once you stop, you might as well be dead.”

In fact, fear is joy for those who are hooked on adrenaline.

“The first time I BASE jumped, it was absolutely horrifying,” Corliss said. “It was a defining moment in my life. It was very empowering.”

Added Brian Taylor, a Go Fast employee who’s involved in free running — jumping from building top to building top in urban settings, among other activities: “My biggest fear? Not being able to do this anymore. When my body won’t allow me to continue.”

Spirit of adventure

When Kuszaj arrived at Western State nearly a decade ago, he knew little about free skiing, though he was young, athletic and had a body built for punishment — prerequisites for extreme athletes.

“You start hanging around with the wrong people and look what happens: You’re skiing off cliffs with a parachute,” he said. “I think it’s a matter of people adapting to where they are; not taking the spectacular surroundings for granted but actually using them.”

That spirit surfaced in the early ’90s when former University of Colorado students Shane McConkey, Kent Kreitler and Chris Davenport skied dangerous backcountry terrain, helping turn a staid sport upside down.

It surfaced again with the advent of high-performance canopy piloting. In 2007, the U.S. Parachute Association reported 2.15 million jumps by its members, about 100,000 fewer than seven years earlier. But swoopers jumped into the void at places such as Mile-Hi Skydiving Center in Longmont.

“You take a traditional parachute and cut it down to a real small size,” said Jay Moledzki, one of the sport’s leaders. “That gives us the ability to dive at the ground at high speeds, pull out at the last second and then cruise level to the ground at high speeds for great distances.”

Perhaps the Go Fast Games best embody this breath-defying spirit. During training for the U.S. Skydiving Championships in 1992, Widgery’s plane crashed near Los Angeles, killing 15 sky divers and the pilot. Widgery and five others survived.

Yet Widgery pushed on after the crash, and again in 2003, after Weston died in the inaugural Go Fast Games.

“Stopping was never a thought or even an option,” Widgery said. “By being so close to death, you respect life more and try and live every day to its fullest.

“Dwain’s passing was a tragic loss for the sky diving and BASE-jumping community, but he wouldn’t have wanted us to stop holding the event. We had no choice but to continue the Go Fast Games, out of respect for Dwain and his family.”

New frontiers

What’s next?

McConkey envisions a day when skis come equipped with shock absorbers — and the opening of ski-BASE jumping resorts.

French adventurer Michel Fournier has spent 20 years in his quest to fly a pressurized gondola to an altitude of 130,000 feet, where the blackness of space is visible, in order to parachute back to Earth.

Corliss is determined to become the first man to land from a wingsuit flight without deploying a parachute, with the help of a specially designed runway that borrows from the principles of Nordic ski jumping.

“There are very few opportunities in life to do something that’s never been done,” he said. “We’ve been to the top of the highest mountains, to the bottom of the deepest seas. We’ve flown around the world in every kind of flying contraption imaginable. We’ve been to the moon.

“But to do something that has never been done before is not impossible. The amazing thing about wingsuit flying is that people have wanted to do this since the time of Icarus.”

Added Widgery: “People will always be looking to be more extreme. ... There will always be those out there pushing the development of extreme sports and finding new ways to get that adrenaline rush.”

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