6 minute read
CALL OF THE WILD
AMBER FORTE always wanted to live a life less ordinary, and when she found wingsuit flying she knew how. Having mastered the art of fight everywhere from the mountains of Norway to Pakistan’s Karakorum range, the Brit is now taking her skills to new heights
The only sound at the top of the mountain is the rush of the wind. A single line of footprints in the spring snow leads to the edge, a one-way track to where Amber Forte is standing on a small ledge of rock, arms outstretched. In the valley more than 3,000ft (900m) below, the sun glints off a fjord and the village of Loen looks like a toy town.
“Three, two, one…” Forte shouts. Then she leaps. She disappears for a second as she drops, then soars out, following the curve of the landscape, gliding gracefully on the stiff breeze that buffets the landbound. Were you to glance up from the ground, you might mistake
Forte in her wingsuit for one of the sea eagles that visit this part of north-western Norway, silhouetted against the sky. A short while later, wingsuit rolled down off her upper torso, Forte is sharing a lift back to the top of Mt Hoven with tourists and walkers. Her husband, Espen Fadnes, hugs her as she exits. “I was a little…” he begins, then pauses. The wingsuit Forte is wearing is new and untested, and the handle to open the parachute is in a slightly different place. “I could see the time it took,” he says. “Three- or four-tenths of a second longer.” It wasn’t a problem, Forte says: “I pulled hard. But the parachute is bigger than I’m used to.”
Fadnes and Forte are a team, a wingsuited power couple. They live in Loen, a village in Norway’s beautiful Nordfjord region, where they can train all year round. “It means I can stay current and allows me to test and try out new techniques and equipment,” says Forte, aged 32 and originally from Devon. “The area is stunning; there are so many valleys and mountains to explore with my wingsuit.”
It’s not about the risk or the adrenaline –I just love the feeling of flying
She tries to jump every day, though it’s not always possible with the weather – she must also factor in rest days – but her life revolves around the sport. Fadnes is the same. “We work together, train together, execute projects together,” Forte says. The two of them first met in 2016, when Forte moved to Voss in western Norway and started working at an indoor wind tunnel where Fadnes sometimes taught. “She was unusually vibrant,” he recalls. He was struck by the way she moved her body in the air: “Like a ballet dancer in the sky. I’m more like a stiff runner.” But Fadnes was experienced in the wingsuiting that Forte wanted to learn and had grown up climbing in the Norwegian mountains with his father. “I had skills she didn’t have, and she had skills I wish I had. We took off, like a little team.”
At the beginning, he says, while Forte learnt wingsuiting – to get started in the sport, you need to have done around 200 to 300 skydives – their relationship was imbalanced. “I had 15 years in this sport, and a position that got me jobs and opportunities,” says Fadnes, who’s 12 years senior to Forte and is a pioneer in air sports and wingsuiting – a former FAI world champion, he has been Emmynominated for his airborne camerawork and features in numerous documentaries including Netflix’s Wingmen. “I think she felt she had to work hard to reach further.”
Forte rose to the challenge. In a relatively short time, she has become the world’s fastest female wingsuiter –her 2017 record of 283.7kph still stands – was the first woman to make the top 10 at an FAI performance wingflying competition, and has featured in commercials and documentaries. Her next challenge could become reality in a matter of months and is something her husband, though heavily involved as ever, says he has no intention of completing: Forte plans to wingsuit across the English Channel.
It has never been done, and there’s probably a reason for that. It will require Forte to jump from 35,000ft (almost 11,000m – her highest so far is 22,000ft, or 6,700m), a height that will require a mask and oxygen tank, which will affect her weight and speed. Her skin will need to be protected from the -50°C cold, which will mean wearing a full fighterjet-pilot-style helmet, and her body kept warm enough to do what it needs to do. And it needs to do a lot.
If she could, my mum would tell me to not do this
Forte will glide for around 10 minutes, crossing 34km, holding a precisely calculated plank position all the way – a feat that requires serious gym and endurance training. She will have to navigate precisely, too, as even the slightest degree off-course could add up to a distance she won’t be able to cover. The aim is to land next to the lighthouse on the Dover cliffs. But she will have to practise for the chance she’ll land in water, quickly jettisoning her parachute and oxygen tank before it drags her down, and learn how to stay afloat in the middle of the sea. This will be as much a mental battle as a physical one. “I’m actually really scared of water,” she says. A wetsuit would help, but that comes with its own problems – at 35,000ft, the tiny air bubbles in the neoprene would expand and strangle her. She’s learning so much, she says. “I need new skills, technology and a team I trust, so it’s a lot of things to feel comfortable with,” says Forte. And a lot of training. Forte is about to return to Spain where she’s training with a plane. There will be numerous wind-tunnel sessions and BASE jumps as she puts all the necessary pieces into place. Fadnes describes Forte as a determined athlete: “She doesn’t give up; she is willing to go very far. She’s full of warmth to others but tends to be tough on herself, with high expectations.”
It also comes just five years after Forte had a skydiving accident that threatened to end her career. She spent months recovering from a broken back and femur, learning to walk again, and this challenge is partly about putting this firmly in the past. “I do respect [the accident] is a part of me. But I don’t want to be known as that injured person for ever.”
This project, she says, is about the future: “A huge part of my motivation is to do something new and groundbreaking, to set my mark.”
