Re: [Mikki_ZH] Fatality Switzerland 03.10.14
Mikki_ZH wrote:
robinheid wrote:
hjumper33 wrote:
Haha what a dick!
Yes, you are, but if you work at it a little you can overcome that.
But enough thread drift. This fatality reminds me of the Russian girl who went in because nobody could be bothered to keep an eye on her when it was patently obvious that she needed a little help. All the background info on what was going on with Don and the other jumper and the site and all that -- and then these guys leave him alone to decide so they can do lunch instead of lurking at the launch point to help him make the right choice?
And then when they come back from lunch and the guy is still there -- making it patently obvious just by the time he spent waiting at the launch point that he was not ready to go from that launch point, neither one of them cared enough to hike down to him... your dickishness shrinks in comparison by orders of magnitude.
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Ok, I had to read the incident report again when I saw your response. I thought maybe it was not clear but even after reading it twice, your coment does not make much sense to me...
Possible that it was not an ideal exit point, and possible Don was not sure if to jump or not. But Don was a very experienced jumper and itbis his decission if to jump or not. I would not jump with friends if they felt they have to tell me if to jump or not. And I would not jump with friends if I would have the feeling i need to tell them to better not jump a certain exit. If this would have happend to a newbe, i would partially agree with you, but not in this case. We (experieced jumpers) are 100% resposible for our own decissions and if we are not accepting this we are in the wrong spot in a first time. But the way I knew Don, he was absolutly capable of making his own decissions, although it might hace been the wrong one.
Respectfully disagree, Mikki: Everyone, regardless of experience, knowledge and mad skillz, can benefit from another set of eyes or another opinion.
This is one of those best practices that has been lost in BASE jumping: In the old days, it was a given that you did not jump alone -- that you always had someone with you (even if it was a whuffo) as an extra reality-check resource because you were doing something so dangerous.
Now there has emerged this ludicrous notion that as soon as we achieve that magic moniker of "experienced" jumper, we suddenly never need nobody no more for no reason.
What a huge massive stinking poop pile of of a proposition.
Regardless of our experience, knowledge and mad skillz, we can all use advice and input from those around us and for that reason we should as a rule always have someone around us to provide that little extra input that may make the difference between life and death.
And by way of example,
I tell here again a story I've told twice before on this forum,
one time (ironically) in support of hrjumper33:
Now, I know I'm speaking to an international crew here who may not know who John Elway is, but he is one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play American football, and I watched him play for all of his 16 years in the NFL.
And there he was one year on his way to winning his second consecutive Super Bowl, and there was his coach yelling at him from the sideline as one play started:
"Set your feet! Set your feet!"
This is THE most fundamental thing any quarterback has to dial in before s/hecan be effective: If you don't set your feet, you cannot throw accurately or with velocity, period.
And here was this guy's coach REMINDING him of something that he first learned in the backyard from his father, then in peewee football, and so on until he's playing in the biggest single-day sporting event in the world, during the last game of his soon-to-be Hall of Fame career, during the game for which he was afterward named Most Valuable Player... and neither he nor his coach thought it was inappropriate -- or unnecessary -- to remind him of something that he first learned when he was 3 or 4 years old.
We never have too many jumps or too much knowledge that we outgrow the need for reminders of the most fundamental kind -- I mean, that's sorta kinda maybe like why we call them FUNDAMENTALS, you know?
The bottom line is that (at least) two people are dead this season -- one experienced, one inexperienced -- in large part because nobody cared enough to keep a lurking eye on them... or because so many "experienced" jumpers have become such slaves to the mindless "ethic" that we are 100 percent responsible for ourselves that they don't have the slightest clue that getting input from others or offering it to them is just as critical as watching rock falls and listening to the wind.
As to your other point, I would not jump with friends who
didn't think it was their business to say so if they felt they had to tell me whether they thought it was a good idea for me to jump or not. And I
always have the feeling when I'm jumping that I may need to tell a companion that I think it is better not to jump a certain exit. Three examples:
1. Night jump, Tokyo smokestack with two younger but very current and heads-up jumpers. We had abandoned a try from a taller building because of nearby police activity. This was a nice site but the wind was blowing the wrong way for the best landing area and the secondary landing areas were just okay - if everything went perfect. I said, "I can't see myself not bleeding so I'm not jumping. You guys do what you want but the margins are too close and I think it would be stupid to jump in these conditions." I walked down. They stayed. Five minutes after I got to the car, they did too, rigs still packed.
2. Night jump at a famous dark slash in the ground: Big landing areas and I'm with a highly experienced jumper. Weird winds, so we snooze at the edge in our space blankets for a couple of hours. Winds still sketchy when we wake up. Other guy still motivated. I shake my head and say, "No way. There is nothing but death down there. If you want to go, I'll wait and see how it goes, but I think you'd be stupid to jump." He pondered and then agreed and home we went.
3. Dawn jump, Denver building: I arrive at the building with a less experienced jumper. Conditions are absolutely perfect, we're happy with our pack jobs, our ground crew is dialed in perfectly. My less experienced companion turns to me and says, "my roommate had a dream that somebody was gonna die on this jump, so I'm not jumping." I laughed and said, "Life is already short enough without trying to prove a stranger's dream wrong. Let's go eat breakfast." And so we did.
It is the conscious and deliberate lack of this kind of reality-checking and collaboration and lurkfulness at launch points that contributed to the deaths of Don and Maria this season, based on this bizarre and misplaced mantra that we must isolate our decisionmaking from all other human input because we are 100 percent responsible for our own decision.
That is brain-dead on so many levels and it is a growing factor in so many dead bodies.
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