BASE jumper makes 23,000 foot high leap off Mt. Everest

An extreme sports BASE jumper wasn't happy with just leaping from the usual buildings, antennas, spans and earth locations so he found a spot that has to be the highest point on the globe to set a world record for the highest BASE jump of all-time— Mt. Everest.

Why? Because it's there.

Russian daredevil Valery Rozov jumped 23,687 feet from Everest's north peak on the Chinese side of the summit to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ascent of the world's tallest mountain.

The 48-year-old 's wild stunt took two years of planning and training, four days of climbing but only about 60 seconds to glide down four miles to the icy Rongbuk glacier below.



Rozov's feat was sponsored by Red Bull. He achieved the record with the help of four Sherpas climbers who trekked with him to the perilous peak.  It took the veteran jumper — with over 10,000 jumps in his career — almost two years to design the customized wingsuit to help protect him from free-fall speeds as fast as 125 mph and temperatures that could freeze him in mid-glide.

Rozov has cheated death before. In 2009, the Russian leaped into an active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in his country’s Far East.

I'm guessing nobody told him about the 29,000 foot peak on the south side of Everest.

BASE jumper survives 1,000-foot free-fall after chute fails to open (VIDEO)

A daredevil BASE jumper is lucky to be alive after plummeting 1,000 feet to the ground in a free-fall after his chute failed to deploy. Not only did he live to talk about the fail, but he recorded it with his helmet-cam.

As Matthew Gough, 25, lay sprawled out at the bottom of a cliff near Lake Garda in Italy, he could barely believe that he was still alive.

"I feel massively lucky to survive, I have never heard of this sort of thing happening before and especially no one surviving from it," Gough told reporters.

The extreme-sport junkie took up BASE jumping about three years ago after completing more than 700 sky dives. He landed 180 jumps without a problem before his brush with death.

Everything was going fine until he pulled the chute. The deployment was really slow and got entangled with itself. He could not control his descent and wound up crashing into the cliff several times.

"When I impacted the first time I started spinning, which made the situation worse, the parachute twisted even more before going into a dive," he said.

He was not sure if he would crash onto the ground or into the lake but he certainly thought he was a goner.

"I knew the final impact was coming soon," he said, "and I knew if I hit the floor at the speed I was traveling, I was in a whole lot of trouble."

At the last moment, Gough shouted, "I'm going in," which he explained means, "I'm dead."

"When I hit the floor I was so shocked I was alive ... that was when the pain set in," he said.

Gough was rushed to the hospital and released a few hours later. He only suffered a few minor injuries to his knees and ankles.

Despite cheating death, Gough has no plan to tone down his risk-taking lifestyle.

"I am still going to BASE jump but it has made me more aware of the risks,” he said.