Basejumper.com - archive

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http://www.ledauphine.com/...un-wingsuiter-se-tue
And last weeks an american guy crashed with nothing out in the forest from the Aiguille, alive but in coma at last news.

“…Flying over the rocky river. By the way, I do not recommend to make such flights without special training. Overall right now, the mood amongst BASE jumpers in Chamonix is uneasy. During my most recent trip here, three month ago, we would get up to jump as if it was a celebration. Now everything has changed, while I was away, many famous BASE jumpers have died.

Just as in the past, the valley gets jumped, you can meet 10-15 people on exit at any given time. In general, people have different mindsets, but overall, the collective mood is lacking the fun it was full of in the past. One of my local mates is really upset. He lost four friends just this season, two of which died in front of his eyes. Once I met David Reader’s parents in the landing zone, he was a wind-tunnel world champion and he died recently while proximity-flying in Chamonix.

These cases and the fact that many of my friends have stopped flying low proximity lines makes me think about what development path I should take from this point onwards and whether those low flights actually make sense. And here are the answers I arrived at:

1. First of all, you get maximum emotional hit on your first flight, the second one is less emotionally charged. Third and fourth flights give away almost no emotions, you perform like a machine;

2. Secondly, it is no longer cool or fashionable. Approximately 10-15 years ago it was considered cool amongst a certain cast of BASE jumpers to open really low, get hit with adrenalin by those low openings – I know because I did it a few times myself. But those times are long gone, nobody opens low any more because it makes no sense, the risk is too great and it pays no dividends. I think that low proximity will follow suite, I believe that in 3-5 years there will be very few people flying that low and people would be looking back to our time saying: can you believe people were flying so low back then and thought it was cool?

3. Rules of the game. When you are flying at 250km/h at just 2-3 meters above the terrain, it is difficult for you to see all of the obstacles, you are tunnel-visioned, you have to know the line off by heart, and if you come across an obstacle which you have not considered, you would either not see it at all or would not be able to react to it. Here is another case – if you are flying next to a cliff face, you could miscalculate side wind at this particular height because the wind up on the exit point and down at the LZ could be null but at that exact spot up on the face there is a right hander blowing you into the rock face while you are carving at that point you understand that you cannot easily alter your angle of attack. I came across all these challenges in the field, I studied the rules of the game , ever-expanding my list of bullet points. And the more challenging the jump, the more rules you need to be aware of. While you are playing the game fault-free, the jumps are not dangerous, but as soon as you make a mistake, the game turns to Russian Roulette – maybe nothing will happen of it and you will keep on flying but if you get a live round in the chamber you will crash and die or will suffer serious injuries.

4. Where to now – there are several disciplines which allow for safe jumping, for chasing new experiences and new highs. For example, there are the starts – you can work on how far you can fly away within the first 200m, a great sporting challenge. Elements of acrobatics – back-flying, corkscrew, 360 – all of these maneuvers can be carried across into BASE jumping, can be performed at safe altitude and can be a lot of fun. Flocking, when you are flying as close as possible to each other without hugging the terrain is totally mind blowing , everyone enjoys these. Flyby – a close flight past something, like the Ingush Towers¹, for example, this is, in principle, quite safe – you just pick a point and fly past it.

And so this is the point of safe jumping – playing by the rules, following the rules and trying not to make mistakes. So these are the thoughts that popped up after I achieved what I planned six years ago. #baseguru #aviasales #adidasoutdoor #phoenixfly…”

¹msk: a jump that Ratmir was very proud of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCqjX9xx8qE

http://www.corriere.it/...5-fd9af6958684.shtml

Chamonix: A russian wingsuit base jumper died for impacting a house on Monday.
The name is released on all italian media so far.

Crash site http://imgur.com/a/jVMHU

Crash site http://imgur.com/a/jVMHU

why does no one talk about how the incident could actually happen? from what i understand he impacted with nothing out at the end of a "safe" flight. how comes that someone with his experience (whatever you may think of him, fact is he did it for quite a while with lots of jumps...) fails to pull the PC?

why does no one talk about how the incident could actually happen? from what i understand he impacted with nothing out at the end of a "safe" flight. how comes that someone with his experience (whatever you may think of him, fact is he did it for quite a while with lots of jumps...) fails to pull the PC?

.............if u fly terrain , if you hit the tree w hand or arm it can knock you and make arm useless... think about it... just one of the reasons...it is bizarre case , but it is also less likely we will ever get to know what happened to him.
very sad, he was a good boy

...the bottom portion is steeper, giving a bit of altitude above the treetops. But not enough for normal deployment