Tim Howell – Exit Point: Leaping from the World’s Highest Peaks

What does it really take to stand on the edge of a cliff, commit your life to fabric and physics, and step off into the void? A look into one of the world’s most extreme disciplines. Moving far beyond the adrenaline-fueled headlines, this high-stakes lecture breaks down the precise engineering, psychological control, and brutal trade-offs required to execute wingsuit BASE jumps in the world’s most unforgiving environments. 

• Experience a hands-on teardown of high-altitude flight gear. Discover how ram-air pressurization transforms a suit into an airfoil, how deployment systems work under extreme pressure, and what physically goes into planning a jump where there is zero margin for error.

• Spanning a fourteen-year career, these raw and unfiltered stories reveal the human side of extreme risk—from an engagement proposal that went spectacularly wrong to the sobering, stark reality of tragedy on Aconcagua.

• Everything builds toward the ultimate alpine target: Lhotse, the 4th highest mountain on Earth. Drawing on hard-won lessons from two previous attempts in the death zone, this presentation reveals what it takes to bounce back from failure, refine a strategy at 8,000 meters, and prepare for the ultimate descent.

My background was forged in high-stakes environments—first as a 19-year-old wildlife ranger guiding clients among South Africa’s Big 5, and later as a Royal Marines Commando and Mountain Leader on various deployments around the world.

That foundation enabled me to push the boundaries of my mountaineering and wingsuit BASE jumping, pioneering world firsts in a discipline still on the fringe of exploration. I was the first British person to ski BASE jump, the first to wingsuit BASE jump off Aconcagua (the highest mountain outside the Himalayas), and the first to log inaugural jumps in Kenya, Vietnam, Angola, and the UK. 

In August 2022, I achieved a decade long goal by becoming the first person in the world to climb and BASE jump all six Great North Faces of the Alps, including the Eiger and the Matterhorn. Now I am taking that vision to the High Himalaya, targeting the highest wingsuit exit point on Earth.