I’d tried to work on my fear of
heights over the years, but the matter
never seemed urgent. Then, in Febru-
ary 2016, during a weekend of ice
climbing with friends in British Colum-
bia, I panicked—an irrational force
took over my body and I refused to
move any further. My fear put my own
life, and the safety of others, in danger.
I didn’t want my terror to control me
that way ever again.
i’d arrived at the small airstrip in the
village of Carcross, Yukon, several hours
earlier. Carcross is an hour’s scenic
drive south of my home in Whitehorse.
Among its few claims to fame is the
Carcross Desert, billed as the world’s
smallest, a tiny collection of soft, roll-
ing dunes surrounded by snow-etched
mountains and boreal forest. Every
summer, a skydiving outfit based in
British Columbia caravans up here
for a couple of weeks and offers
Yukoners the chance to jump out of
a plane, plummet through free fall,
deploy a parachute and eventually
land in the forgiving embrace of the
tiny patch of sand.
The pro skydivers live by the airstrip,
just outside the village, for the dura-
tion. The vibe of their encampment is
somewhere between summer week-
end camp-out and itinerant circus
troupe. They gather in a jumble of
tents, U-Hauls, cars, RVs and trucks
loaded with campers. Barry is their
patriarch. When I met him, he’d been
jumping for 39 years, including more
than 2,000 tandem jumps with clients.
He had grey hair and a grey mous-
tache, a big belly and a bigger voice.
He’s not what you picture when you
think “professional thrill-seeker,” but
his age and experience made me more
comfortable than any young gun could
have. As the saying goes, there are old
pilots and there are bold pilots, but
there are no old, bold pilots.
I was here because my three most
potent physical fears were of heights,
speed and falling. And there was noth-
ing, I figured, that combined all three as
effectively—or as horrifically—as sky-
diving. My notion was to take a blitz-
krieg approach to facing my fears. I
would force myself to do the scariest
thing I could think of, in a full sensory
assault on my fear response, and if I
came out the other side, I would be
changed, right? Empowered. That was
the idea. So far, I just felt sick and scared.
Barry introduced us first-time jump-
ers to the gear we’d be using, how the
various safety mechanisms worked,
and informed me that if I tried to grab
on to the plane as we jumped, latch-
ing on in a last-minute panic, he would
break my fingers to release my grip if
he had to. His tone suggested that it
wouldn’t be his first time doing so.
I signed the bluntest waiver form I’d
ever seen. “Sport parachuting is not
perfectly safe,” it read. “We cannot and
do not offer any guarantees. We do not
guarantee that either or both of yourrd.ca 87