One way to raise awareness
Andy Stumpf served 18 years as a Seal. When he was just 17 he got his parents to sign a consent waiver for early enlistment. When asked why he chose to sky dive, he said that sky diving is the only thing he’s good at. He would attempt to break the world record for absolute distance traveled in a wingsuit jump, which includes the distance covered after the chute has opened, and if Kill Cliff paid for the jump they could funnel attention to a GoFundMe campaign to raise $1 million for the Navy Seal Foundation Survivor Support Program.
Skydiving to me has always been a natural thing. I didn’t feel like I was in danger or outside of my skill level, so I felt comfortable just doing it.
Most people would probably look at me doing an attempt like that as not reckless, but a little bit on the edge of moderately unqualified,” says Stumpf. “And I probably wouldn’t argue that with them. However, skydiving to me has always been a natural thing. I didn’t feel like I was in danger or outside of my skill level, so I felt comfortable just doing it
The Skullcandy crew hooked me up with their performance lab where they started putting sensors on me during the jumps, and measuring oxygen saturation and heart rate and trying to figure out exactly what was going on inside of my body,” Stumpf says. “They really worked with me to try to target the muscle groups that seemed to fatigue the most. What they did for me was take the blindfold off. I was still playing darts, but at least now I had a systematic approach to getting them onto the dartboard
he said.
What’s it like that high up?
“It’s visually intense, and it’s cold,” said Stumpf, who has jumped at 32,000 feet. “You can start to see the beginning of the curvature of the earth. You feel the air thicken as you fall.”
It sounds crazy, but for this former SEAL, that’s not the hard part.
“To me, the jumping aspect is way easier than fundraising and driving awareness,” Stumpf said. “I don’t know how to get people behind a cause that will go viral. So when a guy like Zach steps up, it’s amazing. I need all the help I can get.”
The jumps are unique in the fact that they are singularly useless and have no meaning,” says the Navy veteran, who dove out of a plane from 36,000 feet to fundraise for the Navy SEAL Foundation, which provides support services to members of the Naval Special Warfare community.
Stumpf has spent nearly half his life in uniform, and after retiring from active duty, leaping from the lower edge of the troposphere with an oxygen mask strapped to his face was a way to marry his passion for skydiving with his commitment to serving a community he says served him so well for so long. “It was just a pin in the ground that I could use to put a spotlight on me, and then lateral that over to the Foundation
