Bungee Jumpers

Hurricane Gulch drops almost 300 feet, enough to swallow a football field and have an end zone stick out the top. A two-lane bridge with a modest guard rail crosses the gulch, and Christine Warren is preparing to leap off.

Warren wants to jump, but she doesn't want to die. At the bridge's midpoint, a fellow jumper grabs the end of a heavy, 100-foot length of rubber rope and pulls it toward Warren's body harness. The other end of the cord is attached to the bridge, forming the safety link that makes what Warren is doing one step short of suicide.

Back at the north end of the bridge, a half-dozen neophyte jumpers hide in the alders and provide Warren an audience. They wonder aloud whether she is Doug Hase's girlfriend. Hase and Warren are from Colorado. They journeyed north this summer to help bring bungee jumping to Alaska.

The bungee cord consists of four elastic lines, each as thick and stiff as a roll of dimes, all wrapped together with rubber bands. The cord ends in three nylon-webbing loops that attach to the jumper. But for some reason, Warren is only attached to two loops. The third loop that connects to two of the bungee cords dangles free.

The on-deck jumper, Kristian Sieling, checks Warren's rig. He doesn't notice the mistake. Warren double-checks the gear herself. She doesn't catch it, either.

Violent winds gave the gulch its name, but only a gentle breeze blows as Warren steps onto the guard rail and spreads her arms in preparation for her dive. People who do this sort of thing say the surge of adrenalin peaks the moment the jumper commits to jumping, the moment just before pushing over the edge, when nothing can bring you back but the cords you're supposed to be attached to.

In a split second Christine Warren will let her body drop into the open air.

Then she will be fully engaged in a free fall. No one will realize that something is wrong until about four seconds later, when the rubber cords stretch to their maximum length under Warren's weight.

This was the summer that bungee jumping came to Alaska, opening a strange and somewhat warped world of hustle, thrills and a lot of hang time.

Considered an established pursuit in California, where it was first launched in the United States, bungee jumping probably was destined to rebound up and down the West Coast.

But all the way up to Alaska? Scores of people drugged on their own adrenalin are falling at rates of more than $1 a foot. Behind the scenes there's a lot of money being made and an almost epidemic obsession with what may be the ultimate modern-day leap of faith.

Commercial bungee jumping operators say everyone should come out and try it. They say you can trust their equipment. But the real question may be: Can you trust them?

The first time I met some of Alaska's bungee jumpers was just before Christine Warren and Doug Hase came to Alaska. It was a windy August day at Big Lake, a resort town off the Parks Highway about an hour's drive from Anchorage. These bungee jumpers wore T-shirts advertising their company, Licensed to Thrill. The word "bungee" was misspelled "bungy."

"Bungee jumping got its start from a group of daredevils in England," explains Brian Scheff, co-establisher of Licensed to Thrill. "And they heard about it from some tribe in the South Pacific. The way they prove their manhood is they tie vines around their ankles and jump from towers. They actually whack their heads on the ground, and that's their passage into manhood. Kind of like a bar mitzvah."

We are standing on a swampy finger of land near the Klondike Inn, a hotel along the Big Lake waterfront. The marshy peninsula curls out into the water from the solid lakeside, forming a natural bay.

Scheff is up to his ankles in marsh water and weeds. I'm standing on a plywood platform. Scheff has a deal with the Klondike's owner that allows him to gather customers at the hotel. From there it's a short boat ride to the swamp, where a hot-air balloon tethered to a barge rises and descends over the platform like an open-air elevator. So far today, eight customers have gone up anxious and have come down thrilled to death.

The balloon has just been refueled and is being filled with hot air for another load of jumpers. Dan Bonomo, Scheff's partner, circles one side of the balloon and tells us to step back. He introduces himself and tugs at my hand with a fierce handshake, as if trying to save me from falling over a ledge.

Against the drone of the hot-air balloon fan, there is chatter on the barge where the customers wait and on boats and jet skis parked for an underside view of jumpers who will be dropped over the water. The question everyone asks is, "You gonna jump?"

Scheff spots a friend. "Snake!"

"Hey, dude."

"You're next!"

"I don't think so."

Then another friend. "Hey, Pat!"

"Hey."

"It works!"

"Cool."

The balloon begins rising from all the hot air. Bonomo is in the wicker basket, ready to hit the pilot flame and fill the cloth envelope with breaths of warm air. The flame blasts once, twice. Then suddenly everything goes silent, except for one man's scream.

"OH, S---!"

The balloon's cloth bulb is fluttering in the air. Where the bulb tapers into the sleeve that hangs over the pilot flame like a halo, a patch of nylon is disappearing, melting away.

"S---!" Scheff says. "Dan, you burned the balloon again. That's two holes we're going to have to fix."

Later, Bonomo downplays the incident. "We just patch it up," he says. "It'll fly just fine. I've seen balloons with holes in the top. They fly just fine. Holes at the bottom don't mean much. All the hot air is at the top. That's what keeps the balloon up."

Brian Scheff tells his customers to pick a point on the horizon and jump toward it, creating the lateral momentum necessary for an arcing fall. When people look straight down, he says, they fall straight down. That means when the elastic ropes elongate to about twice their normal length and snap their loads like pebbles in a slingshot, whatever is at the end of the line will bounce straight up for a midair flogging in the tangle of recoiling cords.

These rubber ropes are not what schoolkids use to strap books on the back of their bicycles. Before they were used for bungee jumping, the cords had long been used by the military to reduce the opening shock when tanks and trucks are dropped from airplanes on parachutes. In bungee jumping, the lines are doubled, tripled, sometimes quadrupled as a safety precaution and to provide a better recoil.

Someone named Dave is in the balloon and ready to jump. Scheff looks up and yells, "Let's do it, Dan!"

Suited up in a rock climber's body harness that wraps around his waist and chest, Dave steps onto a metal ledge outside the balloon's wicker basket. The bungee cord is attached to the harness near his navel, and loops down and back to a mount under the balloon basket.

"Cameras ready."

"All right, Dave."

"FIVE!" yells Bert Kleinenberg, owner of the Klondike Inn and a big fan of bungee jumping.

"No, not yet." Scheff says.

Pause.

"Now?" someone asks.

"Yeah!" Scheff says.

The countdown begins. Everyone yells in unison.

"FIVE!"

"FOUR!"

"THREE!"

"TWO!"

"ONE!"

Dave peels away from the basket, seemingly pushed off by sheer force of peer pressure. The rubber rope stretches to almost twice its unstressed length. Hoots and cheers rise from the crowd as he launches back up from the recoil.

The jump cost him $89.

Adventure is nothing new for Brian Scheff. When he was 3 years old, his family lived in an apartment at the top of a stairwell. Scheff remembers spending afternoons on the wrong side of the handrail. Leaning out into space. Letting go. Entering the first stage of free fall. Then, at the last second, grabbing onto the rail again, before it was too late. Once he didn't grab in time. The cowboy hat on his head flew off and caught on a post, suspending him by the leather strap cinched around his neck.

"Little stuff like that all my life," Scheff says.

Scheff is 30, owns an Anchorage document destruction business and is married. When he was almost half the age he is now, his father bought him a motorcycle. "I've always had this desire to go fast," he says. "I always wanted to take it faster. Faster, faster, faster."

Scheff said his need for speed, like other things in his life, sometimes leads other people to misunderstand him. He owns several pit bulls. When the breed started getting a bad reputation in Anchorage, Scheff formed the Responsible Pet Owners Association to show the public that the animals and their owners are not all violent.

"I have a personal belief that what seems crazy for some people is not for others. It all depends on your level of understanding. It depends on your skill level," he says.

"When I got my first motorcycle, a wheelie was something I couldn't do. I tried doing wheelies all the time. I practiced them on Muldoon Road in the middle of the night when there were no cars. After a while, it builds your skill level to the point where it's mundane. You need more. So I'm always pushing. I'm always looking for new thrills."

Scheff is known locally as "Flyin' Brian." At Polar Raceway near Palmer, he performs quarter-mile wheelies on his turbocharged motorcycle and stands on the seat at 70 mph. He races on jet skis and snow skis. He competes in the Arctic Man Ski and Sno-Go Classic, where challengers don skis and get dragged behind snowmachines. When he was attending East High School, he used to rock- climb all the time on the Chugach crud when it wasn't falling onto the Seward Highway, although he says he hasn't climbed much since an accident claimed the life of his friend.

"I'll show you an old climbing trick," Scheff says, recalling his friend. He grabs a mooring rope and begins a coil, using his feet and knees to peg the loops. He talks about his best friend and climbing partner, Grant Henke. Ten years ago, a party of climbers flew to Ruth Glacier amphitheater in Denali National Park for a month of rock climbing. Henke went but Scheff bailed out at the last minute to go to Hawaii instead. On the last day of the climbing trip, Henke and a partner were descending Mount Dan Beard when the ledge they were standing on fell away. The accident occurred at the 8,000 foot level. Their bodies were found 2,500 to 4,000 feet down the mountain.

"That was the end of my climbing, partly because I didn't want to climb with anyone else," Scheff says. "Ever since then, every time I get up high I look down and I see the accident. I imagine I can see the mountain taking them away and Grant falling down."

Earlier in the day, Scheff had been the first to jump from the balloon, mostly to boost customer confidence. "I was nervous, yes. But it was just a leap of faith," he says. "As far as my fear of heights, I faced it down today."

Scheff is almost done coiling the rope. I ask him if he's ever climbed anything other than mountains. He says no. He'd rather be on a mountain than, say, a bridge or in an elevator.

"Look at a rivet," he says, tying off his coil. "You don't know the state of mind of the guy who put it in. But mountains have been around forever."

"You think mountains are safer than elevators?" someone asks.

Scheff looks over. "Things men make," he says, pausing for effect, ". . . break."

So it had been a good day as far as Brian Scheff and Dan Bonomo were concerned. Not bad for bungee jumping beginners. Scheff's jump, for instance, was his first ever. And Bonomo, piloting the balloon, had learned how to fly the aircraft only a week before at a flight school in California.

Now they are seated side by side at a table in the Klondike Inn. Scheff excuses himself to talk to someone, and Bonomo orders a steak topped with mushrooms. A bungee jumping video is playing at the bar. The film's setting is very un-Alaskan, but Bonomo, an Alaskan, is in it. Dry, rolling foothills covered with whiskers of hay, a dusty brown against the blue sky, trademark California. Then a long shot of a hot-air balloon. Then a tiny figure falling from the balloon. That's Bonomo. Viewers know because the next shot is tight on his smiling face. The camera moves up and down his body to record all the gear he's strapped to. If anyone's saying anything, the viewers can't hear it. There is no sound.

Ask Bonomo to describe himself and he starts from the beginning but jumps to the highlights, which revolve around the fact he was a jock of all sports in high school and college. "I was born and raised in Anchorage," he says. "Went to Service High. I played hockey, football, baseball, tennis. In hockey I was league scoring leader my junior and senior years. As quarterback we went undefeated in '78 and '79. I played baseball at Southern Cal, in Mesa, Ariz., and Oklahoma City University. I went into the health and nutrition industry. Now I'm in real estate. I'm really excited about this, about bungee jumping."

He's also excited about my story. He sees the need to build a special observation platform at Big Lake to satisfy the press's hunger for pictures and stories, as well as his own desire for free advertising. Over the course of the day, he asks about what kind of story I'm writing, what will be in it, how they will be portrayed.

The steak arrives. "Sounds like you're worried about bad publicity," I say.

"Sure I'm worried, just like any other company," Bonomo says. "You gotta deal with a lot of people. You've got customers who are wondering if it's safe. You've got the government making sure we're doing everything legal, which we are. I could have environmentalists complaining about the landing site upsetting the environment, or when we break a tree."

Scheff returns, sees what Bonomo is eating and orders a mushroom steak for himself. "I've been looking for a sideline business. This is right up my alley the stunts, all that. What else could you want?"

Maybe a little cooperation from the industry. Bungee jumping companies seem hostile to one another. Scheff says when he called a big-time California operation, Bungee Adventures, for some advice on safety issues, he got the cold shoulder.

"They were real elitist," Scheff says. "What bothers me is they won't answer basic safety questions."

"So what kind of permits and licenses do you need to do this?" I ask.

"Listen, we went through a lot of red tape," Scheff says. "I'd prefer my competitors do their own research. I just don't want them to set up across the street with no hassle. We called the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), and things were taken care of."

"How much did your equipment cost?"

"A lot," Scheff says. "Again, we did a lot of research. We called places all across the country to get the top-of-the-line equipment at the best prices. I'm not trying to duck the question. I just don't want to make it easy for just anyone to start a bungee jumping business using our homework."

California was their classroom. When Bonomo visited, he took the ballooning class and hung out with bungee jumpers. "I took a lot of pictures and watched everything real carefully, so we know how it works," Bonomo says.

"It's been an adventure."

And before California, there was New Zealand, the world mecca of commercial bungee jumping. While working an unrelated job there in 1989, Bonomo observed the bungee jumping rituals then pulled out his wallet and paid for his first jump. The cords let him fall 220 feet off a bridge. Then the recoil set in, giving him a head-jarring revelation.

"First thing I thought about was, this would be so big in Alaska," Bonomo says, shoving a steak cube into his mouth. "It's going to be really big here. Really big. People are really starved for something to do, totally starved for something to do.

"This is not 9-to-5, 40 hours a week," he says. "It only lasts a few seconds, and it's a total rush. It's worth the price. It's something people will never forget."

"Is that why you're doing it?"

"Yes and no," Scheff says, smiling. "He likes cash. I like adrenalin."

Bonomo, chewing on steak, manages a puffy smile.

"We both need cash, actually," Scheff says. "Cash feeds adrenalin."

Other bungee jumpers I talked to agreed with Brian Scheff and Dan Bonomo, more or less.

There was Ernie Hamby. Twenty-six years old, he jumped over Big Lake with a pair of headphones wrapped around his skull, the Scorpions pounding into his ears as he fell to the lyrics of a song called "Winds of Change."

"The cool part is you get up there, you look out," a breathless Hamby says at the Klondike's bar. "He says to you, "Don't look down.' The adrenalin's going. As soon as he tapped me, taps me on the shoulder, you reach the point you can't go back. You fall forever. The water is approaching really rapidly ...

"I teach golf over at the Air Force base. This is a lot more exciting than golf. For 89 bucks you can't get a bigger thrill."

There was Jerry Kaufman. A bartender at Anchorage's Pierce Street Annex, Kaufman and a co-worker jumped wearing the club's purple jackets for a promotional stunt. "It was probably the craziest thing I've ever done in my life," he says, "except getting married." He says it might inspire a new drink. "I'd call it Death Drop."

There was Henry Banks. A North Slope oil worker on vacation, the 49-year-old Wasilla man found out about bungee jumping from his chiropractor. "I don't even feel my back anymore," Banks says after taking a leap with a different bungee jumping outfit in Anchorage. "It was over before I knew it. But what a rush."

Then there was Paul Costa. He hadn't jumped, but he watched. He liked what he saw, and he didn't like what he saw. Costa is co-owner of a well-established Anchorage ballooning company, Hot Air Affair. He watched Dan Bonomo fly the balloon. Burn the balloon. Burn the balloon again. Steer the balloon over trees and drag a dangling jumper through the stand like a car going through a car wash. He also watched me, and called a few days later to let me know what he thought.

"It seems fun and everything, what they think they're doing. But safety is an important factor, especially with hot-air ballooning, where life can be at risk," Costa said from his cellular telephone. "And I believe they are neglecting safety. In fact, it's something they're rushing into as renegades."

Costa listed several allegations, ones that I made a note to check later with the FAA, which regulates ballooning. "They didn't even know how to read their fuel tanks," Costa said. "Their knowledge in operation was so limited and so hazardous, they didn't even how to read a tank and operate a tank sequence."

"What's a tank sequence?" I ask. Apparently he doesn't hear me.

"This isn't sour grapes, and I am not afraid of competition no," Costa says.

"This is, on my part, seeing that safe operations are in the area. Alaska is a small community. Any accident that happens in our community will reflect on the industry as a whole. I can't tolerate that. I won't. I have to be a watchdog for those who don't watch themselves."

"So what are you doing about it?"

"I'm in touch with the FAA," Costa says. "We reported it and we will pursue the complete shutdown of his operation. Until his operation can be certified and his isn't he cannot be allowed to go up in the air."

Paul Costa entered the Anchorage bungee jumping business about a week and a half after Licensed to Thrill was grounded for not being properly licensed.

It is Aug. 28, a crisp morning in South Anchorage, early enough to see cars driving around with films of ice on the windshield. Costa thinks he's found the perfect place not remote like Licensed to Thrill's swampland staging area at Big Lake. He chose a vacant lot across from the Dimond Center mall, surrounded by restaurants and a miniature golf course. His plan is to offer jumps in the early mornings and the late evenings, coinciding with the schedules of Anchorage commuters who just might get the itch to jump from a balloon before or after work.

A man in a business suit parks his car at the edge of the lot and walks over to Costa, crossing ruts and weeds and clumps of earth. A balloon is bobbing overhead. Costa, wearing a blue flight suit, shakes the man's hand.

"You going to jump today?" Costa asks.

The man laughs. He's from a telephone answering service, and he's putting together a message for callers interested in Costa's new venture, Bungee Jump Alaska.

"A man's voice, or a girl's voice?" the visitor asks.

"A girl's voice," Costa says. "People would like to hear a girl's voice, right?"

"Yes, a girl's voice," the man says.

"I cannot manage the calls anymore," Costa tells me. "Really what they want to know is how much it is. That's from MTV. I advertised on MTV, CNN, ESPN.

We're getting a lot of calls from the MTV viewers. They don't want to jump.

They're just curious, you know, about the price. Out of 100 calls, that's what 75 are all about."

I ask Costa if he heard that his competitor, Licensed to Thrill, had been grounded.

"Yes," he says. "There are no ethics in business."

We survey the lot, which is tucked in a block bounded by Dimond Boulevard and the Seward highways. Curious onlookers are parking, watching some are even taking a jump before they continue on their way. All it takes, Costa says, is $115, which is his special introductory price for a 100-foot jump.

"That's why I put it here. To make it accessible. To make it accepted,"

Costa says. "People driving to work on the Seward Highway will see this every day. It's just what I want."

So everything is in place the location, the equipment, the public's state of mind and even a pair of experts.

"Let me introduce you to the foremost practitioners of self-regulation, in a sport which is a far cry from being regulated," Costa says to me. "They have developed expertise in the safe and proper use of equipment . . . after many years of operating one of the premier bungee jumping outfits down in the Lower 48. I would have no one else but them advising me on how I should run Bungee Jump Alaska."

Once, Doug Hase was asked to be on a radio show in Boulder, Colo. On the air, the interviewer asked Hase how he got into bungee jumping. "I said it started at birth," Hase recalls. "I launched from my mother and caught a great recoil from the umbilical cord."

Hase is 23 years old, tall, tanned, well-built, and president of Adrenaline Adventures. The bungee jumping business is how the University of Colorado graduate put his economics degree to use in the real world. It's also what helped get him and his business partner, Christine Warren, a one-week stint last month as consultants for Paul Costa's bungee jumping operation.

They've been running their own business for about two years. "In short," Hase says, "I was getting ready to graduate, ready to go up to Jackson Hole. We were going to start a climbing school or something. Maybe a rafting guide service. We thought we'd try bungee jumping. Besides, it sounded fun."

After Costa introduces me to Hase and Warren, he walks away in search of the man from the answering service. The bungee jumping experts say business this morning is brisk, but not as brisk as in Boulder, where they say some 5,000 people have paid them for a chance to jump.

"Oh, it's crazy," Warren says. "We do 40 people a day, four days a week. We have to turn people away. We're booked in advance for the month, and we have competition. It's a lot of work. God, we were ready to come to Alaska. We needed a break."

Warren is 25 and also a graduate of the University of Colorado. There's a photograph of her doing a swan dive off a balloon. It was published in Time magazine and in the latest Patagonia outdoor-clothing catalog.

"We've been in Time, USA Today, American Airlines magazine," Hase says. "We've been everywhere, so people know who we are. Paul said he found us in the library."

Hase and Warren are working on a promotional video. Every chance they get, they film themselves jumping off things usually bridges all over the West. Colorado. Wyoming. Arizona. Utah. California. Hase says he's ready to film some jumps off bridges in Alaska.

"Bridges are scarier," Hase says. "The thing is, with bridges, you're on top looking down, so you have a lot of time to think. In balloons, you're just falling through the air. There are no reference points. But bridges are different. The canyon walls you're going through them. Definitely much more relative to falling.

"Also, it's illegal to jump off bridges," he says. "That makes it even better."

A few days later I called the Federal Aviation Administration. They had more questions about bungee jumping than they had answers. Joette Storm, a spokeswoman, told me the public Paul Costa included had made inquiries about the safety of bungee jumping from hot-air balloons. FAA officials in Alaska were posing the questions to the top office in Washington, D.C., and regional offices in California to figure out exactly where everyone stood. They wouldn't be sure for a while, she said.

I asked about Licensed to Thrill. Storm said she'd have to get back to me. She did in a few days and, as it turned out, Licensed to Thrill wasn't licensed to fly a commercial balloon. Dan Bonomo had come back from ballooning school with a student pilot license. More advanced ballooning licenses require a written test, a flight test, flight time and a medical statement.

But Storm said the only requirement for student license holders is that they be 14 years of age. Bonomo qualified. He's 30.

The FAA's interest in bungee jumping ends when the activity returns to the ground. The reason: If there's no aircraft involved, then it's not the FAA's business.

In fact, even when aircraft are involved, it's not always the FAA's business. For instance, Storm said, there are no laws prohibiting people from throwing themselves from aircraft. But there are laws requiring aircraft to be properly piloted and specially certified for unusual activities, including bungee jumping.

Storm said she was working on a special bungee jumping press release to explain such regulations.

Eventually she got hold of a flight administrator and put his words on paper. His name is Tom Stuckey, manager of the FAA's Flight Standards Division. This is what he was quoted as saying in a press release issued earlier this month: "Except for one-time-only approval on a specific balloon in Southern California, the agency and the manufacturers have not performed the necessary studies on how the stability or strength of balloons are affected when it is modified for jumping. So any balloon currently in Alaska that has been modified is considered unairworthy and cannot be legally operated."

I asked Storm when the necessary studies would be performed. "At this moment, probably never," she said. "We do not regulate the sport of bungee jumping, nor do we intend to. Apparently it isn't something the administration feels within its purview. But I think there's a lot of questions being asked as this new activity occurs in Alaska. I don't know what the future is. I'm not even sure about the present."

It's the end of August. We're standing in the parking lot of the Vernair flight center at Merrill Field. It's about noon on a Thursday and the skies are clear.

Doug Hase snares the attention of maybe half a dozen people most of them college students by saying today we're going to visit the Mother of All Alaska Bungee Jumps and everyone will get a turn to fall.

Hase and Warren spent the morning on a Vernair flightseeing trip up the Parks Highway. The scenery was nice, he says, but that wasn't what they were looking for. Every time he spotted a bridge, Hase asked the pilot to fly low. By the time the flight returned, they had scoped out three or four potential jumping sites.

Hurricane Gulch was at the top of the list. Rubber cords, harnesses and gear are stowed in Paul Costa's Hot Air Affair van. It's a large passenger van, with the company logo outside on magnetic door plates and plenty of room inside for everyone to sit. On road trips, people tend to bare their souls. It's either that or listen to the drone of the engine, or whatever is on the radio.

Costa, who is driving, tunes to KWHL-FM, an Anchorage rock-'n'-roll station where he has a few promotional projects in the works. A commercial spot breaks in after a song. "What do you want to do tonight?" a man whines. "I don't know. What do you want to do?" a woman whines. "I don't know. What do you want to do?" the man whines again. The whining continues, but fades from earshot as Costa, a born talker, begins to speak. He says he spent nine years in college. He majored in geophysics because that's where the money was.

"They were giving out the most government grants and scholarships were easiest to get."

Costa used to run a restaurant in Seattle and a few years ago he marketed Alaska salmon leather from Anchorage. He joined Hot Air Affair in 1981 as a promoter for balloon trips.

"At that time, I was expanding the Seattle operation, but the weather was so poor there it wasn't worth it," he says. "I came up in 1984 to take on Anchorage. I knew what I wanted. I wanted the market. There were 11 commercial operations when I got here. When I was finished, there were only two. There's us and there's another company, and we cooperate so we are almost the same."

His secret, he says, was waging a sort of guerrilla price war. "The commercial operations were all into service, service at a fair price," Costa says. "They were charging $75 a trip. I charged $125 from the beginning. I wasn't making any more money than the others, because I put the profits back into advertising. I made sure people remembered Hot Air Affair and no one else. And I took the market."

It seems obvious but I ask anyway. "So why bungee jumping?"

Costa takes his eyes off the road to look at me squarely. "Money," he says.

The van's engine suddenly revs harder under the weight of his foot. "Well, I don't want to say "money.' That's so vulgar," Costa says. "It's giving me something to do. I get bored. I move on. That's what an entrepreneur does when it's no longer exciting.

"I'm looking at the promotional potential of bungee jumping," he says. "Maybe I'm going to sell another product with it, promote something. I don't know. I have a feeling. I like a product that can attract people. I like to find things that are accessible, things that don't take a lot of effort for people to do. When you find something like that you take advantage of its potential. Let's face it, people tend to be lazy. Especially people with money."

Costa makes a stop in Wasilla and vanishes into the aisles of Safeway. Hase and the others visit the liquor store and come back with beer.

"I'm just hoping the bridges are over 220 feet high," Hase says. "Why?" "Then we can double the cords and then that's how far you'd fall," he says. "One cord is 45 feet, one is 55. You tie them together for a way-long jump."

I figure now's a good time to ask about the bungee cords. Hase says the ideal weight of a jumper falling with four lines is between 140 and 215 pounds. The cords have an average life of 950 jumps, Hase says, but if they are defective or are run over by cars or left out in the sun or stepped on or abraded or handled carelessly, then the life can be reduced to as low as 40 jumps.

Of course, if they break then they're useless. That's why Hase uses four lines. "You don't have to jump on four, but safety and fear is an issue. People feel safer falling on multiple lines because in case one fails you have a backup."

"What about the law?"

"That doesn't scare me at all," Hase says. "I get caught all the time."

"How do you avoid getting in trouble?"

"I use my tongue and nothing happens," Hase says. "You just explain you're trying to have some fun."

On the Parks Highway somewhere between Wasilla and Hurricane Gulch, Hase says bridge jumping usually is done at night because most everywhere it violates highway trespassing laws. But here, Hase is making an exception.

"Alaska is kind of like Wyoming," he says. "Essentially, indirectly, there are no laws."

Paul Costa is pulling the magnetic signs off the doors. The van is parked in the pullout at the bridge's north end, and everyone has paid a visit to the roadside alders. Later, Costa explains, "I don't want anyone to associate this illegal activity with Hot Air Affair or Bungee Jump Alaska. That's why I've got Doug doing this. They promote me, but I don't get busted.

"When people see him jumping off the bridge, he says he's with Adrenaline Adventures, that he's from the Lower 48. But anyone who wants to jump for themselves, they come to me," he says. "See, Bungee Jump Alaska cannot endorse or condone illegal bungee jumping. We simply will not. And we will deny that we ever have, even in the Daily News."

From our vantage in the alders, Doug Hase looks pregnant. He walks out onto the bridge, taking purposeful steps along the shoulder. He's holding a bag of climbing rope under his windbreaker. At the bridge's midpoint, he uncoils the rope and lowers it down the gulch. He walks back to the pullout and tells us the gulch drops 240 feet. "We're going the whole way," Hase says. "Double it. It's poor etiquette not to use the whole bridge."

Some of the jumpers start uncoiling the bungee cord, handling the thick line like it was a boa constrictor. Hase is back out on the bridge, tying down strips of webbing that will attach the rubber rope to the guardrail. When a car approaches, Hase nonchalantly stands straight up as if he is minding his own business, on the shoulder of a two-lane bridge some 200 miles north of Anchorage out in the middle of nowhere. He sheds his windbreaker. "I need to feel wind," he says. His T-shirt says, "Defy Gravity. Adrenaline Adventures."

"How do you feel?" I know it's a stupid question.

"Of course the adrenalin's flowin'," Hase says. Then he explains his prejump ritual. "I'll step back, get psyched. One, two and I'm gone."

"Cool," someone says.

When the bungee cord is anchored to the bridge, Hase lays out the plan: He and another male jumper, Kristian Sieling, a 19-year-old University of Alaska Anchorage student, will walk out to the bungee cord. Sieling will hook the cord to Hase's body harness. Hase will double-check the rig. When the equipment looks good, and when the coast is clear, Hase will step up onto the guardrail and Sieling will coil a few lengths of bungee cord. Hase will jump off, and Sieling will throw the coils over the edge to ensure the lines don't snag on anything.

"Harness time, then jump time," Hase says, stepping into a waist harness and grabbing a few carabiners from Paul Costa's pile of gear. The harness is the kind worn by rock climbers. The carabiners, metal snap links also used by climbers, still have price tags on them. That's how new Bungee Jump Alaska is. Hase goes through more prejump rituals.

"What form?" he asks himself. "Big X." He angles his arms and legs to form the letter. "Arch." He arches his back. "T." He calls to his business partner, Christine Warren. "System check. First run. Can't risk death." "Ready?" Warren asks. "Absolutely," Hase says. She checks his rig. "All ready." "Thanks."

The jump goes just as planned. Hase raises his hands like a diver, falls forward and disappears into the gully. Warren starts the van and drives out to the bridge. Sieling throws the climbing rope down to Hase, runs the line through a pulley and clips the other end to the van. "Take off," he says, and Warren is driving, towing Hase back up to the top at 5 mph. Hase lifts himself over the guardrail, unhooks from the cord and jogs back to the pullout.

"How was it?"

"Oh, it was sweet!" he says. Hase is so high he's practically yelling. "Sweet job, Kristian! That was awesome!"

Sieling gets a few pats on the back. He's next.

"God, I don't know, when you're up there, about looking down."

"Don't look," someone says.

"But that's the best part," he admits.

"I eat that s--- up," Hase says.

"Stand there and look down as long as possible. That's where the rush comes from."

One by one, everyone gets a chance to jump.

Andy Shields is a bundle of nerves. He is 23, a University of Alaska Anchorage student, and is already in a body harness awaiting his turn to leap into the gulch. Sieling has just jumped. He's standing in the turnout, but his chest is still heaving from the thrill of the dive.

"You can't even scream," he says. "I could scream but I was too worried about other stuff.

"It's a totally personal thing," he says.

"I'm not ready to go," Shields tells me through a cheek full of tobacco. "I'd probably get a point-two-oh if they tested me for adrenalin intoxication." Then he declares: "This will be the biggest rush of my 23 years."

But not yet. It's Christine Warren's turn.

She walks past the group and strolls onto the bridge. Sieling also heads out there to hook up the rig. Doug Hase is looking for a spot from which to videotape the jump. Paul Costa lifts a pair of binoculars to his eyes. The others settle in the alders to watch the jump.

Something goes wrong.

When Warren's weight pulls the cord to its fully stretched length, two of the four lines snap upward but Warren is not attached to them. She bounces on the two other lines. They are holding double their intended weight, and the added stress drops Warren closer to the bottom of the gulch.

When the rebounds fade she calls for the tow rope. Quick. "Come on!" she yells.

Her voice is faint against the winds blowing through the gulch.

"OK!" Sieling yells back.

Nothing happens.

"Come on!"

Hase runs to the anchor point to help Sieling lower the rope faster. The van is on its way for the tow. Costa, still looking though binoculars, says something appears to have broken where the cords attach to Warren's harness. Equipment failure. The tow line drops and Warren clips in. She's on her way up.

For the jumpers unfamiliar with the strength of the cords, that brings a sense of relief. Sieling rushes back to the pullout with an account different than Costa's.

Operator error.

The equipment was intact. They just didn't notice Warren wasn't clipped into all the cords. Sieling is breathless, more breathless than when he returned from his own jump. His face is flushed. He says the two cords that shot upward were slung on one loop, but they didn't clip that loop to the harness.

"I don't know ..." he says between breaths "... what happened .... There were three loops. One, two, three. I counted them. She was clipped into two. I checked it. She double-checked. We didn't spot it. I thought it was right."

Hase storms back to the parking lot.

"I HATE THAT F---ING S---!" he screams. "CHECK YOUR EQUIPMENT! I HATE THAT S---! I HATE IT!"

Warren walks back. Her face is pale and her eyes are like saucers. She steps over to the van to get out of the harness.

"You all right, 'Tine?" Hase asks.

"Yeah."

"I mean mentally."

"No."

Hase calms down. Everyone is looking at him, because it's the first time anyone has seen him explode or allow bungee jumping to get the best of him. He explains they jump on four cords for a reason.

"You can jump on one, but it's safer with backups," he says. "I just hate mistakes. It just looks like s--- and it shouldn't ever happen."

Everyone is quiet. Some of them wear a sober look. But no one says it. No one says, "Well, what am I really doing here?"

Hase looks at Shields, who is still in his harness. "You wanna jump?"

Pause.

"Sure."

Early morning, the day after. At the vacant lot across from the Dimond Center, Paul Costa is taking customers.

A woman weighing at least 250 pounds dives from the hot-air balloon. The shock cords tense, then the balloon quakes and rocks from the great weight bobbing at the end of the line.

Watching from below, Doug Hase and Christine Warren laugh at the sight, then head for the Safeway across the street. It's their last day in Alaska.

In the bakery section, I ask Hase about letting extremely overweight people jump. "Was that safe?"

"No way," Hase says, picking a doughnut from a tray. "But that's what Paul wants to do. He's so obsessed with money, it's sick. I told him not to jump people under 140 or over 215. He said, "If they have $115, I'll let them jump."

And what about the price?

"A ripoff," Hase says, grabbing another doughnut. "Business is business, but you gotta think about fairness. We charge 80 bucks in Boulder."

A few days later, I called Costa. He didn't have much time to talk. The media was calling him more and more, and he had other things to do. A few days earlier, the stories on television and in a newspaper had touted the thrill of bungee jumping. Now, reporters were calling the FAA, and the FAA was calling Costa to check the certification on his bungee jumping balloon.

Brian Scheff, on the other hand, was upbeat when I last talked to him. It had been almost two weeks since the FAA grounded his Licensed to Thrill balloon.

And it had been only a few days since Scheff following the lead of Costa, Hase and Warren took jumpers to Hurricane Gulch. But unlike his competitors, Scheff was observed by the Alaska State Troopers, who ordered him to stop, resulting in a news story.

Now he said he wanted to buy a crane that would allow people to jump over private land. "That way the FAA and DOT (Department of Transportation) can't do anything about it," Scheff told me. "If people would just come out and take an analytical view of the equipment we take.

"But all this paranoia .... Jeez, you know?"

Originally published in We Alaskans, the Sunday magazine of the Anchorage Daily News, September 29, 1991