Best Adventure Montage of 2011: GoPro Promo

Helicopter skydivers, skiers launching huge, wing-suiters in Norway, bikini-clad girls frolicking in a waterfall, surfers getting pounded or riding large, a scuba dive with a shark, sick scenery from around the globe . . . there is little to dislike about the promotional video for GoPro’s HERO 2 camera. Tell me you don’t get goose bumps at 1:37 in this video when the jet takes off, literally pealing out straight vertical into the desert sky, and I will shout for you to wake up and smell the anthem to life lived to its max that this montage is! All backed up by dance-club music by The Glitch Mob, who are seriously not bad either. (The song is “We Can Make the World Stop” — an appropriate anthem.) Viewing this footage you realize the front flips and free-falls transcend action-sports “porn” (which I have decried and am tired of watching) and instead embrace a globally crowd-sourced stock of footage of people pushing limits and not compromising for a life lived only half-assed. OK, now I apologize for getting all philosophical and weird. But just watch the video in full below, all 5 minutes and 11 seconds, and tell me you don’t want to stand up right then and do something outdoors huge and transcendent on your own. —Stephen Regenold

Notes: This video is © GoPro Inc. and shot entirely on the HD HERO2 camera. Featured athletes in order of appearance include Kirby Chambliss (pilot); surfers Alana Blanchard, Monyca Byrne-Wickey, Marlon Gerber, Lee Wilson, Mikala Jones, Malia Manuel, Made Garut Widiarta, Raditya; skiers/snowboarders Tim Humphreys, Tucker Perkins, Tom Wallisch; base-jumpers Jeb Corliss, Matthias Giraud, Jeff Nebelkopf, Marshall Miller, Neil Amonson, Jesse Hall, JT Holmes, Jokke Sommer; diver Andy Casagrande, moto riders Ronnie Renner, Myles Richmond, Tom Parson. Music by The Glitch Mob.