When does adventure cross the line and become simply stupidity? This video might be the answer. Posted by GravityBolivia, a tour company that specializes in “gravity assisted mountain biking,” the video shows an anonymous biker hurtling himself off a cliff from the North Yungas Road in Bolivia with a parachute on.
The cliff-hugging lane is better known as the “Death Road” for the 200+ drivers and traveling passengers reportedly killed yearly along its 43 mountainous miles. It’s amazing that this biker didn’t become a statistic.
We present this video not as inspiration, but instead as a reminder to our fellow adventure lovers that there comes a time when our own aspirations quickly become someone else’s headache. It took a lot of rescue personnel and traffic management (scant resources in a poor country) to save this guy’s butt.
So here it is, the Bolivian Death Road BASE jump on a bike — quite possibly the worst outdoor adventure/stunt idea in 2013. If you want to get to the meat of the video, jump ahead to 1:55.
—Sean McCoy
