Analyzing Skier Noah Gaffney's Proclivity for Cliff Diving

Have you ever wondered what makes someone want to jump off of a 50-foot-plus cliff? Have you ever wondered why you probably don't have that urge?

Professional skier Noah Gaffney spends his winters jumping off cliffs and skiing away on powder. He spends his summers jumping off cliffs into crystalline waters a long ways below. Sometimes, he throws a trick in there, like in the clip below.

Noah Gaffney Cliff Diving #1

So, why do certain people feel so drawn to these activities? I am not drawn to cliff jumping in any season. I have dabbled in gorge jumping, which looks a bit like Gaffney's clip, above, but scaled down about 60 percent. It would not fill me with any sort of joy to take on a jump that big.

I do, however, consider myself adventurous. I spent six months (mostly) solo traveling through Indonesia. I surf in sharky spots. I eat raw fish in foreign countries, and, for the most part, any type of food on the menu. In other words: I enjoy seeking new experiences, but I am not necessarily drawn to extremely intense, physical experiences such as the one shown by Gaffney, above.

The other question here is: can we predict who will be drawn to these activities? Is there a certain makeup or prototype of individual who always partakes in these adrenaline-filled activities, or is it unable to be categorized? To figure this out, I called Dr. Ken Carter, who has a PhD in clinical psychology and is a professor at Oxford College, part of Emory University, near Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Ken Carter's interest in this subject stems from being a clinical psychologist. He explained, "I researched different personalities and how they work. I have always been fascinated in how different people can experience the same thing but get something very different out of that."

He has also written several books, including Psychopathology: Understanding Psychological Disorders, Learn Psychology, and, most importantly for the discussion at hand, Buzz!: Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies. 

Dr. Carter explained that finding the thrill-seeker is not as simple as observing people or chatting with them in passing. "There are really four different pieces of it. The first two components give me an idea of the kinds of things you might do for sensation seeking. The last two give me an idea of how much trouble you might get yourself into with your sensation seeking."

"The first two are thrill and adventure seeking. That looks like pursuing things that are very physical and energetic. Maybe it's roller coasters." Or, maybe, it's cliff jumping.

For Noah Gaffney, this rings true. Gaffney explains, "my main motivation [for cliff jumping] is definitely thrill seeking, but it’s also good off season training. Cliff jumping reinforces my air awareness needed for skiing." Gaffney jumping off a 72-foot cliff, below.

Noah Gaffney Cliff Diving #2

Dr. Carter explained that there is experience seeking, "which is more sensations, thinking of the mind and of the senses. These are people who like unusual foods or travel or meeting unusual people. They're exploring the world and sensations in that way."

In other words: thrill seeking and experience seeking are different. Just because someone enjoys traveling and meeting new people does not mean they are more likely to try skydiving, and vice versa. Importantly, though, it also does not mean they are less likely to try skydiving. The two are not correlated.

When asked if he enjoys trying strange or new foods, Gaffney said, "I’m open to trying new foods, although there are some things I just can’t get into, like fish and mushrooms." It's not fish or mushrooms, so it's fair game for Gaffney.

One may assume that someone who can jump from a high height would have no hangup about fish or mushrooms, but this just further exemplifies Dr. Ken Carter's findings that thrill seeking and experience seeking are not related.

Besides those key differences, the last two are boredom susceptibility, or how easy it is for one to get bored and how irritating you get when you get bored, and then disinhibition, which is one's ability to look before you leap. In Dr. Ken Carter's words, "are you going to plan a lot or just going to jump in and do something?"

Furthermore, Dr. Carter clarified that professional athletes may be easily bored but actually plan extensively before doing things. For example, Matthias Giraud waited years to attempt a ski BASE jump he had been eyeing.

While professional athletes may look like they get bored easily, they may actually tolerate boredom quite well. Park skiers, for example, have to practice for years on end to hit 720s, which then make those skiers look like daredevils.

Dr. Carter says, "a lot of practice that you have to do in order to be really good at those events requires doing the same kinds of things over and over and over again. It may look like [these athletes] get bored easily, but they might not."

So, for everyone viewing Noah's countless Instagram videos of himself throwing himself off tall cliffs and backflipping into the water, it may appear that Noah is easily bored, but in reality, he likely had to practice a lot, repetitively, to get to the point of being able to film that video.

Gaffney explained that this lack of disinhibition is true in his case, making it separate from thrill seeking. Although Gaffney is seeking a thrill, he is not disinhibited. When he cliff jumps, he likes to make it as safe as it can possibly be. He understands the risk, but danger isn't necessarily the appeal of the jump. The risk of something going wrong is minimized. 

Gaffney said, "we always have someone in the water in case a person lands wrong and we always check the depth of the water. I also don’t like to do gaps, I prefer to just focus on the trick I’m doing and not try to clear any rock. Cliff jumping is definitely risky, but there are ways to be smart about it and minimize all the unnecessary risks."

Noah Gaffney Cliff Diving #3

Besides sensation seeking as a personality type, there are chemical makeups that can shed light on people's sensation seeking likelihood. Specifically, the presence of cortisol and dopamine is another key factor in determining not just who will make a cliff jump, but who will enjoy making the cliff jump.

Dr. Carter explained, "cortisol essentially helps our body to organize stress. People call it a fight or flight response, but sometimes you end up breathing when you're in those stressful situations as well."

"Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that's associated with pleasure. What we found is that people that are high sensation seekers, when they are in those chaotic, energetic environments, whether they're alpine skiing or slack lining, have lower amounts of cortisol than you might expect, and higher amounts of dopamine. They're not very stressed out and they're feeling more pleasure."

"For the high sensation figures, this is a really nice combination of chemicals because a lot of them tell me that it feels like time slows down and they can figure out what they're supposed to do."

Gaffney echoed this sentiment, saying before the jump he may feel nervous, but the sense of achievement makes it worthwhile. He said, "when I’m cliff jumping, I am always nervous on top of a jump 50ft and above, but when I lace my trick and entry I get a rush of excitement that makes it all worth it." Perhaps time slows down when Noah is in the air.

Lastly, Dr. Carter exposed that experience is a large component of sensation seeking as well. "With an early exposure to these interesting things, how their family or parents react to those environments can be an important factor."

The way parents raise their children to behave around rarer situations greatly affects the way children grow up to approach those situations. For example, seeing extreme skiing as something to pursue instead of sticking to groomers. Dr. Carter said, "having that experience when you're young, of trying things and not seeing unusual things as dangerous."

Dr. Carter explained, "if you grew up in a family where there are stories of an adventurous uncle or aunt or father, then even if you weren't there seeing it, you might think to yourself, 'this is the kind of thing we do.'"

In Noah Gaffney's case, the connection is obvious. His father, iconic, extreme skier Dr. Robb Gaffney, began taking Noah to go cliff jumping when Noah was 13. Noah said, "my Dad and I would go to a special lake in Desolation Wilderness and work our way up from 5 to 50 feet." Noah Gaffney, cliff jumping with his dad at 13 years old, below.

The question of predicting someone's personality or habits, perhaps, may never be 100 percent answered by anyone except the individual doing the activity, and, occasionally, clinical psychologists. For us everyday folks casually chatting people up, it would be incredibly difficult to predict whether they are a thrill seeker or not without hearing about their patterns of behavior and personality on an intimate basis.

However, it is pretty clear that with Dr. Ken Carter's intel and the psychological research surrounding these behaviors, Noah Gaffney can be classified a high sensation-seeker.

However, Noah swears he doesn't get bored easily. "I wouldn’t say I get bored easily, but I always feel the need to do some athletic activity during the day otherwise it feels like I wasted my time."  Perhaps one would not predict this answer.

At any rate, spending every day doing something athletic is a high bar for time well spent in the summer, but who better to set the bar high than Noah Gaffney.

Related: Mammoth Mountain to Use Old Chairlift Towers as Terrain Park Features

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