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Warning; this post is in no way intended to diminish how dangerous this sport is or to be disrespectful to our fallen brothers. I am merely exercising a curiousity I have been dabbling with the last few months.

Is anybody else sometimes surprised by how few people actually die in this sport, given how close we approach death even on a perfectly executed jump?

John's recent incident and the comments from other jumpers on his jumping skills got me to post this question, but there must be more jumpers like him out there. I'll go even further and admit that I'm surprised how few fatal accidents there are at Bridge Day. Heck, even my own jump was by all standards a suicidal attempt at an aerial and I'm really wondering what causes pilotchutes and parachutes to work so well...

I'm not trying to be morbid here. I'm certainly not arguing that I think more people should die in this sport. On the contrary, I'm happy there are relatively so few incidents!

However, if you stop and think for a second and realize that every time your foot leaves the edge it's a piece of circular ZP fabric attached to a canopy by a piece of webbing that saves your life. Call me crazy, but I think it's un-fucking-believable it works so well.

But as I've said before on these forums, I'm still amazed planes can fly and boats don't sink.

For now, I'm just gonna be really happy we've managed to make gear so bullet- and idiot-proof. It it has become pretty hard to create a total. It probably also helps that the majority of us is still scared shitless on every jump, regardless of how experienced we are, meaning we always have a healthy dose of paranoia to keep checking our gear over and over again.

It's a parachute. It wants to open!!!

I'll admit I'm also a little surprised how well our gear works. I hear so often how bad it is to go head low on jumps but let me tell you, I think I've been head first (freeflyin' ) during deployment on about half of all my jumps! Worst I've had was several line twists, just this past BD '05.

Jesus dude, I understand your situation and jumping style, and in no way do i want to be offensive. that said. Line twists and off headin openings are pretty F'n bad jumping off a cliff.

but i agree with Jaap, our little magic backpacks are pretty warm fuzzy to me.


But i have said before:
"Its amazing what we can get away with in this sport, but its incredible what little of a mistake can kill you so quickly"

cheers

You're right and those line twists scared the crap out of me. I just meant (which I forgot to state) that's the only problem I've had and I only had it that once. Once out of several head down openings. I'm surprised.

Yes, Jaap, you managed to voice that in an effective way and it's something we first noticed at early Bridge Days when the skill level and gear were nothing like today. We watched every mistake that's possible to make being done over and over, and people were getting away with it. Blown launches and out of control deployments? No problem . . . it made us think of the old saying about drunks and fools.

However, the sobering thought to keep in mind is this: If that was the New River Gorge Building, and not the New River Gorge Bridge, you'd need a mechanical industrial sized squeegee to scrape people off. Also, if there were no river the injury rate would skyrocket.

I remember one 1980s Bridge Day and being in a hotel room with the core of the hard core in BASE jumping, all the big guns of the time are there, and we are talking about this very thing. We wondered just how long we were going to keep getting away with it year after year. We talked about everything from making the event invitational only, to mandatory gear choices, to giving actual first BASE jump courses.

The year after Steve G. went in with a towed pilot chute we thought our luck was about to run out. The next year we wondered who was it going to be? Moe Viletto came back from walking down the long line of waiting jumpers and told me, "I saw him. He's about an hour away from launching, his helmet is cinched down tight, and he's about to bust a vein."

But it never came to pass and we realized we made a fundamental mistake about the future of BASE jumping. Sure, we knew we would be over run when a new generation without preconceived notions concerning BASE finally found us, but we thought a high level of carnage would also follow that wave. And it didn’t.

Of course ninety dead since 1981 is nothing to sneeze at, especially since so many are our friends. But the reality is what Jaap says it is. Sure, you're going to get hurt, and probably going to get hurt bad, but the chances of dying are nowhere near what seems logical.

But here's a warning. That's the state of things as they are now. Is the wave of new jumpers here now, or are we just seeing the tip of the iceberg? Do we have just one John Agnos per one thousand BASE jumpers and what will happen if someday in the future when have ten, or fifty or a hundred?

One side of me wants to take some credit for the current state of the sport rather than chalking it up to pure serendipity. I think we, all of us, did this, all of us who keep and pass on the history, all of us who build good gear, all of us who teach the sport by mentoring one jumper at a time. But, I also see how easy we could lose control of the whole bleeping thing.

How is that skydiving, which is way more regulated, seems more out of control to me than BASE jumping does? I think the answer is we aren't driven solely by profit and we use peer pressure more effectively. But there's something more to it than that. People drawn to BASE are a different breed of cat. I say this after knowing thousands of BASE jumpers; they are intelligent and curious without being overly reckless. Sure, we talk a good game, but even the most overzealous of us can be found off to the side looking over the gear for 10th time in as many minutes.

I stood in the lobby of the Holiday Inn for a few moments at Bridge Day, sort of off by myself, just watching people from all over the world laughing and packing and just being BASE jumpers, so cool and so competent. Bill Legg walked over and caught me smiling. "What's up," he asked, "what are you smiling about?" And while I think he expected me to say something more sinister or at least more smart ass, I looked him in the eye and said, "I'm just so proud of these people."

So yeah Jaap, I think we are doing all right . . .

NickD
BASE 194

 

"How is that skydiving, which is way more regulated, seems more out of control to me than BASE jumping does?"

I agree...
and i think it may be because with learning BASE, we dont have a 'For Hire" AFF instructor standing on the exit point with us, checking our gear doing the count, telling us everything is going to be just fine.
Instead we have a mentor-Maybe- and he spent the last 2 days telling us we are probably going to die doing this. and thats the only way we should learn.

And we jump anyway. Nicely put.

I frequently gear up at the exit point thinking, "What the hell is wrong with us?"

Lou

You can see in the video that I don't have the apex of the PC, either. I've just kind of got it somewhere between the apex and perimeter. It's really hard to get the thing straight in your hand in freefall (check out the video of me and Mark R. doing it at GoFast!, and you can see me fumble around with it for about 2 seconds trying to get it lined up).

Oh, and it's Mark, not Mike.

as said before
its a parachute its built to crack open and save our lives,on the other hand sliders are made to slow down this process,thats why slider up jumps are most dangerus

Oh and anyone who saw me pack will probaly say that aslong i survive the rest of you should have a good chance aswell(hope people dont take up my black humor too bad)

I think there is a pretty simple explanation to the "black magic" you all know very well - most of the time, the progression in base is controlled through a mentor. The basic fabric of the sport is the mentor based progression and not many get around that progression. Its a strange sport in this sense, most sports can be approached without such a fence to climb - and without someone to help you get on top of it. I think that lends to the people and history that comes with base. It is almost one of the few sports left where historical precedence still drive the way things occur in the sport and I for one am very impressed by that - not to mention the folks that keep the flame alive.

Thanks for your reply Nick; another great post as usual. I'm glad to see other BASE jumpers have wondered about the same issue. I was beginning to wonder if I was some crazy morbid weirdo.

Of course I might very well still be...

Several people have, in this and other posts, brought up the fact that our sport is one where mentoring is the dominant style of education. I just wanted to point out how much I believe this is what makes BASE such a great sport. Our sport acts much like a guild in the middle-ages, complete with apprenticeships and the obstacle of entry. While beginning jumpers occasionaly find this barrier hard to overcome, I have yet to meet a BASE jumper who complains about his progression in hindsight.

The fact that we are all a bunch of passionate people helping each other out where we can should not be underestimated and is something I have never seen in any other sport.

Call it romance if you will; I call it brother and sisterhood.

My theory is that parachutes actually don't work.

I believe that we're just in a weird statistical anomoly. Parachutes actually only "work" about one time in 5,700,000. Everytime a parachute opens, it's really just a freak accident.

As with all statistics, there are periods where the sample does not accurately represent the whole. That's now. Parachutes just appear to work because of the anomoly.

One day. we're going to wake up and the anomoly will be at its end. Then we're all gonna go in. One at a time. I wonder how long it'll take us to catch on?

Hahahaha, I love it! Mind if I nugget (yep, it's a verb now) you on this one?


The comedy herein feels very Hitchhiker Guide to the Galaxy-ish. A book which I greatly enjoyed, as an aside.

Thanks for making me laugh Chad! Now get back to your usual business of taking the winds where you go, bringing heat to objects, and shutting them down.

Oops...