Basejumper.com - archive

http://www.kgw.com/...rton--267573071.html

SILVERTON, Ore. – A Portland man died in an apparent base-jumping accident Thursday morning, police said.

Around 7 a.m., the friends of 38-year-old BASE jumper Zachary Sommer reported that he never called to let them know he was safe after a planned base jump from a 1000-foot-high tower in Silverton.

When officers arrived at the scene, they found Sommer dead.

Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Cooper, an experienced base jumper, said he thinks Sommer grabbed a lanyard as well as the handle to open the parachute, which prevented the chute from deploying properly.

Marion County officials said they were not releasing the specific location of the tower and there are no places to BASE jump legally in Marion County.

im really fuckin sorry and condolences to the pdx crew. i remember zach from the dropzone when i lived in portland........always shitty to hear.

BSBD zach

For those that want to understand his death and learn from it, here are the essentials. He was going off alone at the top, had ground crew at the bottom, but nobody knows for sure what happened.

Zack was an experienced jumper, and had recently been to Malaysia, where he had been made 40+ jumps, most with aerials. He was a confident but generally conservative jumper, had sound judgment, and was current.

His last jump at this site had been a gainer, but he been frustrated by some off-axis rotation on the jump and wanted to try it again. This evening, due to winds he likely exited from an area that makes the jumper bend down a little bit on exit. It appears that he either stalled or had a slow over-rotation, possibly from the awkward exit position. The pilot chute was extracted, but the pins were not pulled, suggesting either bridle wrap or late pull. Additionally, he had placed his stash bag on his back with the rig over top (big-wall style). This stash bag had an elastic adjusting strap in the middle that had ~6 inches of free slack when the bag was empty. The elastic line was pulled taut when he was found, and so he may have inadvertently pulled the line with his PC, delaying the extraction of his PC.

The site itself is a very dark area, and the ground lighting has not been recently replaced. I believe the moon was low on the horizon or already set, not offering a lot of light. Aerials can be disorienting on a sunny day, and with the low light of this site, it's possible that he lost orientation or lost altitude awareness during the rotation.

Zack was a very well-liked jumper, a great guy, and someone who I admired for his strength and perseverance. He'll be sorely missed.

Be careful out there.

"Marion County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Cooper, an experienced base jumper, said..."

Am I reading that right?

Yes you read that right. In the news interview he said it looked like he may have grabbed his jacket when he went for his PC and the bridle was under his arm around the left side of his neck.

I hate to hear this. BSBD.

No, i think the question was "is Steve Cooper, who is Marion county's deputy sheriff, an experienced base jumper? " as stated.

yes

What I got from the video was the Sheriff is an experienced BASE jumper...

Ditto

Correct - BASE 344. Also an Army officer and a great dude. Coops is the shit.

Here is some more details of the fatality which IMO helps understand what happened.

-Zach was found 80 feet from the object.
-His p/c was extracted and found a couple meters from his body fully cleared of any other gear. Not tangled.
-one grommet had been blown out the other still seeded with closing pin.
-he impacted head and possibly right shoulder first.
-stash bag was worn under his jacket and the tension cord had been pulled out a full arms length.

With this updated information I personally don't think Zach was doing an aerial. Evidence to support this is his distance from the object suggests a good track. His p/c and bridle being clear of obstructions but the s/b cord being pulled out a full arms length suggest he was wrestling with a tangle, went head low and impacted.
This of coarse is just my thoughts after hours and hours at night trying to piece together what happened to our dear brother.

Zach was an amazing man and one hell of a damn solid base and skydiver. We will miss him deeply, the man was never without a smile on his face.
BSBD my brother.

Edited to add- Guys n gals we will never know exactly what happened but we do know wearing a stash bag that has a tension cord under gear played a major roll in the fatality. Please stash you bags in a manner that can not conflict with opening sequence.

Thanks for the report. Condolences.

Isn't this the second fatality that had something to do with stash bag interfering with deployment? :/

I do remember one other similar situation, I think it was in Norway a few years ago.

BFL#192

Dont know if this pic is a repost but it reached me one day with an educational focus...
condolence
M.

I had similar situation in LB couple of years ago. We were on the testing phases of the PTS so jumping multiple jumps back to back with multiple rigs. When I reached for the pull on one jump, I felt that there was something extra flapping around... I thought that it was the bridle that had somehow creeped out under the sideflap. I pulled and had a normal opening but once I landed I realised that there was a big loop of the black compression cord from my stashbag hanging loose on the right side. Not cool! I´m pretty thorough on checking my gear on exit so I´m 99.9999999% sure that the cord was not exposed on exit but creeped out during the launch / jump. My hypothesis on the issue is : I was jumping a prototype suit where the jacket was not as long as it is on the production model so the overlap on the jacket and the pants was not so long. This combined with the fact that I was jumping a rig which was quite tight for me allowed the rig to pull the jacket up and expose the stashbag / compression cord. After this I immediately emailed Robi to make the jacket longer on the production model to more overlap on it which he immediately took as improvement to the design. So my (obvious) advice to all is, make sure you have enough overlap between the pants and the jacket in all scenarios. Maybe it is not too bad of an idea to try it out with your rig in ground to see if you can get the jacket sleeve to lift up enough to expose any parts of the stashbag by moving around, jumping around etc. Of course, only 100% sure way to prevent this kind of incident from happening is to jump a stashbag which does not have compression cords.

BSBD, my sincerest condolences to the friends and family!