'There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it' - Alfred Hitchcock.

Everyone gathered at the top of the main gondola, as they'd all decided to come and see me and Danni jump. To get to where we jumped from we had to go up in another gondola which took us to the very top of the mountain. As I stepped out at the top, I looked around, shit it was high! And very windy! We'd been told to wait just outside the gondola station, everyone walked off to have a look around but I found myself froze to the spot. In front of me I could see a safety barrier, but I couldn't bring myself to walk up to it to see what was on the other side. I just stood there. In a few minutes I'd be finding myself jumping to  my potential death voluntarily, I needed to compose myself, and also try to shake off that dizzy feeling I get every time I look over a big drop! Spence walked over to me and asked if I was ok, he said every ounce of colour had drained from my face & I looked very worried. What the fuck did he expect though, I was shitting myself, this was the craziest thing I'd ever agreed to do in my life!

A few minutes' later 2 men walked out of the gondola carrying huge back packs. These must have been our guys! I went up and introduced myself and they asked which of us wanted to go first. Now it had been previously arranged with Danni that I would go first. I thought it would be better to get it out of the way, and as Danni wasn't scared one little bit she didn't mind hanging around for a few minutes more.  Now I never caught the name of my instructor but for the purpose of this story I'll call him "Klaus" as he seemed more Austrian than Italian! I don't know what type of man I expected but he was quite scruffy with long hair and stubble. This was the man I would be putting my life in the hands of – a man who couldn't even be arsed to shave before he went to work in the morning!! It wasn't looking good! Klaus led me to the safety barrier and told me to hop over. Over the other side there was a slight slope which went about 10 metres and then after that there was a massive drop, and when I say massive I mean massive! It was about 1000km down!! They gave me a helmet to put on, and while I struggled choking myself with the strap, Klaus started spreading the parachute out behind us on the snow while his mate started walking backward and forwards from me to the edge of the cliff attempting to stamp the snow down. Like I said earlier, we'd had days worth of snow by this point, and where I was stood now it came about 50cm up my leg. After a few minutes of untangling what seemed like a million thin cables, Klaus came back up to me and asked how I was. "To be perfectly honest", I replied, "I'm completely shitting myself".

"Its fine", he said. "There's just one thing you have to make sure you do, and everything will be ok. When I say, I want you to run as fast as you can towards the edge of the cliff and don't stop."

Well that seemed easy enough, just run, that's all I'd got to do! Simple! Hold on a minute, not so simple – the snow was nearly up to my knees and I was wearing really bulky snowboarding boots.  Not exactly the best conditions to make it easy to run as fast as I can towards a 1000m drop!  I stood there for a few minutes thinking about this while Klaus attached the harnesses and strapped himself behind me!

"What happens", I said "if I when we run I don't run fast enough or I trip in the snow, or we tangle our legs and fall over just as we get to the edge!!" Klaus just stared at me, gave me a really strange look and just went "Ha ha!!!!", and then went back to adjusting straps.  The look said it all though... fall and we die! He didn't need to say anything else.  I was now more scared than I'd ever been before in my life. If I hadn't had got some deranged Austrian guy strapped to my back, I'd have shot up that slope and into the gondola before you cud blink. But there was nothing I cud do now; it was out of my hand and in fate's! Well fates and some crazy foreign guy's!

Walking off the cliff!

So there I was, stood on the peak of a mountain 2500km up, with a bizarre Austrian 'dude' strapped to my back, buried up to my knee's in snow, waiting for the instruction to run as fast as humanly possible over the edge of a cliff. I was so scared but was also starting to get quite excited. This was it. This was me doing something I'd never normally do; I was living on the edge, chasing the thrill! I was ready for this. Let's go!! And then it happened. Within the space of about 30 seconds, everything disappeared. The clear sky suddenly went white, the surrounding mountains peaks vanished and I found myself staring into a haze! It was fog, and it had moved in quickly surrounding us before we knew it. "Shit", Klaus said as he looked around, "We're going to have to wait for the fog to clear before we can do this, don't worry it'll be gone soon".  This was the last thing I needed, I was psyched, my blood was pumping, I wanted to go now & get it out of the way. The fear and anticipation was killing me, the very last thing I needed to be doing was waiting the fuck around. But I had no choice, so I waited, and I waited a bit more, seconds seemed like minutes, minutes like hours, and the longer I stood there the more scared I got. Just when I needed something to take my mind off it, suddenly from nowhere I heard a noise... something that sounded a lot like singing. It was bad singing, but singing all the same. I'd forgot that the whole crowd were still stood behind me, and now they had all burst out into song to keep themselves amused while they waited for me to die. The mountain air was filled with the tuneful sound of Spence & co singing R Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly". I pissed myself laughing! Over the next 10 minutes while I stood there waiting more and more songs were sung, and each one took my mind off what I was about to do.  I'm sure at one point I heard someone singing "He'll be jumping off the mountain, and he'll die!!!", but when I brought it up in conversation after they all denied it.

Waiting to jump!!

I'd been waiting about 15 minutes by this point, I was filled with fear and just wanted to get it out of the way and get into the bar to relax. I was just starting to think that I'd be up here all day when Klaus suddenly said "Come on, let's give it a go", and pushed me in my back. This was it, we were going, I was doing this!! I started to run; I went as fast as my legs would carry me. I looked in front of me and the edge of the cliff was getting closer and closer and then suddenly we'd reached it. I felt us drop slightly. Oh fuck!!! This was it, I was about to die, my legs were still doing the running motion but there was no longer anything for them to run on and I felt us quickly fall. Then suddenly I felt a big tug in my shoulders and body from above and we stopped falling. The parachute had caught the wind and we were now sailing off through the fog. Instantly I felt relieved, it was the most bizarre feeling ever, we were just dangling in the air. At first I couldn't see much at all because the fog was still around us, but then suddenly it disappeared and the view was unbelievable. It completely took my breath away. This was the most amazing experience of my life. I can't describe to you just how spectacular it was up there; I could see everything, the hotels, the ski slopes, and the mountains. I'd been so scared all week, but there was nothing at all to be scared of; well apart from a big flock of birds flying past and tearing the parachute to shreds, but that seemed quite unlikely.

Running off the cliff!!

Suddenly I heard Klaus say 'Smile!!!!", and I looked forward and saw his outstretched arm pointing a camera at me.  Over the next few minutes he took a few more photos then put the camera away and started to glide in circles around the valley. We were up in the air for about 15 minutes or more, and I loved every second of it. We landed right in the centre of town, and it was about as smooth as landing a parachute can go I think. My feet were back on solid ground, but all I wanted to do was go back up the mountain and do it again. I spent the next 10 minutes waiting round to watch Danni come down. Unfortunately, just after we'd jumped the fog had come back thicker than before and the wind had dropped and they were forced to cancel Danni's jump. She rescheduled it for the Friday, but that was cancelled again due to the snow, and in the end she never got the chance to have a go! Maybe next year!

Me and Klaus in the air!!

The view down!

To see all the photo's from my jump click here

I've realised now that I've waffled on a bit longer than I planned (well about 2000 words longer than planned) so I'll stop boring you all. All I can say is if you ever get the chance to do a jump then go for it.  Running off the cliff is probably one of the scariest things you can do, but it's definitely worthwhile once you're over the edge! Bring on the next number!!!