Wingsuit Pilot Brian Drake Gets Absurdly Close to the Ground

Nope. 

Joining the list of things you wouldn't ever catch us doing but are more than happy to watch others perform, we give you this video of a wingsuit jumper flying mere feet above the ground. 

For the Win's Chris Chase spotted this video of "pilot Brian Drake flying down France’s Ensa Couloir." Rather than say "flying," we like to say Drake was falling with purpose. 

Epic TV's assessment of the video, via Digg, was to merely ask, "Is this the closest a wingsuit pilot has ever flown to the ground?"

Try as we might, we couldn't come up with an exact measurement on this particular flight. Records indicating how close these pilots get to the ground also don't seem to be readily available, which might be by design.

The last thing you want is a bunch of daredevils trying to one-up each other by getting as dangerously close to the ground as possible. 

This past October, CNN's Paul Armstrong reported the death of wingsuit pilot Victor Kovats, who is believed to have died when his parachute failed. 

And there is the famous video of Jeb Corliss clipping the side of Table Mountain in South Africa:

The Daily Mail reported back in February 2012 that Corliss broke both his legs and needed extensive surgery, as well as skin grafts. 

Thankfully, he left the mountain with his life, which is really the only "win" you can take from this sport. It's also the reason that it takes a very special (crazy?) person to do it. In fact, if you ever see me in a wingsuit, call the police. That could only mean something very wrong has happened and I am being held against my will. 

Back to Drake. All we can do is look on in awe of a pilot who laughed in the face of gravity, capricious wind currents and very rocky, jagged earth just feet below his body. 

For the rest of us, clicking on these videos will have to be extreme enough. 

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