BASE Jumper Ian Flanders Falls 1.5 Miles To His Death — And It Was Captured On Film [Video]

BASE jumper Ian Flanders was elated after he successfully completed one daring flight above the Karanlik canyon in Turkey on Tuesday. He used a wingsuit to flutter safety into the Karasu River.

“The wingsuit jump was great. It’s a gorgeous flight, it’s a beautiful view of the town. You get to kind of fly over the town and we landed in the river, which was also kind of fun. It’s a pretty technical jump. Overall, it was a lot of fun, it was great, and this place is fantastic.”

But Ian’s second jump not long after ended in his tragic death at only 37, and it was all captured on video, the New York Daily News reported.

[Warning: the video at the link above may be disturbing for some viewers.]

He and other extreme athletes had gathered at the International Culture and Nature Sports Festival in Erzincan. It was day two, the Daily Sabah reported.

Flanders and his BASE jumping team were practicing their sport for the first time in Turkey, USA Today added, and local TV filmed the event — and inadvertently, his death.

On his second pass of the canyon jump, Ian leapt from a height of 1.5 miles off the mountain summit. At some point, the ropes of his parachute became entangled in his legs. He died instantly, and later, a search and rescue team recovered Flanders’ body from the river he had landed in safely not long before.

Not much can be seen in the video, except Ian’s tiny, black form falling at unimaginable speed against the blue sky. What appears to be his parachute trails behind. Ian disappeared behind the shadowed bulk of rock face, his fall obscured from view. Not long afterward, people started to scream.

In an ironic twist, Flanders was actually filming a documentary about the sport’s dangers, Outside magazine editor Grayson Schaffer said.

“At the time of his death, Flanders was actually working on a documentary about all of the deaths that have been happening in the BASE world, and… it’s just an incredible tragedy that he would die this way.”

In the sport’s history, 264 people have died BASE jumping. Ian Flanders’ death is the third this year. Dean Potter, 43, and his jumping partner, Graham Hunt, died when they jumped from Yosemite’s 7,500-foot-high Taft Point, as Inquisitr previously reported. The sport is illegal at the national park.

[Photo Courtesy of Twitter]