Gondola Skip
Gondola Skip is the act of bypassing the death plane near the gondola at the top of Snowy Mountain in order to get down into Volcanic Crater. This is done to skip the long process of taking the gondola down into Volcanic Crater. It was first discovered that Flut Flut could get out of her designated area in Snowy Mountain to explore the rest of the level. While on Flut Flut, it was possible to cover enough horizontal distance to get past the death plane near the gondola and fall down into Volcanic Crater. It was later discovered that Jak could get out of bounds near the gondola in Snowy Mountain and bypass the death plane by falling down into Volcanic Crater.
Tutorial
Technical
When Jak and Flut Flut pass through the Volcanic Crater checkpoint during Gondola Skip, Volcanic Crater is made the active zone. Snowy Mountain is still loaded in, just in the secondary level loader. This causes Flut Flut to "turn invisible" when falling down into Volcanic Crater.
Discovery
Gondola Skip was discovered by blahpy on October 25, 2014.
The on-foot method was discovered by Goofy on April 5, 2020.
Other Notes
Discovery
The original Flut Flut Gondola skip by blahpy likely was not implemented because it didn't save time and/or was difficult, due to the general lack of knowledge about having Flut Flut out of Snowy. (October 25, 2014)
Not long after, blahpy found it was possible to simply jump over the death plane, which was demonstrated in a video by Jazz. (November 19, 2014)
Eventually world record implementation came in both Any% & 100% by thesxysaxman in late 2015 after it was found you could land in the Miner's cave by Ouiji, upping the time save significantly from previous methods. (July 30, 2015 & August 7, 2015)
Goofy first found a much more difficult method for on-foot gondola skip, before quickly replacing it with the current on-foot method. (April 5, 2020)
Community
It became a meme in the Jak speedrunning community that everyone had their own version of a gondola skip tutorial video. Every time someone asked for one, many different versions would be shared. As a joke, Ruh and SixRock began making meme edits of gondoal skip tutorials that would start being linked whenever someone asked for a gondola skip tutorial.