West Virginia's largest annual
festival. It is usually held in
October; in
2000 it will take place on October 21st.
Bridge Day is a
celebration of the
New River Gorge bridge, the world's longest
arch bridge. The bridge is over 800
feet high, which makes it suitable for
rappelling, and more notably,
BASE jumping--in fact, BASE jumping off the bridge is expressly
legal for about 6 hours on Bridge Day, making it a huge
attraction for the BASE crowd. Many BASE jumpers have their
first jump on this day, as the
river below is populated with
rescue boats and the
shore with
ambulances,
just in case.
I highly recommend going to this festival--the bridge and the
park are
beautiful, and the
jumpers provide quite a show, with
near death experiences as they wait a few seconds
too long to let their
parachutes open (there are only 9 seconds between the bridge and the ground; last year I witnessed delays from 5 to 8 seconds). In the
20 years of the festival, however, there has been only one
fatality.
Even better, I recommend actually jumping off the bridge yourself, but
that's another matter entirely.
More
information about bridge day can be obtained at http://www.nps.gov/neri/bridgeday.htm.