Scouting the site, evaluating the landing area, sorting out the permissions. Most of the work happens before anyone travels.
The best photo from our Canyonlands retreat isn’t a freefall shot.
It’s a handful of jumpers in the desert at the end of the day. Low sun, long shadows, canopies bundled in their arms, walking back across a landing area most people only ever see from the road. Nobody is posing. They’re just heading back to pack.
What the photo doesn’t show is how much of that retreat happened long before anyone got there.
A MyDive retreat is a multi-day skydiving trip built around a place worth traveling to. MyDive brings the aircraft, and the group stays together at or near where they land, with lodging and meals arranged. It isn’t a visit to another dropzone. It’s a jump operation built at a location that doesn’t have one.
That last part is the whole job. Here’s how it comes together.
Every MyDive jump starts with somewhere worth landing and the same few questions: who owns the ground, how do you get to it, and can you put an airplane over it. We’ve written about that part on its own. (Landing somewhere that isn’t a dropzone →)
A retreat adds one more, and it’s the one that kills most ideas: can the whole group live there for a weekend?
A landing area you can jump into once is a private skydive. For a retreat you need somewhere to sleep within reach of it, somewhere to eat, and somewhere to sit when the wind picks up. You also need a way to move people and gear between the airport and the landing area all weekend. Retreats cap at 15 jumpers, and that number is set as much by what a place can hold as by what the airplane can fly.
Before a place goes on the calendar, somebody walks it.
Satellite photos say a place looks open. They don’t tell you about the soft spot in the middle, the fence line, the power line on the approach or how the wind comes around the rocks in the afternoon. So sites get scoped in advance, in person. Once a retreat is running, Ben Dickerson, who runs MyDive’s ground operations, reads the landing area again before every load.
Permissions, permits and operational approvals are all sorted before anyone books a flight. On private land that means the landowner. Elsewhere it can mean permits and coordination with land managers and local operators. None of it is visible on the weekend, and that’s the point. You show up and the jumping already works.
This is where a retreat stops looking like a jump trip and starts looking like a weekend you’d want to be on.
At Canyonlands the group lands at a private glampground with its own landing area. The stay is two nights in a glamping tent, and a private chef cooks the meals, so nobody spends a weather window hunting for lunch. Ground transportation between the airport and the landing area is part of the plan from day one.
Meanwhile the Red Rocket flies in, gets positioned at the nearest airport that makes sense, and becomes the group’s airplane for the weekend. (Meet the Red Rocket →)
Every retreat opens with a briefing specific to that place: the landing area, local hazards and how the operation runs there. A place you’ve never jumped has its own outs, its own wind and its own ways to catch you out. This is where you hear about them from the people who walked it.
Then the first five jumpers climb into a red cabin, and the rest start getting kitted up. From there the day belongs to the weather. (How the loads work →)
Some places earn a second trip, and Canyonlands is one of them. This October is a return: October 16–18, 2026. The work doesn’t vanish the second time, but a lot of the questions already have answers. Everyone who was there the first time knows exactly where the sun sets on that landing area.
What is a skydiving retreat?
A multi-day skydiving trip to a destination, with the aircraft, lodging, meals and ground logistics arranged so the group can jump as much as conditions allow.
Is a MyDive retreat at a dropzone?
No. MyDive brings the Red Rocket and builds the jump operation at the location itself.
How big is the group?
Retreats are capped at 15 jumpers. A typical group is around ten.
Who can go on a MyDive retreat?
Retreats are for licensed skydivers. Each retreat page lists its exact license and experience requirements.
What’s included?
It varies by retreat. Canyonlands includes jumping from 17,500 ft MSL — roughly 12,500 ft above the ground at that field elevation — a private landing area at the glamp site, two nights in a glamping tent and chef-prepared meals.