94 Australian GeographicAUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC
SOCIETY SUPPORTEDI
’M AT AN ALTITUDE of 28,000ft, above the North Rim of
the Grand Canyon, and sitting in the open door of a Cessna
Grand Caravan Supervan. I am being blasted by a 140-knot
(260km/h) wind that’s trying to rip me out the door. Beneath
me, the canyon stretches as far as the eye can see. Looking
similar to the surface of Mars, its numerous fi ssures glow red and
gold in the early morning light. The temperature is –50°C and
I’m fi ghting to control my leg wing. Any second now, I will jump
from the plane, infl ate my wingsuit and fl y across the canyon, with
my husband and teammates beside me.
The Grand Canyon is one of the world’s most spectacular
natural wonders. It attracts more than 4.5 million visitors every
year, but no-one has fl own over it in a wingsuit. Could we be
the fi rst? I fi rst posed this question to my husband and fellow
wingsuit pilot, Dr Glenn Singleman, in January 2014. I was at
home in Sydney marvelling at a panoramic photo of the South
Rim at sunset when it struck me – wouldn’t it be incredible to
fl y across that landscape in a wingsuit, just like a bird?
Glenn and I have been fl ying wingsuits since 2004. We’ve
fl own custom-made suits that transform a skilled skydiver into a
human glider, over the Himalaya (AG 84), outback Australia (AG
93), Sydney Harbour, Brisbane’s CBD and many other spectacu-
lar places, but never anything as ambitious as the Grand Canyon.
The dream was inspiring but the challenge immense. Even
at its narrowest point, the canyon is about 8km wide (rim to
rim) and the top of the rim is more than 2000m high. We could
cover the distance in our wingsuits, but only by fl ying from an
elevation of at least 28,000ft (8534m. In aviation, altitude is
measured in feet; 1ft = 0.305m). At that altitude, useful con-
sciousness can be counted in seconds, so we would need full
bail-out oxygen systems and a purpose-fi tted skydiving plane.
At fi rst we were overwhelmed by the enormity of this project,
but, by following an analytical risk-management process we use
for all our big goals, we decided it was achievable. It took a year
to prepare a detailed operations plan, assess the risks and com-
plete the complex permit process that would enable us to make
the fl ight from the North to South rim. The Hualapai, the Native
American landowners in this part of Arizona, gave us permission
to land on their 4000sq.km reserve.
Working with US-based, high-altitude skydiving expert
Tad Smith, and Australian engineer David Goldie, Glenn
designed a system with an oxygen bottle inside each arm-wing
of our wingsuits. The bottles connected to a modifi ed military
oxygen mask and regulator similar to those worn by fi ghter
pilots, and provided about 22 minutes of pure oxygen – more
than enough to make the fi ve-minute fl ight.Dr Glenn Singleman and
Heather Swan are an Australian
husband-and-wife team. They
work and play together, and their
partnership has produced three
world records and two Australian
records in extreme sport, including
the world’s highest BASE-jump in a
wingsuit from 6604m on Mt Meru
in the Indian Himalaya.It was an elegant, eff ective, but relatively cumbersome col-
lection of gear that required practice to master, so we jumped
it from our normal exit height of 14,000ft at Sydney Skydivers
until we felt completely comfortable.
It was during this training that we added skydiving camera
fl yer Paul Tozer and a little later our friend and fellow wingsuit
pilot Roger Hugelshofer, to our team. We completed more
than 100 training jumps together, including a demanding fl ight
over Brisbane city. Our other teammate was Vicente Cajiga,
an American wingsuit flyer who had flown across Sydney
Harbour with Glenn and me in December 2011. We were all
fl ying the highest performing wingsuits in the world – Apache
Rebels made by TonySuits. With four pilots, and Paul fi lming,
we hoped to fl y an ambitious, high-performance diamond for-
mation across the canyon.CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ROGER HUGELSHOFER (RH); PAUL TOZER (PT); HEATHER SWAN (HS); HSLike a bird. Glenn Singleman
fl ies at 160km/h, thousands
of feet above Arizona.36° 14ˇ 44ˇˇN
113 ° 3ˇ 32ˇˇW
ArizonaUNITED STATES