Czech Tower Jumping Won’t Increase Your Life Span

We’ve never been inclined to extreme sports that place our body in danger of aches and pains. We usually lean towards extreme sporting of the financial and gastronomical kind. You know, gambling while you’re completely trashed or eating some sort of meat product cooked on an outdoor burner in Mexico. That’s thrill-seeking for us. But for some Czech’s, placing your spinal chord in danger, or foretelling your future ankle injuries before a 70-foot jump between rocks is their definition of extreme.

Kops was standing at the edge of a 70-foot chasm called Broken Bones. He announced that he was about to damage his ankle. Then he jumped.
While it may seem suicidal, leaping across a gaping crevasse is actually an extreme sport that is gaining in popularity.
Called rock jumping, or simply jumping by the locals, this adrenaline-charged activity is taking place in the Adrspach-Teplice Rocks, a remote nature preserve in the northeast part of the Czech Republic.

Before you think about joining, keep in mind that there are a few, decisively common ailments:

In most cases, climbers jump with a rope tied around their waist.
If they miss the landing — which is not uncommon — they plummet into the wall of the base tower.
“Jumping requires fearlessness, a fair amount of agility, and a high threshold for pain,” Prochazka said. “Broken ribs and damaged spines are fairly common.”

Those injuries are also common in extreme roller derby, so we guess this isn’t too different. Except for the fact that if you miss the base of the rock, then you’re usually, um, dead. We’ll stick to eating pastor de pollo a la gringa on a street corner, thank you very much.

With Luck, A Rocky Landing [NY Times]
Image [NY Times]