British man is killed while base jumping in the Swiss Alps

A British man has been killed base jumping in the Swiss Alps. The 38-year-old died on Wednesday afternoon practicing the extreme sport, also known as wingsuit flying. 

Wingsuit flying involves a special jumpsuit, sometimes called a birdman suit, to fly through the air. Participants jump from a fixed structure or cliff.

The man was in Lauterbrunnen, popular with wingsuiters because of the rock faces and mountain peaks. He was with two people who were also wing suiting.

The man jumped shortly after 12.15pm from ‘La Mousse’.

‘Soon after his departure, he found himself, for some reason still undetermined, in difficulty and fell to the ground,’ according to the public prosecutor.

The jumps in the Lauterbrunnen Valley are rated on a difficulty scale. The blue rating is intermediate, red is advanced and black is expert.

La Mousse is rated overall as red. The exit point, or first six seconds, is also rated as red and the landing is considered blue.

Rescuers located the victim in the Ryggerschwendi area. An investigation has been opened into his death.

There are 72 waterfalls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, the most famous being the Staubbach Falls.

Plunging almost 300 metres from an overhanging rock face, it is one of the highest free-falling waterfalls in Europe.

Due to the lower altitudes of the jumps, BASE jumping is significantly more dangerous than skydiving from a plane. 

The 38-year-old British man had jumping from a ‘red run’ for advanced wingsuiters [file photo]