Skydive Monterey Bay exclusively offers 18,000 foot ocean-view skydives, the world’s highest jumps, over beautiful Monterey Bay. The longest freefalls, award-winning scenery, and the closest beach jumps in California make for a primo first-jump experience.
An 18,000 foot first jump is the unicorn of skydiving experiences. This is the Mt Everest of freefalls, the Iditarod of parachuting, the Coachella of extreme adventures. Considering only a handful of skydiving centers in the world jump at this high of an altitude (none as close to the beach and ocean as Skydive Monterey Bay), this is the very best first skydiving experience.
Your first jump is a tandem skydive. Our tandem instructor team will brief you on the entire tandem skydiving process. The short version is you’ll be attached to your instructor during the entire skydive enabling you to participate and enjoy skydiving while having a professional, highly experienced, and certified instructor at the helm. Our instructors are rated by the United States Parachuting Association and other national skydiving regulatory bodies.
At 18,000 feet above the ground, you’ll exit the aircraft with your instructor. For one and a half minutes, you will experience zero gravity weightlessness, free from the limitations of everyday life. Despite falling at 120 mph, for a glorious 90 seconds you will experience weightlessness, and an incredible surge of dopamine and other blissful neurochemicals.
Your instructor will open the parachute at a predetermined altitude. Most jumpers find this to be a zen, scenic and very enjoyable part of the jump. Provided conditions allow, we usually allow the students to fly the parachute.
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An 18,000 foot skydive is almost double the freefall time and distance than what’s offered at 90% of all the skydiving centers in the United States.
Our Freefall
Vs. Most
Tandem Skydives
Skydive Monterey Bay jumps closer to the ocean than any other skydiving center in California.
Closest California
Ocean Skydive
Less than 1% of the skydiving centers in the country offer an every day 18,000 foot skydive.
Skydiving centers
that offer
18,000 Feet Jumps
on Every Flight
A standard skydive typically offers about 50-60 seconds of freefall.
Seconds
120 mph freefall.
Not sure what skydive package and jump altitude to choose?
Six reasons to consider choosing the 18,000 foot, world’s highest skydive option.
As far as intense and high adrenaline experiences go, this is nirvana. An 18,000 foot skydive extends freefall time up to 90 seconds. That’s 25% more freefall than our 15,000 foot skydive; 60% more freefall of a standard 13,000-foot skydive in California!
In states of high adventure, adrenaline, dopamine, and serotonin provide that euphoric “buzz” that first-time skydivers seek. During the world’s highest skydive, your brain will pump out almost double the levels of blissful, feel-good neurochemicals throughout the body.
You’ll also have a couple more minutes in-flight to enjoy the incredible views, as well as a additional video and pictures of your skydive.
Seconds sometimes matter. There is no pause or replay button once you jump from an airplane the first time. Everything is temporary but let’s make your first skydive just a little less so.
This is the world’s highest first skydive.
Only about 1% of skydiving centers around the world offer first jump, 18,000 foot tandem skydives. We are only the California skydiving center that flies to 18,000 feet during all our skydives.
You can go anywhere else to do a lower altitude skydive but Skydive Monterey Bay is the only skydiving center in California that does high altitude jumps with ocean views on every flight.
You only live once (and you may only do one skydive) so try the premier skydiving experience.
If you’re a go big, send it, once in a lifetime, bragging rights, bucket list personality type, then there is no better first-time skydive option.
For the relentless adventurer, moments collector and thrill-seeker, this is the skydiving experience for you.
Selecting an 18,000 foot jump provides access to special VIP packages.
Our VIP package with personalized one-on-one training, a private tour of the skydiving facilities, priority boarding, and a special skydiving gift. This package is only available with an 18,000 foot jump.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but an 18,000 foot skydive often increases comfortable level and reduces nervousness compared to a lower altitude skydive.
The effect of “ground rush” only happens at significantly lower altitudes. Even above 10,000 feet it’s difficult for an untrained eye to distinguish significant altitude variances. High altitude jumps provide an opportunity to get comfortable with freefall sensations without the perception that you’re getting closer to the ground.
When you first exit the airplane, it is common to experience sensory overload. This is when your senses provide more information than your brain can process. Sometimes first-time jumpers hit peak nervousness or notice hazy recall during the first few seconds the jump. On a lower altitude jump, these first few seconds are a much larger part of the overall experience.
A jump from the highest altitude possible gives you the most amount of relaxed, and enjoyable time during the experience.
The thrill and excitement of freefall is what attracts so many people to try skydiving. Our jump options and pricing encourage first-time jumpers to experience as much freefall as possible.
Our 18,000 foot jump is the best value skydive near San Francisco! We offer the best price on a high altitude skydives in California. If you find a better advertised price for an 18,000 foot skydive, we will match that price.
A standard altitude skydive in California costs between $230-250 per person. For about 10% more, you can get upwards to 70% more freefall (plus the iconic ocean views of Monterey).
You’re wondering if I’m already doing a higher than normal skydive from 15,000 feet, does it really make sense to upgrade to the 18,000 foot skydive?
Yes, it really does. Skydiving is a high intense but short-duration experience. Freefall even more so. This type of experience happens in a small sample size. For example, a freefall from 10,000 feet is only about 30 seconds, while a freefall from 18,000 feet is about 90 seconds. Since the freefall experience is compressed into a highly intense, small sample size, any increase is a relatively large change. The world’s highest skydive enables you to freefall for 3 times longer!
High-intensity or adrenalin-fueled activities literally change your perception of time. This is why moments of pain feel longer, and moments of pleasure feel briefer. Ultimately, neurological responses alter your sense of time and your perception of the length of the skydive. A 10,000-foot skydive might feel like the blink of an eye; a 15000-foot jump provides enough time to assimilate the sensations; an 18,000 foot jump provides the opportunity to relax and fully enjoy and absorb the experience.
Ultimately time is all we have, yet we often don’t have enough of the right kind. The most cherished of time in life usually distills down to just a few moments. So, shouldn’t we capture, pursue, hold on, and extend those moments at every opportunity?
Skydiving is truly is a case where more is more.
It is a bit of a paradox.
The short answer is that your thoughts and preconceptions, and your response to those, create those intense feelings. But the actual sensations experienced from skydiving are very zen-like.
People typically try skydiving because they are seeking thrills, chasing adventure, or trying new sensory experiences. Venturing beyond comfort zones into perceived dangerous or scary scenarios activates our brain to create a self-protection response. These all stem from our ideas, thoughts, preconceptions, and projections of what happens, or could happen, while skydiving. Essentially our brain is a real “Negative Nancy”, attempting to convince us not to proceed. When we push forward past those feelings, the brain releases a series of divine nuerochemicals to help prepare the body to face the challenge.
During freefall, you’ll experience complete zero-gravity, weightlessness. While gravity often carries descriptors such as heaviness and restraint, zero-gravity is the absence of those. It provides a sense of floating, lightness, freedom, and the ability to maneuver with very low levels of effort. These sensations are essentially only available to skydivers and astronauts.
We all intuitively know that being in nature is calming and zen-like. Eliminating white noise, distractions, and expectations helps reset our brains. We unplug and reboot, and ultimately derive positive physical benefits such as increased calm, balance, and pleasant feelings. Now stack on the benefits of exploring a brand-new natural wonder in an otherworldly type of experience. For the first time ever, you’ll be touching and playing in the sky outside of a vehicle. With the Monterey Bay beaches perched next to our landing area and nestled on the edges of the St Lucia mountain range, you’ll be surrounded by absolute beauty in all directions. In that moment, nothing else matters. The world seems small; all problems fade away; and that in and of itself, is very zen-like.
Other than possibly becoming addicting to skydiving, quitting your job, and selling all your possessions to do more skydives, not really.
For a few reasons, Skydive Monterey Bay is one of only a few skydiving centers in the country that can offer the world’s highest skydives every day. Most of the other centers that advertise 18,000 foot jumps only do them occasionally because, amongst other reasons, they do not have a powerful enough aircraft. They require more complex oxygen systems to be installed in their airplanes to prevent the effects of hypoxia. This is a condition caused by lower levels of oxygen in the tissues, sometimes resulting in disorientation, sweating, changes in skin tone and breathing patterns. It occurs when we spent a prolonged amount of time at higher altitudes and is typically more common with mountaineers.
The short version is that with our aircraft hypoxia is not an issue. While there is no definitive formula, typically in skydiving minor and early symptoms begin after spending about 10 minutes above 10,000 feet. Our aircraft is so fast that we only spend a few minutes above 10,000 feet. In fact, our entire flight is usually less than 10 minutes. For additional safety, our pilot breathes oxygen, and supplemental oxygen is available onboard for passengers.
Occasionally, people do experience some minor ear discomfort due to the variant changes in altitude pressure. Typically, only people that are highly sensitive to pressure fluctuations, about 10% of jumpers, might feel some minor discomfort but not significant enough to warrant bypassing the experience. There are various techniques to eliminate or reduce pressure build-up if you feel you might be susceptible. Just let us know when you arrive if you have any related concerns.
Of course, you should! There are many reasons to do the world’s highest skydive on your first jump but ultimately the most important is that it is an incredibly enjoyable experience that you want to extend for as long as possible.
Skydiving by its nature is a highly intense sensory experience condensed into a short time interval. With most skydiving centers offering jumps between just 10,000 to 13,000 feet, any incremental jump altitude adds significantly to the experience. Jumping from 18,000 feet provides two and a half times more freefall than a skydive from 10,000 feet. That additional time completely changes the experience; providing more opportunity to overcome sensory overload and truly relax and fully immerse and enjoy the experience.
In addition to Skydive Monterey Bay and our sister skydiving center, Skydive Space Center, there are only a handful of other skydive centers in the entire country that offer 18,000 foot skydives every day. Operating costs and aviation restrictions make it almost impossible for most skydiving centers to jump from such a high altitude.
Some skydive centers say that they offer 18,000 foot skydives, and they technically do, but we jump from that altitude every day on almost every flight. We jump 300+ days a year and more than 98% of our flights go to 18,000 feet.
