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In the early days of BASE, we used either our skydiving rigs or one of the few Velcro-closed rigs out there. Within a few years, Mark Hewitt invented the tailpocket and the steering line release on slider down jumps. He had had a lineover on a slider down jump and compounded both femurs. His recovery left him with time to think.

Velcro BASE rigs, holding one canopy, showed up almost immediately after BASE began. I believe the credit goes to Jim Handbury, who was a rigger for Carl. They spread until there were 25 or 30 of them around the country and the world. It really was a small club back then. The rigs have changed since then, but not much. The germ of the idea has lasted for decades.

When we did a big terminal jump, like El Cap, we used our skydiving rigs. Why not? They were designed for terminal use, and if you picked your gear well, things almost always went perfectly. You liked your gear, and we would pack in bags and do the jump. Everything went well for a huge majority of people, and I'm not aware of any problems from jumping with a bag or having a reserve.

Right now I see the Wingsuiters. They clear out at the end of a proxy jump and pull at a reasonable altitude. Still, there have been 2 fatalities with bridle wraps around cameras, and who knows how many other bridle wraps around body parts that have happened. If you haven't noticed, severe line twists happen on wingsuit jumps. They just create a huge burble. That bridle is whipping around like crazy. You never see line twists like that on a normal BASE jump or skydive.

I think it would be a good idea to reintroduce the reserve for wingsuit flyers, or anyone doing terminal objects. They can't hurt, that's for sure. You can dump them up into a mess if needed, and most likely inflate.

Most of the stuff we did in Yosemite was high enough to easily use a reserve. The round might be the proper reserve for BASE. The open fast and, if it isn't spinning too bad, a flying canopy. As the round inflates, the main falls forward, and you just cut away. That was called a canopy transfer, and I've done about 6 of them skydiving.

When it went to a one parachute system, Hewitt called it "Make your main work." Of course for slider down jumps, a reserve is a waste of time, but on a terminal jump where you can clear out and toss at 1000 feet, they could have saved those lives lost to bridle entanglements and other fatal gear occurrences.

Rounds are cheap. You don't have to be a genius to pack one (easier than squares), and they are tiny. I see that with the wingsuit revolution, they may have a place.

I've heard that it makes it too complicated (baloney-it is one handle). Too expensive (maybe), or just out of style.

That all sounds good but how many people these days are jumping off an object in a wingsuit and pulling at over 600 feet .. most are too busy flying alongside the object and pulling within a few secs before impact...

The jumping has evolved a lot ( and I aint saying its a good evolution) But it certainly has changed a hell of a lot these days.. Some of the hikes in northern Norway go past 4 hours and hiking with a reserve is just not required..

It all sounds great but I highly doubt it will happen ..

Just out of style !!

Rounds weigh only a few pounds. I came to BASE as a climber in Yosemite, who watched jumpers from El Cap.

Anyone who lets a few pounds make their lives riskier...well...they are just pussies. They don't weigh that much.

I predict that reserves will come back. On one hand you have a lot of slider down BASE going on. No need for reserves there. On the other hand you have a lot of terminal wingsuit flights going on. A little round reserve would save a few lives, that has been shown.

There is a great story from the very first years of BASE. A guy I knew jumped a 1000 foot building in Houston with the Houston bunch, who created BASE along with the California bunch.

So this guy's pilot chute is too small. Nobody had figured out that skydiving pilot chutes were black death yet. He did a three second delay. After a few more seconds he pulled his reserve. He landed hard and was slightly injured, but he lived to have a long and happy life. He's still climbing.

Lack of a reserve isn't the problem today. Look at the BFL and let me know how many in the last 100 fatalities were r/t not having a reserve.

I think you'll be surprised to find it's something more simple/complex at the same time that is the killer of jumpers today than 30 years prior.

Oh, it never killed jumpers back in the early days. We all wore them. Even when BASE rigs came out, some of us would wear tertiary reserves mounted on the belly. They were little bitty things, and the canopies were the ones that hang gliders were using. The skydiving reserves saved several lives back then. I believe it was Dead Steve who had a pilot chute in tow or something similar, and got his reserve out on Auburn Bridge.

I watched a Video by Dougss, talking about what he has learned in BASE, and in it he said that he had seen two bridle entanglements with cameras. There have also been entanglements with folks doing aerials. I will look for the link on FB. It is a great talk.

The rounds open fast. We used to pull our round reserves out of our old skydiving rigs and use them to BASE a number of objects. I would take a solid 2 from 350 feet. Phil Smith used them to jump the interiors of both the Astrodome and the Superdome. You had to PLF if it were on land, but we also used them at Lake Powell. I liked them because you could pull low. One of our cliffs there is 600 feet. I would take a slow 4-5 count and toss, and get open at about 150 feet. It was impossible to hit the cliff because the forward speed was too low to get there from this low altitude.

I'm just saying. The single parachute idea was really created for sub terminal jumps. Everyone still used their skydiving rigs for El Cap and Half Dome, even though we did burn it down too far for reserves on Half Dome. Even back then you could track far out over the slabs at the base. By the early 90's, when ZP fabric and Sabers came out, the mains were totally unsuitable for BASE, and they weren't making any new 7 cells, except for reserves.

That sucked, because we like skydiving and BASE jumping on the same canopy. You got really used to it.

Off headings weren't a problem. Both El Cap and Half Dome are way overhanging. The only thing to worry about would be a mal.

Say you have a tension knot and are out over green grass. You can use your reserve. If you can keep it flying straight, you can do a transfer, something that vanished when we all went to square reserves.

To do a transfer, you didn't cut away first. You pulled the reserve and it would trail out behind you. As it inflated, the square would fly down in front of you. When the round was almost right overhead, you cut away the main. I don't think that you can do that with a slider up square reserve.

I did it a number of times. I had a main that blew lines now and then when skydiving. It flew straight but was warped. I would do a transfer every time. It was something you learned about back then.

There have been constant changes in BASE equipment over time. If a manufacturer made one with a tray for a small round, I bet terminal velocity jumpers would buy them, or at least a few.

You can still pull it out of the container and use it as a BASE main on objects with landing areas beneath the object.

For wingers, there is plenty of space for a reserve in the leg wing.
Take care,
space

Now there is an interesting idea. A few things I think would be required to make it practical:

1. Ability to use your normal BASE gear in conjunction with the tailwing reserve.

2. Ability to disconnect the reserve and use it across multiple suits.

3. Ability to jump suits without a reserve (e.g. It's not integrated into the suit, driving up wingsuit cost).

So I'm thinking PDA round with a single riser to avoid entanglements... it just clips into a ring or webbing loop sewn onto your harness any rigger could install I think... something like that... But for it to be routed that far down the jumper's body, I would definitely want a single riser, and for speed of opening a pulled down apex round vs. normal round; also a pda round creates more drag than a conical, meaning a pda round of 16' would be similar to something like a 20' conical. Also, round over square reserve just to limit malfunctions, especially since this would be a SUPER oh f**king s**t emergency that probably messes up your body orientation anyway. Rounds snake out of the tray and around people's bodies in bad orientation and still open usually... squares can get entangled and then dive at the ground much easier I think...it just seems like rounds would have less consequence.

I have a 15-16' foot round that is pulled down apex that has super short lines (~8') and can open in 60' from a pca... add airspeed and you've got a bit of a slammer emergency canopy, but one that opens before you hit the ground. To deal with the instability one might naturally assume comes from the short lines on this round, just like a pilot chute, I've got a toxic-pc-style ring vent on the canopy to bleed a little air and help prevent any rocking. There are also small drive vents in the back, to force a bit of motion. It's supposed to be a water-landing canopy, but it would be about the most weight and size I could expect the WS guys to be willing to adapt to, and it would prevent you from dying on impact if it were fully open and had slowed you down to it's normal rate of descent. It packs super tiny and weighs very little. Attach that thing to a long single riser, route it down the left side of a wingsuit in a little velcro sleeve akin to a shrivel flap and clip it directly onto the harness in whatever attachment form your heart desires. Then the suit just has to have an accomodating sleeve/pouch/pocket for the canopy. Like I said, it packs very small and flat. It would probably fit perfectly in the "tail deflector" thingy on most wingsuits that sits on the butt area behind the container to create that smoother line from container to tailwing. That deflector could be closed with yellow cable over a pocket between the tailwing and the deflector that contains the round... it would pretty much operate like the wingtip-released pilot chute. I think the real problem is finding a way to deploy that round into clean air. Like what is launching or pulling the round off your ass at that point? Are we also going to spring-load a pc into the ass too? Gives new meaning to getting "sprung" haha. Maybe if you did some weird wingtip released emergency pc built into the left wing since your normal pc deploys on the right from the boc or leg pouch... that could be how it deploys... Okay here's my theoretical design.

1) So you could pull a wingtip emergency PC release on the left that releases a pc.
2) That pc's bridle is attached in the center of the tail deflector to two pieces of yellow cable that start to pull the "ass container" open from the container toward the tail... so the back opens first. There is slack bridle in the ass container enough that the yellow cables can completely clear the suit before the canopy is pulled out. The container end of the reserve pocket, rather than the tail end, opening first ensures that the single riser (routed out that end) has clearance before the canopy comes out. (I'm not sure I want the canopy flipping me head down and looking like it deployed from my butt, because the yellow cables are engaged at the hips still.)
3) The canopy is now pulled from the container, attached to a single riser, routed along the left side of the wingsuiter with a long shrivel flap or something like that.
4) Profit???
5) See drawing... f**k it, I decided to kind of draw it. Red is the "handle, yellow is the yellow cable closures, lime green is the single riser, blue is the bridle, dark green is the pc, purple is the round, and pink is the lines of the round. Obviously the routing isn't all perfectly located, this is just the idea, not the exact design... given the likelihood that this will ever get made, I wasn't going to try that hard.
6) I call this system the "Save Your Ass" system, given that that is where it comes from. All rights reserved lol ...I also considered "Pulling It Out of Your Ass" but it seemed too long.

Alright anyway brainstorming over now. :P On a serious note, do I think any of this is really necessary? Nah probably not, but it's a fun thought experiment if nothing else. PM if you wanna see pics of the pda round. Fun times!

I used this on a couple sketchy cutaway flights last year. It's an extra 3lbs and takes a couple minutes to rig when you're gearing up. Uses the stock reserve risers that are too long to go straight into the RW-6 so it's going through the RW-6 and then connects to the hip rings so it stays tight on your body. My reserve is only rated to 115kmh/70mph and you are quite likely to be tumbling on your back if you pull it in freefall, but even with a couple lines broken it'd give you time to fix your main.

In reality though, no one would want to jump with you if you were to gear up with this on every jump.

Attached is a photo of John Hoover and I opening up a 650 foot new cliff on Lake Powell. I am getting open at about 150 feet (I liked to pull low). The canopy is a Preserve 3 reserve, which I pulled out of my skydiving rig. Square reserves showed up a few years later, and that was it for rounds. They are so simple to make and pack, and take up very little room.

The other is of a pilot chute assist from a 350 foot cliff. You can see how high she is when she opened. Almost as fast as a slider down square.

I know that similar canopies have been used to jump sub-200 foot objects. The interior of both the Astrodome and the Superdome, as well as high highway overpasses.

So they open fast. They have a vent hole at the Apex about a foot across, presumably to slow them down for terminal velocity openings. We would slide a packing rubber band down over the vent and they opened much faster.

So first of all, I agree with your sentiments, and in very specific scenarios, a reserve could absolutely save a life. Wingsuiting specifically as you mentioned could work, but here are the reasons why I believe reserves will never come back to base jumping, or at most be a novelty that a few people use such as the sorcerer.

1. The current gear works pretty damn well if properly used. There are a handful of fatalities that you could argue a reserve would have helped, but proper use of gear may have caused the issue in the first place. Pilot chutes knotting or towing are often from weak pitches, or improper pull technique. These are problems we see maybe once every few years, but far from an epidemic. People will be hesitant to add complexity to what is a pretty simple and functional.

2. Wingsuit base jumpers hate weight. People have already shown they will pay much more money for a rig that is lighter, easier to hike, and may aid in performance, even if it will wear faster than normal weight gear. Convincing people to add even a few pounds to a system that they will likely never need to use will be difficult.

if people were going in constantly from malfunctions, I could see this argument get much more relevant. Reserves will likely be similar to the wingtip pilot chute system. A good idea and very interesting, but probably not essential to survive in the sport.

Interesting discussion, and I'm going to get off topic for a moment, but I wanted to correct something from the original post.


Mark Hewitt did not invent the tailpocket. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mark Hewitt fan, we've been friends since we were 19, and I'm among the first and loudest to praise his contributions to the sport including the brake line release mod, the mesh slider, and don't forget the Sorcerer, which was a BASE rig with a reserve and the first MARD system in existence. But not the tailpocket. I actually brought the tailpocket to BASE, but I didn't invent it either.

Here's how it came about. When Para-Flite came out with the first square reserves, the Safety Flyer and the Safety Star, they developed the free bag system with the line stow pouch on the side of the bag as is used today. I'm not sure exactly who designed it, but I would guess between Elek Puskas, who ran Para-Flite, and Jake Brake, who I believe worked there at the time. In that era, there were a number of skydivers who 'trash packed'. Trash packing used no bags or other deployment devices (other than the pilot chute). The main was basically pro-packed, the lines were simply coiled into the container and the canopy free packed on top of that. There were people who would pack in like three minutes. Well, there were a number of fatalities due to the lines snagging part of the container creating a malfunction that could not be cut away, snagging the round reserve into an entanglement. The 'coil of death'. When that line stow pouch came out, there were a few black-death artist riggers, including Al Frisby, Hank Asciutto, and Bob Butt who thought to put that pouch directly on the tail of the canopy in order to get the lines safely out of the container. About that time, I bought a rig from a trash packer and asked Al to get me a bag for it, and he convinced me to try the tail pocket instead. I thought it was a bit of a harsh deployment for terminal skydives, and when I bought a new canopy (a Comet) I had a bag on it. Well it was about that time that BASE jumping (beyond El Cap) was beginning, and the tail pocket just seemed the logical fit. So yeah, I brought the tail pocket to BASE, but I didn't invent it. I just happened to be the guy standing between new technology and a new sport who could add 2 and 2.

I stand corrected, then. Hewitt was the first guy that I knew who was using it, and after he did, they spread like crazy.

I agree with you that reserves will probably never come back, but if you keep doing this, for thousands of jumps, you are gonna have some damn close calls or end up on the BFL. At the least, you will lose friends.

When we were first packing without a bag (Phil Smith taught me the most), we would use line stows in our containers. The Handbury rigs were like that, I believe. I used one of those once, but it had been packed by Smitty. We never coiled them in loosely. I even had line stows in my skydiving container, because I would free fall B Creek Bridge in it without a thought. Hell, we would use a bag and one of Hank's bit 52 inchers and call it good, for that matter.

Just to clarify, the 'trash packers' referred to in my previous post were skydiving, not base jumping, and this all occurred before or during the beginning of BASE. As I recall, most of the earliest BASE jumps were made with skydiving gear and deployment bags. And 104 is correct, I believe those earliest Handbury BASE rigs had line stows in the container.

Thanks for the post, love hearing about the history of it all. :)