Basejumper.com - archive

The terminal jump I was so excited about all week didn't happen. The hike up was inaccessible because of dangerous bears that had been sighted in the area. Aside from the fact that an encounter with a pissed-off grizzly bear doesn't appeal to me, the locals also have a good relationship with the park-rangers that we didn't want to disturb.

Interestingly, this dangerous bear may have saved my life. Instead of doing the terminal jump, we went to a slider-down cliff. There, I managed to completely fuck up my exit, go head down freefly style, feel my canopy extract and touch my legs and then whip me upright in the harness so hard I was seeing stars.

Because I went hand-held, I could pitch as soon as I realized I fucked up my exit. That, combined with what was left in my lucky-bucket is probably what saved me from a disastrous opening and a potential object strike.

Of my previous 48 jumps, 44 were stable exits from bridges and cranes. On those, I have used a style of exiting that is basically just a simple hop. It is very easy, stable and head high. However, it creates minimal distance from the object. On cranes and bridges, this often doesn't matter much.

On the four previous jumps from solid objects, I tried doing exits that pushed away harder from the object. All those were head high and stable, but I suppose I got lucky on those. This fifth time it didn't go as well.

I can only imagine what would have happened if that jump had been from the terminal wall. Stowed, with a 32 inch pilotchute, completely unstable, trying hard not to kill myself. Only because of the bears, did I end up going handheld from a much lower object.

I learned that I am not yet ready for a terminal jump. I'll be going back to the pool to practice exits that launch away from the object. This upcoming weekend I am driving down to the Perrine to practice hard exits as well. Hopefully that'll give me the confidence to try a terminal jump at some point in the future.

Lessons learned:

• Know the difference between simply hopping of, launching hard from the object, and the entire spectrum in between.
  
• If all your previous jumps were stable exits, it doesn't mean your next one is going to be.
  
• Learn jumping hand-held and use it when appropriate. Going hand-held instead of stowed on this jump allowed me to pitch as soon as I realized I was going head-low.
  
• When visiting Crwper and 736, you will end up hiking more than you will jump. They'll come up with lame excuses like bears, private property, the winds being too strong, misjudging the distance from the talus to the ridge and even creeks you have to wade through bare-foot (causing odd girly noises), but in the end you'll make some incredible hikes that more than offset the limited amount of jumping you do. The Canadian Rockies are magnificent!

On another very embarrassing note; I got my tree-E. I misjudged the amount of penetration my canopy has and ended up hugging a tree about five feet above the ground. Thanks to my monkey skills and body-armour, the only damage was two small holes in my canopy and a bruised ego.

Attached is a picture of the jump I went head-low on. It doesn't look too bad, although you can see I'm way too horizontal, being that close to the object still. I hope that 736 can post a still from the video around the time the canopy is lifted from the packtray and scrapes along my leg. That way we can all have a laugh at my terrible exit that fortunately turned out to be a great lesson and nothing more.

A stable exit at the bridge might not work as well when transfered to another object. When you learn to jump the bridge, jump it as if it is a solid object.

Cheers,

Jaap Suter

p.s. Big thanks to the Calgary locals for an amazing weekend.

Awww, Jack. Bears dont eat vegetarians. You were fine. Too bad theres a local ordinance among bears forbidding Rangers from the menu as well...

Stability is more important than exit jump "distance". And the height of the cliff (being terminal) made it moot. Provided you do not have to clear an immediate obstacle beneath your exit, drop off the cliff stable, than use the track to pull you away from the wall, following a protocol of stability, tracking distance, and heading. Expend your energy on remaining facing away from the wall, with level shoulders at pull time, and do your best at tracking away and youre fine. You'll do great, particularly since with your physique you should be over toronto when you pull....

...or maybe you should just stick to writing?

HI Jaap,

I am sorry I was not available to show you the magic of the missionary Man but I heard the evil twins took care of you all the same.

The great thing is that you got a nice picture of yourself to send home to the girlfriend, whereever she lives whenever you get one.

Signs say otherwise... Around these parts, our bears don't put up with any of that hippy crap.

Apologies. Jack, Stay home. Good for the equal opportunity bears. Vegetarians are as fruity as their diet. Just makes them chewier....

We usually carry weapons around here because of locals but they could easily be turned on bears.

If a catholic bear "poped" in the woods, and nobody was around to see it, would it smell as bad? sh'ya...

Good point. Jack, go jump with mike. I am Jacks complete lack of animal protection in the deep woods...

I'm generally of the opinion that stability is more important than maximum "push". On low stuff, the push just doesn't get you that much further away, and on high stuff, the stable exit gets you into the track sooner, so you really can move away.

That said, having a strong push off is always better than having a weak one. So, a combination of a strong, stable launch is the best way to go. That's definitely something to practice in a relatively safe way, like off a bridge. But note that a terminal wall is a relatively safe way to practice this, too, since you have the time to recover stability and track away, so blowing the exit usually isn't going to be a fatal error.

and


Very true, especially on low stuff where it doesn't give you much extra distance anyway. However, one feet more or less could be the difference between hitting the object or not. Considering that a hard stable push outward is possible (I've seen Crwper, 736 and others do it), I might as well practice it. That said, stability is more important for sure, so never compromise stability for distance.


You clearly haven't seen how utterly poor my exit was...

Thanks everybody!

<hands Jaap a dollar>

Here, go buy me a lotto ticket please.

Seriously though, glad you're OK.

Ok, guys, can we try to keep this one reasonably on topic?

It's tought to deal with the threads that mix technical info and banter, because I often can't just remove the banter without catching some of the technical posts.

It'd be great if we could sort of recognize that threads are either "drunk vegetarian hippy" threads or technical threads, and try to keep the two separated.

Thanks!

Jaap, If you find yourself going seriously head down drive your knees forward up to your chest. This will accomplish 3 things:

1) Slow or halt your forward pitch
2) Keep your feet & legs clear of the deploying PC & canopy
3) Earn you extra style points with your buddies.

Also, specifically with that launch point (#5 ?):

It has a long steep scree slope and an open plain almost 3000' below you, it can be difficult to find a reference point other than the horizon to determine your body's launch attitude. I used to suffer bad vertigo from that exit point if I hung out there too long waiting for a lull in the winds.

I've done everything from a total upright to a nose dive from there...so don't be too hard on yourself.

Maybe if you strapped a snowboard onto your feet you would have had better luck!

587 has some great points here. I prefer to use this method on all my terminal jumps because I can be in a track pos very fast, though I don´t use this method for recovery but to keep from going there (head down) in the first place. see attatched, I´m on the right.
take care,
space

my god, you look so tired there on that picture!!
take care space!!

That hike gets me everytime. Dam-age

Hi Jaap,
I went to the pool today and I wonder how you can train exits for basejumping in the pool. As far as I know, the uptimal exit position is about 45 degrees with the ground (is this correct?). If you do this in the pool and mix it with jumping far out, the landing might hurt pretty bad (I know all about it ).
So how do you train in the pool?
Thanks! Thijs

Not quite. It depends on the object and delay. On static-line jumps and PCA's, I exit very head high, pretty much vertical. This minimizes swing in the harness, which means I have more time for proper flight, which in turn helps on low jumps with short canopy flights. There is a good discussion about this on the Blinc forums, right now.

For longer delays, I start falling flatter, from 45 degrees to even horizontal. Partially because it allows you to fall more stable, it also presents the canopy extraction to the cleanest air.

If you watch a lot of videos of terminal jumps, you'll notice that on terminal jumps, some jumpers even exit a little head low to gain speed and get into their track fast. I'm not an expert in this area (nor am I in the others admittedly, but I have at least done some slider-down jumps), so I'm not going to comment on it.

The bottom line is that your angle depends on the object and the delay, that distance is more important than angle, and that stability is the most important thing.


Find a five meter tower. These don't have the springboard bounce of the three meter ones, but aren't too high like the seven meter towers.

Then exit like a proper base exit (I'd say for practice about 45 degrees, head high, eyes on the horizon seems about right) and start falling. Than just as you're about to hit the water, tuck your knees and elbows in, absorbing your impact with your lower legs and lower arms. This has worked really well for me, aside from the odd looks you get from the people around you.

Alternatively, or complementary, you can also practice base exits from the side of the pool. I would, in fact, start out by doing this. Just stand right at the edge of the water, and jump in. I won't hurt too bad. Unless you do it wrong, and then pain is a great teacher.

Two cents...

We've been doing a lot of practice from the 5 metre platform at our pool. One thing I've noticed is that it's not so much about practicing the 45-degree exit. For me, it's about learning that you can do a lot of things and still get yourself into the right position when you hit the water. It's not so much building muscle memory for the exit, as training your mind to believe that you can push out super-hard from the platform and not rotate head-low.

The natural way to launch outward on a jump, I think, is to rotate into an angled position and push off. This will give you rotation on exit, and you'll go head-low. Launching at the pool teaches you to place yourself in a good launch position (instead of rotating into it), launch off, and control your freefall after that.

I watched some video a while back of monkeys jumping between treetops. What was really remarkable to me is that they exited in kind of a classic BASE exit, tucked up their legs, pushed their feet down in front of them, and suddenly they were landing feet-first on the opposite tree. Check it out sometime. This really drives home for me the fact that you can exit without rotation, and introduce an angular offset in freefall. You can practice this at the pool.

Finally, the pool's been awesome for my runners. A few years ago I did some runners from the popular sandstone cliff, and the way I'd do it is to pace it out backward from the edge, and then try to get just the right number of steps in before I got to the edge. I'd get all tensed up as I launched, and this led to some body position issues. Doing runners at the pool (and also at the terminal cliffs with expensive beer), I have learned to stand maybe ten or twenty feet back from the edge, run, and just launch off when I think this is my last step. Works great. I'm not sure I would have the confidence to do this if I didn't do it at the pool first.

Michael

it's superman and his great grandfather on this jump!

think less.
jump more.

like in, mmm... skydiving?

Here's my take. I hope the language isn't too involved that I've lost the plot. Pls reply if anything needs to be made clearer.

The type of jump determines the exit you take.

For a stable, no-tracking delay of 0-4 sec where you wish to deploy in the 45degree head-up attitude then it is desirable to exit with this particular head-high attitude and retain it throughout the freefall to deployment.

However, if it's a transition to a track that you desire (i.e. a slightly head down position) then the more head-high your exit the more of a rotation you must go thru to get to the desired track attitude - and it's the inertia of the upper body as it goes thru this rotation that tends to carry you to a more head-down position than desired.

Therefore if you are intending to transition to a track then you need to lessen the amount of inertia generated by rotating less, which means starting off in an attitude closer to the horizontal (exiting flatter).

With this said, we usually have to go thru this arc anyway as we are usually standing upright on exit and have to transiting to the horizontal anyway. To reduce this I practice an exit where I'm pushing out and slightly up from a crouching position being mindful to have any kinetic energy from my legs be channelled up thru my body in a strait line toward the horizon (slightly higher) and not to let any leg energy contrubute to any rotation.

It all comes with being tuned to the kinetic energy transfer thruout the body and what I call "inertial interplay".

Also, given that we usually rotate a bit further than we want to it's also helpful to anticipate this overrotation and try to arrest it a bit earlier to compensate.

In short - starting head high will end up head-low. Exiting flatter whilst being mindful and present to the rotational forces going on will get you the desired attitude you are after.

Hope that helps and I've made sense.

g.

Beautifully said.

Non rotational exits: Exit and acheive and maintain the desired the plane for it . Or rotate into the plane. Controlling one´s rotation is the key. The knees give control. Boxman sux bigtime, has no place in tracking jumps if you are working for horizontal separation.. This is not my opinion, this is physics..contradict please.
take care,
space

How many jumpable terminal walls does Canada actually have? Also do you guys happen to know anything about the ground launching camp in Calgary?

Cheers,
Brenan

Just in BC, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories there are more walls than a single person could possibly jump in a lifetime. The problem is accessibilty. I think less than five percent of the landmass that makes up those provinces is reachable by roads.

So unless you own a helicopter, this drastically reduces the number of potential walls. I know of two terminal walls that have been jumped, one that is being jumped and at least five that will see attempts within the next two years.

Admittedly, none of them are as high as what northern Norway has to offer. There is still plenty of fun to be had though.


I don't, but try getting in touch with the local dropzone, perhaps they might know more.

Don't forget that the motherlode of terminal jumps is in Canada, way over on the other side of the country.

True, but unfortunately also rather remote and expensive.