Nearly 60 years to the day after the first ascent up Mount Everest, Russian extreme sport star and Red Bull athlete Valery Rozov (48) flew off the north face of Mount Everest –the world’s highest BASE jump ever - 7220 meters above sea level.

Exactly 60 years after Edmund Hillary and Tensing Norgay climbed the world’s highest mountain (8,848 meters), the 48-year-old extreme sport ace from Russia succeeded with his latest project. Red Bull Athlete Valery Rozov has made it into headlines around the world in recent years for his spectacular leaps.


The journey began in 2009 , where he jumped into an active volcano in the Far East on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in 2010 he leaped from the Ulvetanna in the Antarctic and in 2012 he jumped from the Shivling mountain in the Himalayas. Rozov jumped from an altitude of 6,420 meters in the Himalayas, which in effect also served as his final test for the ultimate jump for a man with an incredible over 10,000 jumps to his name. All of these jumps can only be seen as warm-ups to his most spectacular jump, from the highest mountain in the world.

Rozov with his team spent over two years preparing for the jump, including considerable time and effort devoted to developing a special new Red Bull Wingsuit. The team, which included four sherpas as well as photographers and camera crew, spent nearly three weeks in the Himalayas before the Red Bull Everest Jump took place on May 5.

The ascent began on the Chinese side of the famous north route. Rozov had selected a spot for his leap, at an altitude of 7,220 meters and it took him four days to climb from the base camp to the jumping location. At precisely 2:30 p.m. local time on the 5th, he leaped despite adverse weather conditions and temperatures set at -18 Celsius. Because the cliff at the top was not very high, the initial moments of the leap in the rarified high altitude air were the most critical.


Rozov needed more time than usual in the thin air to transition from freefall to flying. After that he flew for nearly a full minute at speeds of about 200 km/h along the north face before he landed safely on the Rongbuk glacier - at an altitude of 5,950 meters.

“Only when I got back home did I see how hard it was for me both physically and psychologically,” said Rozov after getting home to Moscow.