Jim McConkey watched his son nearly die.
It was a blustery day in 2003 when Shane McConkey leapt off the edge of Stawamus Chief, the iconic 700-metre granite face that stands above Squamish, B.C.
As Shane hurtled toward the ground in swirling wind, he had a "wall strike" – whipping into the wall of the mountain he was trying to jump away from, not once but twice. In his own words, he "almost died."
"We were hoping he'd get out of that," Jim said of his son's fascination with the extreme sport of base jumping, the act of skiing or otherwise plunging off a cliff and then parachuting to the ground. "You know, you can't force people. I was always worried when he'd go away on those trips and always be so thankful when he'd come back and he was okay.
"He wasn't ready to give it up. Maybe in another couple years, he probably might have been. But he didn't survive it. He died flying. He died doing what he loved to do."
Shane McConkey, 39, one of the world's best skiers, died March 26 after taking another leap off another mountain, half-a-world away from his wife and three-year-old daughter in California, while being filmed for a movie. He did a backflip after skiing off a craggy peak in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy. But when he tried to release his skis so he could glide away in a wingsuit and parachute safely to earth, something went wrong. One of the bindings didn't release, sending him into a brutal 12-second spin. He died on impact.
Ski base jumping and other forms of "base jumping" – throwing oneself off structures such as buildings, bridges and mountains in a freefall before releasing a parachute – are more than just risky sports. So in the days after Mr. McConkey's death, it didn't take long for a familiar debate to begin.
His infectious personality, his easy smile and laughter, and his amazing feats, made him widely loved and celebrated. "It feels like Superman died," one person said on a tribute website. But on another site, someone else called Mr. McConkey's life work "quite stupid useless acts."
"If he really valued his family he wouldn't have jumped off a perfectly good mountain," the commentator concluded.
His friends, fans and co-workers defended him as a professional athlete, living the life he chose: unconventional and full of risk.
In extreme sports, participants obviously believe the thrill is worth the risk. But is the risk also the thrill? And what exactly is a risk taker – someone who puts his life on the line or someone who simply feels the need to break free of convention? What makes a person take risks and do dangerous, even life-threatening things?
Jim McConkey, of anyone, has the best perspective. He's a Whistler Mountain legend who ran its ski school in the late 1960s and 1970s, starred in vintage ski films and helped launch the area's helicopter ski business. He was a pioneer of what's now called big mountain skiing – skiing far away from in-bound areas on slopes with extreme angles of 45 degrees or more, where a fall has severe consequences.
Now 82, Mr. McConkey has chased the highs and skirted death himself. He has felt what it is like to explore new frontiers in a world where everything's been discovered.
"I skied a lot of runs no one had ever skied before," Jim said. "It's the feeling of freedom, of being able to go up and ski down these big open slopes and through the trees and being able to handle it. I really loved it. You feel it. And you simply have to do it.
"That was the thing with Shane. He loved doing what he was doing. He took it to the pinnacle. He took skiing to the ultimate."
Shane McConkey was born in Vancouver but grew up with his mother in California. He ski raced as a teenager but yearned for more than just banging through gates. In the 1990s, as all things extreme began to percolate, Mr. McConkey was a ringleader. Virtually unknown in the mainstream, he starred in ski films for a decade and was all over magazine covers. He made skiing cool again after snowboarding stole the spotlight, and the fat skis every skier is on these days were popularized by Mr. McConkey. Ever inventive, always looking for a new thing, early this decade he married his passion for base jumping with extreme skiing.
In an interview two weeks before he died, Mr. McConkey distilled his passion in three takes: One: "For me, it's crazy to think of living in a big city and working on Wall Street."
Two: "It stems from the fact that we live in a world that's been completely mapped and completely charted. There's no exploration any more. And we as humans have the built-in need to go explore, to go see what's possible. And that's where I find it, in the mountains, with my skis and my parachute."
Three: "It's the most fun thing ever – nothing comes close."
Maryanne Pope doesn't jump off cliffs, but she understands risk, its lure and its pounding danger. Her husband John Petropoulos, a Calgary police constable, died in 2000 at age 32 after falling through a false ceiling on a break-and-enter call. She wrote a book, A Widow's Awakening , about coming through the pain.
"You love someone. You know who they are. You sign on the dotted line," Ms. Pope said. "And then when it happens, yes it's horrific, even if deep down it's not a big surprise.
"In terms of race car drivers, and extreme skiers, people like that, they are sports and entertainment. They're not saving people's lives, but they have a huge purpose in society as well," she says. "It's good to see people pushing to their very limits. We have to respect people who do that."
Eric Pehota, 44, knows the soaring highs and crushing lows of big mountain skiing. With skiing partner Trevor Petersen, the two British Columbians were among those who helped define the sport in the 1990s until Mr. Petersen died in a 1996 avalanche in Chamonix, France.
Mr. Pehota was starting his family about the time Mr. Petersen died. He pulled back from the most extreme sports, but he fully rejects people who think "it's too dangerous."
"I would say maybe they should get off the couch and live a little. I don't consider it foolish. We were professional, and calculated," Mr. Pehota says.
The risks are relative, says Ingrid Backstrom, a pro skier who worked with Mr. McConkey for six years. It's all about experience. You don't just go jumping off cliffs. It is a life of work.
"The rewards far outweigh the risks. It's what makes life worthwhile, and what gives us freedom and purpose in life," Ms. Backstrom says.
The theme of addiction is a constant in big mountain skiing – and in any extreme endeavour. When people say with a smile, "I'm an adrenalin junkie," it is no joke. Extreme activities produce the same flush of joy inside a person's head as opiates such as heroin.
"It's the same circuits in the brain involved and it's the same rush," says Dr. Gabor Maté, whose 2008 book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts explores addiction in general and drug addiction in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside specifically.
Mr. McConkey, in the 2007 documentary Steep , a history of big-mountain skiing, tried to duck the addiction question. "I don't think I'm an adrenalin junkie but I sure do love those kind of things that give you adrenalin," he said. In another segment, he said with a mischievous boyish laugh, "It's addictive."
While extreme skiing was always captured on camera, it wasn't until the late 1980s, when VCRs proliferated, that the lure went viral. The Blizzard of Aahhh's , the 1988 Greg Stump film, was seminal. Shane McConkey was 19. "I watched those movies until the tape was worn out and tried to go bigger than those guys," he once said.
With a wider audience, ski manufacturers sponsored athletes such as Mr. McConkey, providing enough cash – $30,000 a year in the 1990s was a big success – to get along.
This decade, the sport and the entire extreme world has been fuelled by the makers of the energy drink Red Bull, a major sponsor of all kinds of wildness, and one of Mr. McConkey's main backers. The audience increased exponentially with the Internet, particularly on YouTube. Big names can now make $100,000-plus.
Limits were continually pushed. Mr. McConkey once half-joked that there are no injuries in base jumping. It's binary, one or zero, alive or dead.
Miles Daisher, a close friend and teammate of Mr. McConkey's on the Red Bull Air Force, turns 40 this month and has two young daughters, two and four years old, and a third child on the way. He has base jumped more than 2,400 times, more than anyone else. He's not stopping.
"Hell, no. What am I going to do now? Swing a hammer? It's not my passion. I'm going to do what I love," Mr. Daisher says.
"If you quit doing what you love, you cheat yourself, and you're not going to be happy for your family. "It's not what we do. It's who we are. It's seeing what you can do, and what's possible. And not settling," he says.
"Shane was an explorer of what's possible."
David Ebner