With three quick flights from Turkey, I managed to land myself in Lebanon. It was a new country for me and the second time I would be collaborating with Red Bull and the Clean Cliffs Project.
The Red Bull Cliff Diving competition was being held in Beirut for the first time ever with the athletes jumping off the Pigeon Rocks at Raouche. It’s an iconic site with two huge rock formation set 100m out from the shores of the bustling Beirut.
I was on board to team up with Ellie and Owen from Clean Cliffs Project. The pair of divers started the clean-up movement to encourage adventurers and cliff jumpers to clean-up trash at the locations they were enjoying and to focus on their plastic-consumption habits. We had an awesome collaboration in the Philippines at the last RedBull event and you can watch the full vlog here.
We began the week by heading out on a few adventures with local Instagrammers to some waterfalls and caves and coastal cliff jumps. At each spot along the way, we showcased these awesome Lebanon natural attractions as well as the huge amounts of trash we found at each spot!
I created a vlog at Yahchouch, one of the spots we visited. Think amazing waterfalls, swimming spots and … piles of trash.
The next call of duty was our big cleanup at Raouche with Live Love Beirut, Clean Cliffs Project, and Adventure Bag Crew in a great team effort. More than fifty locals came to help the cause and we collected hundreds of pounds of trash over the course of three very hot hours in the sun. Thanks to everyone who came out.
The RedBull divers then got serious and the competition was on. Over two days each diver completed three dives in front of the local Lebanon crowds down at the popular Raouche precinct. Watching on was incredible and the athleticism and courage from the divers always blow my mind.
It was an amazing week and I extend a huge thanks to Ellie and Owen from Clean Cliffs Crew and also to RedBull. They don’t have to support environmental movements. They don’t need to care but they are deciding to and for that, I thank them and look forward to future projects where RedBull uses there power, platform, finances, and determination to help us improve our environment.
Here are my favorite snaps from the week while following around this very adventurous bunch of athletes.
