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After watching Renes' video of him striking the dam in this thread http://www.dropzone.com/...;;page=unread#unread I started to think.

Think about this hypothetical situation.... say you have a 180 and end of hitting the cliff you jumped from, now this jump is somewhat low but not low enough to not get a canopy turned around after a strike but if you do get it around you're faced with this. . The area directly below the base of the cliff is loose small rock that has crumbled down the side of the cliff and broken apart. Down the rest of the talus are large car sized boulders and other nasty hazards extending out further than your canopy could fly after a strike and the subsequent loss of altitude. Assuming you're jumping a vented canopy that won't deflate totally and you have sustained some type of injury that is impairing your flying/thinking (hell assume you had no injuries at all) would you:

A: Turn the canopy around and take your chances with the huge boulders and talus.
B: Continue to slide down the face to try to hit the smaller rocks at the base and possibly get snagged before impact at ground zero.
C: Turn the canopy enough to quite smacking your head and go for a landing parallel with the face.
D: Give up and shit yourself.
E: You answer here....

Rene had an unfortunate incident but it looked like most of his injuries occurred from the initial strike. His actual touchdown might have only broken his foot or ankle. The area he landed in is a bit of a depression and had smaller stones but the area above the depression has larger rocks that could have caused much greater damage. I don't think he could have gotten around and made it to those boulders but it got me thinking of other places and scenarios. Maybe a good PLF at the base can save you from something worse like a boulder strike with more forward speed had you turned it around. I know there are tons of variables that might come into play, I just thought it might be a good topic of discussion.

So what would you do?? Has anyone else thought about this type of scenario?

Jason
570

Rene... glad you're ok after that, it looked horrible I know you'll be back there as soon as you heal up. It's such a beautiful place, I was fortunate enough to make 7 or 8 there in 1999. Heal fast brother.

Whatever it takes.
When you're in a situation,
and you look down,
and you think,
so this is what it's like to go in,
save yourself.
That sound of Rene could very well be the
last sound you ever hear if you can't pull it off.

All good questions to ask while you're at the top looking down with the canopy still on your back.

Post exit? Like I told Johnny Utah...I'd do the same thing as I would do at 1:50 am in a night club...go for the big ones.

 

Not exactly on topic, but I think Rene's video should be shown to anyone thinking about getting into BASE.

If you have the ability and time on the low object to get turned.. then..

C .. that is my final answer..

In fact I witnessed this type of scenereo at the Turkey Boogie this year.
Saturday at where the Unimog Boogie is..

third jumper took if very low with a front flip. throw out of good position. ended up with a cliff strike. got sucked into the LIPS crack. turned out just enough to end up flying with the face and landed at the top of the talus..
LUCKY him he walked away without a scratch..

turning 180 wold have smashed him into the BOULDERS.
riding the wall would have hit way too hard on landing.
It was amazing to watch.

Um...Was that by any chance the one that "walked" away with a break? ...or was there more than one cliff strike that day?
~J

no breaks not even a scratch..

just singing a song...

GOING IN ON A BORROWED RIG.. DO DA.. DO DA..

this was saturday no one else out there

 
I like that song a lot....!
I make a point to "Sing that Song" to everyone I meet, that is

Jumping a Borrowed Rig......Do Da...Do Da..

Just before they Exit.
.

How well did you scout the cliff face? It doesn't take much of a ledge protruding to break an elbow and dislocate a shoulder - or break a leg...

Or a worse case scenario is you get your legs caught up on something and the canopy collapses and falls beneath you, after which you break lose and fall into it...

Seems to me there's just too many 'what-ifs' to make riding down a cliff face a feasible option. You might do it once and get away with the fact you didn't get turned around, but the next one could bite you...

I had a head-on cliff strike last week which ended up with me eating about 150 feet of cliff. My canopy stayed inflated for most of the ride and at the point where it deflated i managed to grab onto a ledge and avoid another ~150 foot fall, probably with no canopy out. On the first strike i flared into the cliff and took the hit with my legs, i had 4 impacts in total (not including grabbing on for dear life), all of them were feet first and trying to "spring" off the face, which i feel contributed to the canopy staying inflated. Here's a couple of interesting grabs from the ride down...

thats some lucky Shite there, what kind if any injuries did you sustain?

WOW! Do we get to see the video of it all?
Did you get a chance to try to stall it and back slide it away from the face?

Lucky?

Did you read the following :


This guy got into a bad situation but then worked his ass off to get out of it. To call that 'lucky' is insulting. A lot of your one line posts are inane, but this one was simply ridiculous. I don't see luck having anything to do with this situation (maybe the guy in question thinks bad luck gave him the off-heading, or maybe it was a dropped shoulder or wind).

Will

I think you misunderstood me. All I meant was that it could have been seriously worse. I give mucho props to him for the adept handling of his situation at the time.

I was also curious if he got hurt.

In no way did I mean to insult him, apologies if I did.


...you need to go to the time out corner

at the beginning of the year I watched my friend have a 180 on a pretty hardcore UK cliff (my jump was perfect if your interested!! hehehehehehhehehe) - although cheesey his dealing with it and bumping off the cliff face all the way down from 300ft to landing was far from "lucky" - it was only his skills, and his canopy, and his being switched on throughout the whole "horrible" affair that meant he landed and stood up and went "fuck, i should not be standing"

in my eyes, skill and canopy type has a lot to do with whether you walk away from such an incident or you friends call the emergency services - sorry I have to agree with Will here, its nothing to do with luck (although sometimes it adds to advantage) and everything to do with skill and the type of equipment you are jumping............

Are you gonna post video?
Glad you're ok, the grabs look pretty gnarly

I had a sore ass for a couple of days .

At one point i stalled the canopy and i thought i might have had a chance to turn it but i'm glad i didn't as i might have ended up in more trouble if i snagged an end cell or something. There was a reasonable amount of height so someone with more canopy skill might have been able to pull it off.

I'm a very inexperienced jumper and it was bad body position compounded by me thinking "$#^&, this body position sucks, i'm gonna have an off heading over there ----->", looking that way made it ten times worse.

I didn't lose it at any time, pretty much the only thing going through my mind was taking the hits with my legs (like sacrificial lambs) and just trying to keep away from the cliff, it wasn't till halfway down that i thought "hey, this is probably keeping my canopy inflated". The upside-down pic i posted before is towards the bottom when i really started picking up speed and i thought i was probably going in if i didn't grab on soon, luckily there was a ledge there to do so.

To contribute to the original question, i did and would again in the future always try and turn the canopy around, there are just too many variables to deal with in an object strike. I mean i could have gotten my leg stuck in a crack trying to push off and it would have been torn clean off. At least in a boulder field, if you're wearing the right equipment you're probably not going to die. My incident could just as easily have been a fatality and i think that's where the luck that leroy mentioned comes in. I've witnessed another object strike that seemed trivial but ended in severe brain trauma.

I think of the whole experience like a house of cards, i walked away with barely a scratch and ya can't really ask for a better outcome than that.

Does this mean you ended up still on the wall face 150' up? How'd you get down?

Yeah i climbed down about 50 feet then there was another 50 feet of unclimbable rock down to a ledge that was accessible from the landing area. I sat there for 3 hours while the guy i was jumping with organised some ropes and stuff to get down with (thanks ben!). I was stuck on the face for 4 1/2 hours all up. It ended up being quite fun, after a failed attempt to throw up a rock with some fishing line tied to it, i had to make a rope out of my clothes which came up short, so i made the rest with some bark from a small shrub on the ledge i was on. How not to BASE jump macguyver style...

Luck had no factor? Of course skill and equipment plays a roll. You haven't been base jumping long have you?

yeah but your all wrong..eww dude,going for the big once at 0150am means you gonna p1ss yourself at nite

about the tread i would no matter (i think) try to turn my canopy away from the object...