(CNN) “Ever since I was a kid, I had a dream where — if I ran fast enough on the ground — I could lift off and start flying.”
Ellen Brennan, 26 years old, wakes up. She opens her window to look out across the bustling pines of the Chamonix Valley, to the clustered snow-capped peaks of Mont Blanc.
For six years, Ellen has been throwing herself from mountaintops, with only a baggy synthetic suit to stop her from falling like a stone to a certain death.
She checks for clouds. Soon she’ll set off for the “Aiguille du Midi” — a jagged, vertical needle of granite, where she will face her hardest jump yet.
