Watch a 255-Foot World Record Ski Jump Off a Cliff!
At 78 metres, this was the biggest intentional cliff ski huck ever done
Photo by: Teton Gravity
Jamie Pierre drops a 78-metre (255 feet) cliff to set an intentional world record at Grand Targhee, Wyoming, on Jan. 25, 2006. He skied away with a bleeding cut lip from being hit by a shovel when his partners dug him out of his 12-foot bomb hole. Google’s Sergey Brin had estimated that Pierre was almost at terminal velocity when he hit the ground.
He began to be followed by the media in 1999 when a black and white photo appeared in Powder Magazine of Pierre leaping off a 40-foot cliff. The size of the cliffs he was jumping were increasing quickly, starting at 50 feet, and soon were up to 90 feet. His first 100 footers were off of crags in Utah. “Pierre began to question how high he could go. What were the limits?” Soon Jamie Pierre was jumping a cliff 165 feet in Wolverine Cirque Utah; he cleared this monster cliff in 2003. In Engelberg, Switzerland he cleared a 185-foot cliff around March 2004. Before settling down, Pierre wanted to go big, bigger than anyone else had before.
The record at the time was jumped at 225 feet and Jamie Pierre wanted to beat it. After scoping out many cliffs, he finally decided on one, a 255 footer in the backcountry of Grand Targhee resort. “Hail Mary” are the words Jamie yelled before hucking his body off this world record cliff. Around a dozen people were watching, including photographers, family, friends, and spectators. Plunging headfirst into the snow, Jamie Pierre got that three seconds of the feeling he had always craved.
In 2008 Fred Syversen beat this record by surviving a 351-foot cliff, albeit unintentionally. Pierre died in November 2011 in an avalanche.
World Record Ski Jump
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