One of my favorite parts of sport is training, and playing around with what training actually means relative to adventure sport, which for me is mostly wingsuit base jumping and climbing. I’ve found what works the best is a mix of increasing skills in safe environments along with getting out there and actually doing it.
Winter is a slower time in Moab, and it can also get pretty cold, so I headed down to Arizona in January to spend some focused time skydiving and flying in the wind tunnel with Ian and some other friends, which checks all the boxes of training and having a lot of fun while doing it! I’ve been focusing a lot more on acro skills in the wingsuit, which is a great way to build high technical skills that directly translate to base jumping in more dangerous environments, so training in that way means lots of skydiving.
Ian and I teamed up with our good friend Jack to do jump after jump as a tight group, frolicking and tumbling around the sky like ravens, pulling steep corkscrew dives, flaring up and gaining altitude. Though I always skydive a lot in Moab all year, there’s something really productive about a totally immersive trip where you are jumping all day, every day and focusing completely on the progression
So we not only had a blast, but were able to build on skills and get even more tuned in to the micro-aspects of controlling our suits in the air, which is what makes wingsuit BASE jumping safer and even more enjoyable when leaving the safety of the airport and getting out onto the cliffs.
Though the priority in traveling south was wingsuit training, climbing is always in the mix too! We visited Milagrosa Canyon outside of Tucson for some vertical climbing on crisp edges and stopped through Sedona on the way home to get pumped on steep sandstone and climb with some friends.
The wingsuit BASE jumping in Moab is incredibly beautiful and unique, but it’s also very low and therefore more extreme, so you have to bring your "A game" on every jump. Coming home from Arizona feeling hyper-current from so much skydiving made the first jumps of the Moab season super enjoyable, despite alpine conditions on the hike, where the rock was still snow covered! Spending some time down south also helped fast forward through some of the coldest days in Moab, and now spring feels just around the corner
Steph Davis
Steph KAVU
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Ian Mitchard
© 2026 KAVU
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