World-renowned BASE jumper Miles Daisher has all the makings of a hit cartoon character. With a lingo and delivery all his own (think “California dude” with something of a cackle) and an extreme exuberance for life, Daisher completes the caricature with his propensity for making outlandish cliff-top exits in the tradition of Wile E. Coyote (just with a parachute, of course).
Air in the Bloodstream
But Daisher’s passion is flying, and more specifically flying the human body — his body. And that’s a big part of why he lives in Twin Falls, Idaho — it’s home to the Perrine Bridge, one of the only places in the United States where it’s legal to huck yourself into the abyss in the name of BASE jumping. Over the years, Daisher has completed more than 1,839 BASE jumps (and counting), which ranks him among the five most experienced BASE jumpers in the world (living). During one epic day in September of 2005, Daisher set a unique world record for the most human-powered BASE jumps in a 24-hour period — 57 — including 27,702 vertical-feet of uphill hiking and scrambling to facilitate each 486-foot plunge off the Perrine Bridge. The feat was hailed as one of the top-10 “plays of the day” on ESPN’s SportsCenter.
“I did get tired a couple times, so I had to sit down and take a rest and eat — like three sandwiches, half a chicken, bag of chips,” says Daisher of his world record push. “I also swam around and waded a bit in the Snake River to soak up its cooling powers. But once I caught my fourth or fifth wind, I was golden.”
Daisher grew up with the concept of flight — his dad was in the U.S. Air Force, and the family moved every few years. High school found Daisher in England, where as a star wrestler he took the U.K. Championship in 1986, undefeated in his weight-class. He liked track and field too, and won the U.K. pole vault title in 1987. British officials scrambled to find a way to get this American on their national team, but Daisher had different designs: He wanted to be a sky diver.
Once back in the United States, Daisher pursued kayaking as well as sky diving for a while. But, as he tells it, “One day my kayak flipped in perfectly still water and I bashed my head hard on a rock. That was it. I decided kayaking was way too dangerous, so I sold my kayak and got a BASE rig.”
Daisher continued sky diving, gravitating toward “free-flying,” a style that involves streaking across the sky at 160 to 180 mph — head-first, feet-first, anything but the traditional “belly” method. “A really big airliner is like normal belly flying,” says Daisher, “but a fighter jet, now that’s like free-flying.”
Daisher also excelled at BASE jumping, and still today he lists “cliff scoping” as one of his hobbies. “The sport is pretty young, so people don’t understand it,” he says. “They think we’re jumping off a cliff with a traditional round parachute. But it’s totally different. The equipment is more sophisticated, and things happen a lot faster because you start out so close to the ground. Plus, you’re usually surrounded by rocks or trees or whatnot, so the landing has to be precise. It’s like doing a demo jump every time.”
Earth to Major Daisher
Nowadays Daisher travels frequently to appear in demonstrations and exhibitions with teammates from the Red Bull Air Force. He has also founded a BASE jumping school in Twin Falls — Miles D’s BASE Camp — so he teaches regularly as well. And he’s begun experimenting with “wing-suiting” — wearing something of a flying-squirrel suit for BASE and sky-diving jumps — to enhance glide capabilities during free falls.
Meanwhile, Daisher and his wife, Nikki, are keeping busy on the home front with the birth of their second child. Daisher is also getting tapped for his personality more and more these days, so in addition to performing in exhibitions as an athlete, he frequently finds himself with a microphone in hand serving as a commentator as well. But for a cartoon-esque character the likes of Daisher, it all seems to come with the part. “It’s really easy to announce for something that you’re really excited about,” he says. “But I guess I do tend to get fired up about pretty much anything I do.”
Daisher and Nikki also organized another Perrine Bridge Festival in the fall of ’06, hoping to make it an annual event. His focus for the festival was raising money and awareness for special needs children in the Twin Falls community. “We called this one ‘Parachute for Kids,’ and it focused on BASE jumping in general — and not on me or a record so much — with an accuracy competition and other cool stuff. Then maybe next year, I’d like to try and beat my human-powered record.”
Clearly for Daisher, BASE jumping is not all about records. Sometimes it’s about the age-old pleasure of proving your friends wrong. Daisher recently won a year-long bet with his old friend Shane McConkey, a renowned freeskier and ski-BASE jumper. The challenge? Complete an average of two BASE jumps a day for an entire year – that’s well over 700. The prize for completing this task was two bucks (“We always bet two dollars, because we are not rich men,” he laughs). With two extra bills and another accomplishment under his belt, Daisher is set for another year of challenges and thrills, thanks to his lifelong love affair with flying.
Miles Daisher
