My extreme moment | Valery Rozov

On April 18, 2009 Russian extreme sport adventurist Valery Rozov, 44, jumped into an active volcano in the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia. He shares his experience.

My team — comprising eight cameramen, three guides, two photographers and four in the support team — and I had travelled to the Kamchatka peninsula on April 10, 2009. The plan was that I would jump into the Mutnovsky volcano, an active volcano covered with snow but with a simmering crater, one of the many active volcanoes in that region.

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Before the jump, we had to assess the situation on ground and mark a safe landing place in the crater. We knew that there were active and passive parts of crater so it was important to go check the crater first. However, although we stayed there for 10 days, the terrible weather made it simply impossible for us to check the volcano for a safe landing spot. On the eighth day, that is April 18, I finally decided to go ahead with the jump, despite not knowing precisely where to land. We were also running out of time and had to return to Moscow in two days. All we could do was imagine where it would be safe to land and go ahead.

The MI-8 helicopter we’d hired flew us to a spot 500 m above the volcano. As I stood at the door and looked down, I saw the spiral shape of the volcano below me. I wrung my hands a bit, adjusted my gloves and shook my shoulders to make sure the parachute was sitting well over my wingsuit. And then I jumped. With a back flip, I aligned myself in such a way that for a few seconds I was falling vertically, headlong into the volcano.

I had jumped nearly half a kilometre away from the crater, since the wingsuit gives tremendous horizontal speed. There were three main dangers I was facing then. One, there was no option to turn away, as you’re headed in the direction of the opposite slope. Two, you need to time the opening of your parachute well, so that you don’t hit any cliff face. In my case, I realised I needed to open the parachute after entering the crater, and that too somewhere in the middle. Three, of course, I didn’t know what was beneath the snow field I was intending to land on.

Once I jumped, I flew with my wingsuit for almost 40 seconds. Around me, smoke billowed from the other volcanoes. I took care to fly into the crater and then opened my parachute. Within 10 seconds, I landed on hard snow. All was well.

Watch the video of Rozov jumping into the volcano on YouTube at http://bit.ly/67uEBo