Brandon Gilbert stood with his toes inches from the edge of a 400-foot sandstone cliff on a desert rim outside Moab, harnessed to a guide for his first tandem BASE jump.

“I’m shaking like a leaf,” Gilbert said.

“How’s the view, though?” the guide asked, sweeping an arm at the terrain, a labyrinth of cliffs, buttes and fins, fall-yellow cottonwoods along the creek below and a brilliant blue morning sky.

“It’s pretty good,” Gilbert said. The guide encouraged him to look down – he did for a fraction of a second before snapping his eyes back to the horizon.

On the countdown, they stepped off together, an awkward four-legged creature. Gilbert let out a bellow as they went over the cliff, the sound cut off as they dropped. Then the canopy opened with a sharp crack that echoed off the canyon walls, and they drifted toward the sandy landing zone along Kane Creek Road.

Gilbert was one of 10 participants in a Veterans Day weekend retreat hosted by 22 Jumps, a nonprofit that funds traumatic brain injury research, supports military veterans and works to prevent veteran suicide. The name references a statistic from a 2012 Department of Veterans Affairs report estimating that 22 U.S. veterans take their own lives each day.

Founded by Marine Corps veteran Tristan Wimmer, 22 Jumps grew out of a single fundraiser in Arizona after Wimmer lost his brother, also a veteran, to suicide in 2015.

After years grappling with that loss, Wimmer organized an endurance day of BASE jumps in 2020 to raise awareness for traumatic brain injury and veteran suicide in his brother’s honor. The overwhelmingly positive response from donors surprised him. The one-day event grew into a nonprofit that now hosts events throughout the year.

The Moab retreat began in 2023, when Moab local Matt Lajeunesse, owner of Tandem Base Moab, reached out to Wimmer with the idea of hosting veterans. Other local businesses pitched in to make the retreat cost-free to participants – they cover only their travel to Moab. Volunteers and donors, particularly Moab businesses, contribute time, equipment, expertise, food and lodging. The group is deliberately small, around 10 participants.

22 Jumps partners with researchers, including at the University of Utah, studying adventure sports as treatment for traumatic brain injury, PTSD, anxiety and depression.

Wimmer has seen firsthand how these intense activities can be therapeutic for people who have lived through trauma.

“They’re coming out the other side of that experience just high on life,” Wimmer said. But it’s not just the thrill. “It’s the skill-building and the community-building along the way that keeps people coming back.”

By the time they regrouped after their BASE jump, the shift was visible.

“That first step off was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” said Cheyenne Rinehart, an Army veteran from Ohio. He finds skydiving relaxing, but BASE jumping was different.

“My stomach hit my throat. I don’t think I breathed for a good 10 seconds,” he said. “But once you realize, ‘OK, I’m not going to die,’ it’s like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. I want to do this again.’ ”

Friday afternoon, the group went canyoneering, rappelling through narrow notches. The next morning they rode the Moab Brand trail system, cycling a loop that opened onto long views toward Arches National Park.

 

SATURDAY AFTERNOON brought another high-intensity challenge: the rope swing. Participants packed into an open Humvee, and a guide drove them up a steep, rocky road to the edge of a deep canyon. A taut line stretched across the chasm, a rope hanging from its center. One by one, participants jumped into the canyon, freefalling until the rope caught them, then were hauled back to the rim.

For some, it was the most intimidating activity of the weekend. Unlike the BASE jump, there was no experienced guide harnessed alongside them, and several felt mentally fatigued after confronting fear the day before.

Dane VanOosten volunteered to go first.

“I try to be the one who goes first, try to get everybody moving,” he said later. Years before, during a Marine Corps swim training exercise, when no one wanted to leap from a high dive, he did.

“My platoon commander pulled me aside and told me that showed real leadership,” VanOosten said.

At the rope swing, he flung himself into the canyon as the others cheered. When he was hauled back to the rim, he was grinning.

Michael Jennings, a Marine Corps veteran who traveled from Wyoming, upped the ante with a front flip. Later, he said he was terrified while waiting and watching others jump but convinced himself to face the challenge head-on.

“I did it for myself, to prove I could do it,” he said, “but also hoping that I would unlock something in somebody else.”

Meanwhile, Rinehart stood quietly in the staging area, staring at the jump point while he waited his turn.

“I am not happy,” he said. “My heart started beating faster as we got closer on the drive.” Jennings came over to offer tips and encouragement.

After a long moment at the edge, Rinehart stepped off, shouting a line that had become an inside joke over the previous days.

Back at the rim, all smiles, he joked, “Now not only do I look tough, but I feel tough.”

Sunday brought a different adventure. The group went skydiving, an experience many described as peaceful. Later, they rode in 4x4 Jeeps through the fins and canyons of the Sand Flats Recreation Area. That evening, they gathered for a guided breathwork session with coach Marissa Astill.

Astill led the group through a three-part breathing pattern. “Belly, chest, and all out through the mouth,” she instructed. A focused breathing session, she said, can bring strong physical and emotional responses to the surface.

Veterans and first responders are often trained to compartmentalize fear and grief, leaving little room to process those experiences in the moment. Those experiences can remain buried.

For some participants, the breathwork was the most powerful part of the retreat.

“That was a different experience I never have felt or done before,” said Ryan Cook, a Marine Corps veteran. After returning home to St. Louis, he signed up for more sessions. Others agreed it was profound, like being detached from their bodies.

 

The quiet didn’t last.

Monday marked the group’s last full day together. Early that morning, under another clear sky, they drove and hiked back to the rim of a deep canyon. World-renowned highliner and guide Faith Dickey had rigged a top-rope assisted highline across a narrow chasm between two rock fingers, with access from both sides.

The task was simple to describe and difficult to execute: walk across an inch-wide strip of webbing stretched over open space, steadying yourself with handlines above. Participants were clipped in for safety, but missteps still meant dropping below the line and hanging suspended in the air above the canyon.

Dickey demonstrated first, moving with calm control on the line, then offered practical advice: Stay loose. Keep your knees soft. She also spoke directly about fear: Fear is your friend, not your enemy. Be kind to it; it’s trying to keep you safe. Think of it as a passenger on the ship, not the captain – or like a small furry pet you carry in your pocket.

Jennings volunteered to go first.

Harnessed and barefoot, he stepped onto the line with tentative, wobbling strides, leaning too far forward as he tried to advance. He lost his balance and dropped below the webbing, hanging in space. After a pause, he pulled himself back up hand over hand, swung a leg over the line and turned to face forward as the rig swayed beneath him. He managed to stand, then fell again.

This time, he asked for Dickey’s help, and she brought him back to the cliff edge using her belay and haul system.

“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done,” Jennings said afterward. Reflecting on the retreat weeks later, he said, “My strength and resolve failed, where poise would have been the successful thing. That’s how I face things I fear – I just go in feet first like a bull in a china shop.”

When that approach didn’t work, he said, the support of the group and Dickey’s coaching made the difference.

“It’s okay to ask for help,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you’re weak.”

The Moab retreat was not their first time facing fear. Most had served in war zones and lost friends – coping strategies that worked there didn’t always translate home.

Cook said that during deployment, he and the Marines around him relied on deliberate detachment to function – pretending the worst had already happened, treating the present as unreal.

“If you think you’re already dead, you have nothing to worry about,” Cook said.

That mindset helped him get through deployment, but it lingered after he returned home. At the retreat, Cook recognized the same mental reflex surfacing again at the canyon’s edge. This time, he noticed it for what it was and realized he no longer wanted to rely on it.

Cook left the retreat with renewed confidence, having shown himself that he still had “the guts to push myself physically and mentally.” Others described similar changes.

For some, the shift showed up in small ways, reframing everyday anxieties like speaking up at work. For Nathan Heidbreder, it prompted a larger change – seeking a new job.

“I needed to take a risk and move on with my life,” he said. “The retreat helped me be comfortable taking that risk.”

Some participants had skydived before, but few had experienced BASE jumping. David Bartelt, a Marine Corps veteran from Illinois, had never done either before attending 22 Jumps. Weeks after the retreat, Bartelt said he felt more relaxed, not always compelled to be busy.

“Up until the retreat, I was wound up tight,” Bartelt said. “And now I’m not.”

VanOosten said one appeal of these sports lies in how completely they pull you into the present.

“You’re in the moment when you’re falling out of the plane or doing the BASE jump,” he said.

That focus, he realized, doesn’t have to end there.

“I thought to myself, you can do that with everyday stuff. And you should. Like when my 6-year-old and I are coloring a picture, slow down and enjoy what you have and where you’re at.”

Several echoed a comment Rinehart made after the retreat: “People tell me I look happier, I sound happier, I look and sound more like myself.”

 

Beyond the jumps and highlines, every participant pointed to the same draw: camaraderie they once knew in the military and had struggled to find since.

Jennings reached for a familiar phrase – “blood is thicker than water” – but invoked the expanded version: “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the waters of the womb.”

“It means those who stand next to us are more important than family,” he said. “Those who shed blood next to us, those who face fear next to us and stand next to us under challenges.”

Others echoed that sentiment. Heidbreder said the most striking part of the weekend was the level of support – how consistently people worked to help one another, often without being asked. He hadn’t seen that kind of atmosphere since his time in the military.

Heidbreder recognized in BASE jumpers an ethos of confidence built on tested skill, and that’s one of the reasons he plans to pursue the sport himself. Others from the retreat plan to jump again or earn skydive certifications.

The group members, most of them strangers before the retreat, have kept in touch. All expressed deep gratitude for the experience and applauded researchers studying adventure sports as therapy.

“With the work they’re doing there,” Jennings said, “one day maybe they’ll be able to rename it to 21 Jumps or 18 Jumps. I’d much rather people be jumping off cliffs to choose life than jumping off cliffs to choose death.”