Felicia Sturgeon, to me, is incredible – an amazingly talented flyer who seems to excel at every sharp end of our sport. She’s a bad ass swooper, BASE jumper, wingsuit skydiver, speed flyer and freeflyer. Oh, and freestyle snowboarding, skiing, roller-blading, and – hey! – let’s put some of those together!
How did you start skydiving Felicia?
I did my first skydive at the Air Force Academy, on 23 July, 2012, with the military. They do five hop ‘n’ pops, that’s essentially the program. From there I knew I had to keep doing it, I loved it. I started AFF at the local dropzone at Colorado. I had no idea skydiving was a sport. I didn’t know you could just sign up at the local DZ to do a jump, I thought it was only for the military. I had no exposure to the sport. I wasn’t the person who grew up watching videos on social media. All of a sudden, I found myself jumping out of a plane and I’m like – Woo, this is wild!
What can you remember about your first jump?
The moment I stepped off the plane I remember thinking, ‘This is it!’
When did you put on a wingsuit? For both skydiving and BASE?
I didn’t start wingsuiting that early in my jumping. I had probably a thousand jumps before putting a wingsuit on. I started BASE jumping in 2016, and started wingsuiting skydiving around 2018. And I did my first wingsuit BASE jump in 2020.
Photo by Jesse Hall
Why did you start wingsuiting?
I started wingsuiting kind of by accident. I started traveling to Utah to jump and everyone was wingsuiting there at the time. My best friend that I grew up with, she’s the same size as me, so she had a wingsuit in my size and just suggested I try it. I was like ‘okaaay’. Before then I thought wingsuiting wasn’t cool-looking. I was also really into swooping and freeflying, and, you know what it’s like, swooping and wingsuiting don’t mix! The dropzone you grow up at, you just do whatever is considered cool there. Once I was at Skydive Utah, she just gave me her wingsuit and all of a sudden, I found myself flying a Swift with all these super-experienced wingsuiters around me. I was like – woah, this is actually pretty cool!
You said swoopers and wingsuiters don’t mix, why is that?
It’s about the canopies. You can’t jump a swooping canopy with wingsuits. That’s what steered me away from wingsuiting for so long because I thought I couldn’t fly a parachute I thought was fun.
Photo by Jesse Hall
Did you find it easy flying a wingsuit ?
I was instantly okay at it – because of my freefly background and I had a lot of tunnel time, it didn’t feel overwhelming. I just felt I could fly it the way I wanted to fly it.
Do you think some people rush to put on a wingsuit too early?
For sure. I see this a lot at my dropzone, because wingsuiting is the cool thing to do. When you get to 200 jumps, of course you’re gonna put on a wingsuit. And – boom! – let’s put on a Go Pro at the same time!!
Wingsuiting can be very scary in ways that I think people don’t understand at that stage. At 200 jumps most people don’t even know how to fly without the suit on so it seems a little crazy to add a suit. Of course it’s very dependent on the person, with some people it’s more reasonable than others.
Photo by Foxy
What can be scary about wingsuiting?
The speed you can generate with a wingsuit and the collisions that can happen are high speed, scary. We just had an incident that went to an AAD fire with a wingsuiter. She had a collision on exit because she got out of control, that knocked her unconscious. The suits can just generate so much speed that when you collide the chances of getting knocked out are pretty high. I feel there are a lot of accidents with wingsuit collisions, way too many.
How can we prevent that?
The education needs to be a little better at some dropzones. Sometimes people just have their friends teach them, without always getting a first jump course. It’s just a number but 200 jumps to put on a wingsuit is kinda low.
How do you manage flying such different canopies as swooping and BASE?
Flying a parachute, there are a lot of the same things that carry over for each type of canopy; reading the wind, feeling it. The more experienced you are, and the more canopies you’ve flown, the better you get at reading each wing. Speed flying, swooping and flying a BASE canopy are very different but they contribute to each other, they are all complementary. Especially with speed flying and swooping. I have a Mutant coming very soon, I’m excited to see how that compares to speed flying. I’m pretty sure it’s going to have a lot of carry-over.
Do you have a favorite discipline?
It depends on the month! Sometimes I’m super stoked in BASE and other times I can’t stop talking about speed flying! I guess I just want to do it all! [laughs]
What makes you want to do everything?
Man, I feel like here in Utah this is the Mecca for everyone who wants to do everything. Climbing, skiing, snowboarding, BASE jumping, speed flying, skydiving. Utah has it all. I started snowboarding when I was five, and switched to skiing about six years ago to be complementary to speed flying. I just wanted to be good enough at skiing to speed ride… and then I kind of got obsessed with skiing and I haven’t really stopped since! It’s funny, I competed in freestyle snowboarding and I never thought I would be a skier before I took up parachute sports.
Do people rush into BASE?
For sure. Again, there are a lot of BASE courses out there that just have a number of jumps requirement, a bare minimum. 200 jumps is just a number – barely enough. Most of the base jumping in the US is lower, slider-off. A lot of people think the skydiving requitement is to do with the freefall awareness – but it’s their canopy skills that are lacking. People get hurt because they are not comfortable under a parachute. That’s 95 per cent of the BASE jump.
It’s very dependent on the person from what I’ve seen. Some people are better at flying parachutes than others. That’s just the way it is. Some people can fly a parachute well at 200 jumps and others may need a thousand. I wanna say, why is it 200 jumps for everything? Why put a number on it at all?!
Do you have any advice for someone who wants to get into BASE?]
Often, the canopy skills are really lacking for a lot of people getting into BASE. And that’s the part that’s going to hurt you. It’s easy to just jump off a bridge and throw a pilot chute. The parachute is going to open – but landing it where you want safely is a different skill. People think because it’s a big 200-plus square foot canopy, that it’s no big deal; but it’s actually very technical to land well. It’s easy to jump off an object but it’s typically what happens under the canopy that can break you.
Most people that ask about getting into BASE, I first look at their canopy skills. Are you a proficient canopy pilot.? Are you landing consistently where you want to? In any conditions? If not, that’s what you need to work on before going near BASE.
That being said there is no USPA of BASE jumping and that’s part of what makes it awesome. It’s your own journey and you have to decide for yourself if you’re ready for it or not. Talk to people you trust that understand your abilities and can give you honest feedback. In my opinion, finding a mentor is the best thing you can do for your journey.
Tell me about your ski base journey
Probably about four years ago now, I started jumping with Jesse quite a bit, right after Covid. I was traveling to Utah to jump. I started a jumping relationship with Jesse. We were both super-fired up on it. He has a lot of history in the sport, he became my mentor in base and wingsuiting . He obviously is one of the top ski-basers in the world, he’s been doing it longer than most. As I started skiing and hanging out with him, the idea of it became more of a reality. We’ve totally had a blast.
Do you ever have ‘The Fear’? You seem so relaxed at exit points
Yes, I definitely feel fear. I’m at the point of managing that fear and trying to understand it. Is the fear too overwhelming? And, if it is, then why? It should be normal to be nervous before some things, especially base jumping. But most of the time when I’m standing on something, an object, I feel ready, prepared for this moment.
Sometimes I have walked away from jumps because I just didn’t feel like jumping or the amount of fear was more than made sense. I’ve walked away from jumps when the weather was perfect and everyone else jumped, but I just didn’t feel right. BASE jumping is too risky to jump when it doesn’t feel good. The whole idea is to have fun, right?!
Where did your adventurous spirit come from, were you like this as a child?
I was always a tomboy growing up. I have one brother, he is two years older than me. I always wanted to be doing what he was doing from a young age. I always had this adventurous spirit. I wanted to be one of the guys.
Are you and your brother similar?
We are very different. We grew up doing the same things, being super-competitive. Once I started jumping, when I joined the military, our lives took different trajectories. He is very content doing more ‘normal’ sports. He likes fishing, riding bikes, shooting. He also has a kid. We are very different now. I took him skydiving one time. He said it was ‘alright’!!
What do you do for a living?
I’m a full-time skydiving instructor at Skydive Utah right now. I recently got my tandem rating, back in April. I’m kind of figuring out my life right now. When I got out of the military I saved up a bunch of money so I could potentially not work for a couple of years .. so now I am working in skydiving to prolong that kind of ‘fake retirement’ that I’m in. It’s allowing me to pursue a bunch of time doing airsports. I’m kind of living the dream right now. Flying all the time, doing what I want. I started making money with tandems to cushion the blow of going back to a ‘real job’.
Do you have any sponsors?
I’m very grateful to Kavu, Squirrel, PD, Cookie helmets and L& B for their support.
What canopies and wingsuits do you jump?
I jump PD canopies for swooping and reserves, and Squirrel canopies for BASE and for wingsuiting. They are both super cool manufacturers.
Wingsuit-wise, I have three; a Freak, which is the best all-round skydiving suit; a Creature, which is also an awesome all-round suit with a bit more power; and a Loki, which is a fun intermediate suit, really good for acro wingsuiting. All of them are great in their own way.
Whom do you admire, who are your mentors and who have you learned the most from?
Matt Leonard, my boyfriend, has taught me a lot about high performance parachutes. Probably more than anyone else. He’s one of the most knowledgeable canopy pilots in the world. Swooping, flocking, mountain flying, BASE, you name it. He’s top of the lot.
What makes you so good at everything ?
I guess sometimes it’s hard for me to think that I’m good at what I am doing. I just love flying. It changed my whole life.
I just focus on one thing at a time. I dedicate myself totally to that one area for a while. I don’t try to do everything all at once when I’m learning new things. If I wanna get into swooping I’ll dedicate time to that, and get really dialed in with that… then dedicate a bunch of time and jumps to learning wingsuiting really well. Then, I can mix it up and do lots of different sorts of jumps in a day.
I’ve always wanted to be safe and not the person people are worried about. I try to not skip any steps, go through the right progression. I’ve definitely dedicated a lot of time to progressing. Everything is just so much fun. Enjoy it. All those little steps. Progress naturally. If you constantly have this idea of where you want to be in the sport and you have very specific ideas like, ‘I want to be like that person’ or ‘I wanna be a wingsuit BASE jumper’, you can focus on it too much. It’s okay to have those goals but you can miss out on the stuff inbetween. How much fun it is to be new and progress with something. Having fun along the way. I don’t know what the point of all this is but I just know it’s the most fun we can be having. I want other people to feel that and share that too.
It’s cool to have goals within the sport but I think people focus on that too much and they can miss out in how awesome everything is leading up to that. I think it actually slows your progression. I’ve just always focused on having fun. If that’s what made me progress and be good at stuff, it’s an easy approach anyone can take.
What’s the next area of growth for you?
I’m super stoked to focus on the Mutant that I’m getting soon, I’m really excited about that. I’m not the most experienced wingsuit BASE jumper so I’d also like to focus on that. I just ordered a new suit, specifically for BASE. So that’s my next plan and after that, who knows?! I’ve loved every second of my flying journey so far and part of the fun is, you never know what’s round the corner.
Photo by Jesse Hall
