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I haven’t uploaded this video to the internet yet for personal reasons, but some things have changed and I can upload it now and feel the need to, especially in light of the recent fatality. My hope is that it can help save a life or two this season, or at least make someone think twice about what they are doing. I know I’m lucky to still be alive today. Please don’t copy this video anywhere, just use my password protected version. Thanks. Password is “joker”.

https://vimeo.com/214355123

My experience level at the time:
This was during my first BASE season. Before ever getting into BASE I had around 650 skydives. Most of them training or competing with my 4-way competition team. I also had around 100 hours in the tunnel for belly RW. About 500 of my jumps were on 7-cell, F-111 canopies that were anywhere from 230-300 square feet for ac competitions (policy of the team I was on). I used every jump to train for BASE. I started reaching out to some Colorado locals at the two DZs I went to about getting into BASE, and I had a few guys take me under their wing to learn packing and get ready to get started. I got my first rig from JVH around Christmas of 2013. It was the same rig I jumped in the accident. It was pretty heavily used but in great shape, and he was selling it because he was transitioning to ultralight gear to focus on alpine wingsuiting. Fly free buddy. Helluva guy as most of you know. I used the rig to pack and practice rigging before committing to my first jump. I was also one of those guys who read every book about BASE available, talked to as many people as I could and tried to get as much experience as possible under my belt with jumping prior to hitting the exit point. I wanted to make sure I did it right and was safe.

I had one specific block of time during the following summer that I could make a trip to the bridge, and JVH had planned to go with me along with my other buddy who was being mentored by another guy who was heavy in the wingsuit game, Taylor S. (full name withheld for his privacy). He was also teaching me some wingsuit skills in the sky at our little southern CO DZ. A few days before the trip, JVH said he couldn’t make it because a party in Vegas ended up being too awesome (jealous?) so I had to go to plan B and signed up for a course Tom was having at the time. He was able to fit me in. My other buddy came too but had a little more experience than me at the time and didn’t take the course, he just practiced jumping. I got 16 jumps and great training on that trip. I personally loved the course and found it very valuable. My buddy and I were both training for a trip we had booked to Kjerag. A few weeks later we found ourselves in Kjerag where I got 15 jumps off Smell, waterfall, 5, 6, and 7. When my buddy and I returned to CO we planned to get a few more jumps that season, but due to Tom’s coaching and my desire to “do it right” I didn’t want to do any solid, slider-down cliffs until I felt like I had proper object avoidance skills and training (like Moab, for you new guys). We managed to get a few jumps off and both really wanted to hit an exit near Rifle, CO before the snow rolled in and closed the roads off. And since most people jumped it slider-up, I felt a little better about it. It was more like Norway and Smellveggen than Moab in my mind. My first mistake... JVH gave me some beta on the spot (jokingly told me to bring my wingsuit), and my jumping buddy had 4 jumps off of it already with the help of another “local”. So this jump was in the mid 30s for my log book.

My thoughts going into the jump:
As part of my personal jumping routine, I would write to my family in my journal before each jump. It helped me have the peace of mind I needed to leave the exit point. I wrote this prior to the jump.
“(Jump buddy) and I are planning to BASE jump off the Roan Plateau outside of Rifle, CO tomorrow, and I have to get a few things off my chest before my subconscious will be at ease while I leave the exit point.
I know I could die. I could die every BASE jump, every skydive, but this is the most technical jump I have done. It is fairly remote terrain. It requires skill. A good exit, a solid delay, perfect body position, quick reflexes, expert canopy flight. Wind conditions ought to be perfect or else jumping is not smart. It is the most technical in the sense that it is not terminal, but not sub-terminal. It is most safely jumped as a slider-up, 5-second delay. I plan to do a 3-second delay to give me more time to get comfortable under canopy since I don’t know the landing zone. It is not terminal, so there is not enough time to track away from the wall, leaving me close enough for a wall strike if I have an off heading. Luckily, I have the most perfectly symmetrical pack job of my life in the container. Since it is slider-up, though, heading performance is not as reliable. Anything under a 5-second delay, slider-up, is rolling the dice. Chances are it will open fine. I packed it to open quickly, even as slider-up. Still, I could die.
BASE is selfish. Why am I doing this jump? Mainly because I want to, and I have the skills to do it safely. It is by far the best jump in CO because it is legal and gorgeous. Beautiful cliff jump. Stateside. Can't beat it. I'm stoked.”

Obviously I was misled about a few things. It was probably “most safely” jumped slider-down/off. Or just not jumped at all. Or with a 5-6 second delay. But our “local” source of intel said everyone takes short delays off of it all the time slider-up and the longer snivel opens you up much more nicely in the overhung part. Obviously that logic is complete BS because of heading performance, but I took the advice. I had a few slider-up short delays off Smell that opened on heading, and a no delay slider-up jump at the bridge that was literally a perfect on-heading, so I felt like my packing was good enough for it. Every one of my jumps to that point was on heading. All like 33ish of them. The problem is, a short delay slider-up jump just creates too many variables. Crosswinds are a huge factor. Body position leading to side loading is a factor. PC oscillation. Karma. Magic. The ghost of Aldous Huxley. Everything I already knew about and read about in the Great Book of BASE and also learned at Tom’ course. He really goes into depth about that shit and everything else. Good stuff. Not an advertisement for the course. Obviously my buddy took the half baked mentor method and I tried to “do it right” and I was the one who ended up in a wheelchair while my buddy ripped shots and logged jumps. Do whatever the fuck you want. i ripped shots too.

The jump:
My buddy jumped right before me with a similar pack job and delay and everything was fine. He radioed up that I was good and he laid out his canopy in the direction of the winds for my landing.
My jump can be seen on the video. I ended up only taking about a 2 second delay. The second the canopy started to open I could feel that something was wrong. My plan for an off-heading was to jump on a riser or toggle and steer away, and for line twists I had seen a lot of opinions, but most people agreed on these forums that the best thing was to reach above the twists to a control line and point the canopy in a safe direction. So that was my plan for line twists. So when I realized that I had an off heading and line twists, my plan was to reach above the twists to a control line. I can be seen in the video struggling with arms up, but the twists were too high. I couldn’t reach jack shit. Essentially the canopy opened with a twist the the left and the momentum of my body twisted me to the right, resulting in a full twist with me facing about 170 degrees off-heading. After watching the video a bunch of times it seems like the best thing to do would have been to pick a toggle right away and do a hard turn in whatever direction I grabbed. There probably was enough air time in either direction for that to have kept my from a full on cliff strike. I have heard steer into the direction of the off-heading turn because of momentum, but in this case my plan was to try to turn back to the left because there was a shorter distance to freedom, which I have also heard people argue for. Im sure all the armchair quarterbacks out there have plenty of opinions too. In the moment, I thought “reach above the line twist to a control line” then my next thought was fuck they are too high and I need to brace for impact so my arms don’t break off. I also thought, “this is how I die” since before wingsuiting took over the leading cause of fatalities was cliff strikes (it seemed like it at least, after reading all the base books and full fatality list and trying to be a good educated little padawan before getting into BASE).

After the first impact, the line twists were pushed lower which allowed me to get a left riser. At that point I really felt like I was going to be able to turn the canopy and fly away from the cliff with only the minor strike. Unfortunately, a riser turn kills lift like the plague, so you can see how much my canopy started to sink at that point, especially with no forward motion to ram-air inflate the canopy. It was a vented canopy, FYI. At the same time, the bottom of the cliff started to bow out, and I just ran out of airspace to work with before clipping the wall, breaking my left ankle and foot pretty bad, and then smashing into the bottom with essentially a 20ish foot fall with no real canopy, crushing my right foot pretty bad.

The aftermath:
We did a self rescue that was very involved. I had a killer ground crew. I would need a novel to go into that one. Luckily my brother is an expert rock climber and also has a shit ton of gear… I got a metal plate in my left foot and did about 4 months in a wheelchair while my feet healed. After that was a lot of physical therapy. I haven’t BASE jumped since. I got a new BASE rig and have done some sky and balloon jumps, but luckily my job sent me to an island with very few easy BASE exits.

The lessons:
Every jump is dangerous. If you’re gonna be dumb, you better be tough. Take whatever you can from my mistakes and learn from them. The big lessons are for the new guys out there and guys who are getting into their first season. Just because 8 guys before you jumped it that way and got away with it doesn’t mean it will work for you. If your gut tells you the local beta isn’t good, go with your gut. Unless you are a dumbass. Yes, you. If I had packed slider-down, I would probably still be able to run without pain in my ankles. But I had a “no solid object slider-down” rule. Well unfortunately for that rule, subterminal slider-up jumps are even more retarded. I knew that, but I took a few pretty short delays off Smell in Kjerag and it went great, plus my slider-up bridge jump, so I was confident in that realm when I probably shouldn’t have been. I knew it could go wrong as demonstrated by my journal entry, and it did. Now I live with the pain. Going back would I have done it again? Abso-fucking-lutely. The rescue in itself is a three hour story. 4-5 hours if you add some good scotch. The ladies love it. But really, I certainly wish I could go back and tell myself to be a little smarter. Maybe wait until the next season when I would have had more experience and not let the snow or a bad local force me into a bad choice. I have pain in my left ankle every morning as a reminder not to be dumb. I am definitely much more cautious now than I was then. I wear full safety gear on my motorcycle no matter how hot it is and I surf far away from the reef because now I know; if it can happen, it will happen to me and it will fucking hurt.

Another big lesson: -safety gear. If I hadn’t been wearing my heavy duty snowboarding helmet my head probably would have exploded on the wall like a watermelon. You can see in the video that my helmet takes a solid chunk of rock out of the cliff. My G3 probably would have cracked but would have been better than nothing. The shin guards I wore didn’t save my legs, but we were able to use them to make splints during the rescue. I also jumped with a first aid kit in my cargo pocket and was able to use that to help myself in the few hours I was alone before my buddies got to me. Mainly I just took some of the pain killers and came up with good jokes for when the rescue team got to me.

That leads me to another lesson: Even if you know you can call the helicopter, always be prepared to save your own ass. Don’t burn a spot or risk the life of a search and rescue volunteer if you don’t have to. The self rescue was super tough, but it was my dumb ass that got me there and I felt it was my job to get my ass out. And I also have the best friends on planet earth who are a bunch of badasses

Fourth lesson: I have the best fucking friends in the world and hope that no one ever has to put their friends through a situation like that. I know I don’t ever intend to again. If you don’t have friends like mine, find em.

Stay safe out there this year. Please don't fucking die from a cliff strike.

good write up.. bravo man.

having hit a couple objects in my time, i'd say you did a really good job with what you had, especially at your experience level.

lessons like these are hard, but everyone thinks it's all fun and games... until it goes to shit, because then it gets bad fast. real fast.

i don't like to throw around the word "luck" but so many people have not died simply because of dumb luck, not any BS or skill or reactions they claim to have made. it's a dangerous game that yields high stakes for a small reward.

"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself." ~ Sam Levenson

how did you come up with a no solid object slider-down rule?

Thanks, I appreciate the write up.

I also make a lot of rules for myself in BASE (e.g. No solid slider-up delays under 6 seconds). The most interesting thing with this scenario, to me, is that you used some lawyer tactics to circumvent your own rules.

I'll be sure to scrutinize myself as to whether I may be doing the same.

I think that shorter delay slider up jumps have gotten an undeserved bad reputation. I think that 3 to 5 second delay slider up openings are the ones that I can most predictably control the heading of prior to the canopy's forward movement.

I see the logic of both sides of the topic, but short delay slider up has been good to me.

This was your first, and probably biggest, mistake. They NEVER open straight!

Also, next time, trying to get away from the cliff first before trying to undo your linetwist may prove beneficial. Risers are your friends!

Thanks for the write up man, I hope you get better and are able to continue doing what you want. I had a similar incident happen to me a few weeks ago - a life altering injury because of a series of bad decisions. Sometimes they're just so hard to see when its happening, and only hindsight lets you see clearly.

"Luckily, I have the most perfectly symmetrical pack job of my life in the container."

This definitely jinxed you dude!!

+1

good report, though, and many good takeaways for everyone. thx.

Thanks for posting - some good points.

Curious how much you weigh and what size canopy and PC you were using ?

Short delay, slider up, has been good to me also, because if it does start to go off heading it is usually such a soft, slow, opening that there is plenty of time to respond and guide the heading with riser input. Slider down at 3 secs is much more dynamic than slider up but as long as the pack job is half way clean and the body position ( shoulders square ), is good, there is no good reason for a 180. I would never recommend 4 sec slider down delays though, just too uncomfortable. I've never had a 180 slider down, sub 3 sec., I've never had more than a 135 off heading opening slider up, sub5 secs ( at least on my own packjob, lol )
I have jumped the exit that Derek had his issue on and would have advised a longer delay, it is about 800' vertical, I have also jumped the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland where the recent fatality occurred, it is about 600' but a slider down sub 3 sec jump and absolutely no place to have a 180. After reading Derek's analysis I would attribute inexperience with the category of jump as well as with BASE in general as the defining factor in his incident. I am curious as to what extent this was a factor in the fatality in Ireland?
Condolences to the Irish, regards, B.

Thanks for the post and video.
I do agree that doing an 800' wall slider up with a 2 second delay sounds like an odd plan.
Glad you are still here.

My 2 centavos -
The prob here was just the short delay. There is a big difference in speeds when you are sub terminal
sec - mph
1 - 21
2 - 42
3 - 60
4 - 75
5 - 87
looking at that site,the sun is going to warm up that talus and face and all that air is going to funnel right up it

Thank you so much for taking the time to write that up. There's some good info in there.

A couple things to consider which you hopefully don't take personally and is to be expected with someone at 30 BASE jumps but more to just get others thinking.

You got about 1-2 steps off that cliff with a pretty weak push and still had more time than I've ever had on a slider down 180. Everyone can freeze. I know I can freeze, and I have but in other high focus sports that I did before entering the unforgiving environment of BASE. People with 5 or 1000 BASE jumps can freeze. But objectively that was a long time to fix the problem and you could have had a whole lot more since that exit is flat for about a 1/4 mile and running off it is very inviting. Again you only had 30 jumps but just stating the objective here because I see a lot of very nervous inexperienced people jumping in places like Moab with very timid pushes and it works 99% of the time, but people generally accept things "working out" as being okay.

Again the bulk of this is not about you, it's more the growing trend of people in this sport that are just not 100% ready to be doing what they are doing. But the problem is it works most of the time and people get a false sense of abilities that way. That's wingsuiting slider down static line whatever. This was a case that you had done probably 80% of what you could have, which is a really good amount, but the unlikely happened. So in the end, this is a great lesson and anyone who has an understanding of themselves and their own abilities hopefully will learn from this otherwise the people who don't will have the subconscious it won't happen to me receptors block this out. Again thanks for sharing this.

Nice writeup, and thanks for sharing.

The one thing I noticed right away about the video is that you seem to do a poised, or one step exit. Ive always been on the theory that if you have the option to run (and this exit has about the best run up you could ask for), run like your life depends on it. In a 3-4 sec delay, you can get another 20-30ft away from the wall. A lot of times, this is the difference between a close call, and a hospital stay.

Thanks for shelving the ego and sharing so others can learn.

Echoing Mitch & Charley: separation = life.

When you can run, fucking run like your life depends on it, because it does. And if you can't run, think twice about the solid object slider down jump.

"Going back would I have done it again"


Why?

Also, were you planning on taking a 2-second delay, or was that more of a panic pitch?

I'll throw in my endorsement for running like hell, too. But practice, because I have run & pushed off so hard that I turned myself into a left 90. Kind of embarrassing. So run hard, but realize you have to control your body position even harder.

The run up is key when committing to sub terminal slider up jumps. Echoing what Charlie is saying, a solid running exit will not only propel you further from the object but for my money puts you in a more naturally symmetrical body position if you are F&S/sub term tracking. With that stable, flat and square to earth body position you are far less likely to have off heading issues. I've racked up well over two hundred sub terminal slider up jumps in the 3-6 sec range and have never had anything close to a 180. Most openings hover between on heading and 45 degrees left or right. Sorry you went through that because it looked like an awesome day out there. Hope you heal well.

That's a pretty good track record I've got more sub terminal just than that but have had more that 10 180's and one with a 180 and line twist.
I don't think they are a big deal with how far away you can get from the wall. Obviously a box man panick pitch with no run does not give you much bet he had plenty of time. Toggles work through line twists as well and quicker than trying to reach above.

agreed my friend. i've had plenty of 180s or very close, but i've managed to turn them all around except for one that i don't remember much ... and one that i kicked off a positive wall first and then landed in a tree with no injury.

can't really say how you'll handle one until you do.

i like to stay current on my EPs.