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There was no news of Sylwia since 16th August, her body was found 4th September.
Assumption is impact grass at entry to crack, body finished just inside crack, nothing out.

Jumper was jumping alone, as was common for her given her historical behaviour of not engaging much at all with the wider BASE community.

Since no video has been recovered, nothing can be known for sure about the causes of this particular tragedy, but historically jumper demonstrated poor starts, weak flying ability, and dangerous decision-making.
Combined with a somewhat difficult character, she did much of her jumping alone and un-mentored.

Many of us saw this coming from a mile off, but I can't help wonder if there isn't a collective failing of the community here. despite my personal opinions about her, mostly developed during an excruciating 4 hours stuck lost on Hellesylt together in 2014 and the remainder of that season, i can't help but feel sad and a little guilty, that this jumper might well have spent 3 weeks rotting in the crack, with jumpers flying right over her, because we all pretty much shunned her, mostly with good reason.

Can we at least make something postive come of this, by maybe getting some basic list of best practices to follow, or equipment, or anything, that might be useful or recommended for solo jumpers?
A sticky with good information for the other lone wolves out there seems to me to be missing..

RIP Sylwia, you were weird, dangerous, and a total pain in the arse, but you were a BASE jumper, and that'll do. Fly free...

We can but to be honest, this information is already out there and you will find it find if you want to. You yourself wrote that "Jumper was jumping alone, as was common for her given her historical behaviour of not engaging much at all with the wider BASE community". If she had historical behaviour of not engaging with the community, what makes you think she would have wanted to use a best practises created by the community? I didn´t know her but what I think is that she chose her way in the sport and unfortunately it ended like this. A death is always a tragedy but I think we as a community cannot feel guilty about this or think we could have done something different. I feel sad that we lost another jumper and I wish strength to her family and friends in the most difficult times.

She wasnt easy to be around with, yet, absolutely nobody deserves an end like that. I really hope her end was quick and she wasnt waiting for help to come. She was a free-spirited human, and i will miss her. This is very sad.

I was on a load recently where a jumper got hurt. The two others of us flew over him and didnt notice something was off until he didnt come down after a few minutes. We were doing a 2-way and were focused on each other

I jump alone quite a bit, and mostly i let someone know when and where i'm jumping, groundcrew by phone in most cases. Probablly your best bet if you go solo!

I met her in the valley, jumping via ferratta.
We were both jumping alone, we talked for a bit on the exit point.
She was Juming a p3 with a very weird style exit. Not much forward movement after she was flying. We did a few jumps together. If you have seen the HBO documentary "worlds most dangerous sport" she was one of the people they interviewed. Blue skies

By far, the saddest thread I've seen for a long time.

I once arranged to meet and jump with a guy a few years back, and came home after one day as he scared the shit out of me. Poor skills, crap decisions and impossible to educate. He was going to die jumping and I told him that. Within a month he was on The List.
As we say in the Paramedic world, "you can't save 'em all."

I know nothing of this person and hope I'm wrong, but it feels similar and I feel for everyone affected by this death.

Dave M

She showed up at some skydiving events 2 or 3 years ago, when she was just starting.
Though several coaches tried to give well meant, patient, friendly and (no charge) advice and coaching on her progression, she was hard to get through to. And not sure her quoted experience was her true numbers.

She lived in her own bubble it seemed, hard to get to with reason, and just had a short track to wingsuit base in mind. Though most saw it coming, still a sad way to end...

I met her in LB in 2015 when she was doing laps of Via Ferrata in her P3. She did seem a bit odd, and I had heard a little bit about her from others.
I remember that HBO documentary. She was pointing at the Jungfrau and said "that is the dream". It's a dream for me too.
She chose her own way but she just wanted to fly like the rest of us. It sounds like a few people saw this coming, but its still very sad.

BSBD

On the point of jumping solo, i use a Spot beacon that i send a message before i exit and a separate message after i land. It is easy to do and fairly cheap. Also has a tracking feature so you dont have to activate it should you crash. Please consider it if you are doing such solo activities in the wild for your families sake if nothing else.

No. Not this time. There's nothing you can do when the person you need to tell is the last person who will listen. The emotion shouldn't be guilt - enough people tried to tell her that it was only her fault that she kept down the wrong path. Frustration is more appropriate, a pointless loss that we all knew was coming.

On the flip side, let's not pretend she was unique either. She started in what, early 2014 or late 2013? A hundred people have died jumping since then. To be painfully blunt, someone as clueless, inept and bereft of good judgement as Sylwia managed to outlast over one hundred other base jumpers. Many, many of whom (from noobs to legends) you could also say 'yep, saw that coming.'

There is a few I was sure going to go in, but they are still here, and kicking ass as one of the few legends still active. You cant do anything about attitude and longing for fullfie dreams, and some I had more patient with than others. Everyone needs a friend sometime to see them for who they are, and most important respect their dreams, and try to guide them as good as possible. If they wont listening, and they suck your energy, there is maybe one in the next line who can try.

But really you can not deal with suicidal behavior, it is impossible.

Not related to this incident at all but I have couple of seasons of experience with the SPOT device in the Swiss Alps and would advice anyone not to rely on the SPOT in that environment. I found it very often that the SPOT was not able to get message through due to the limited satellite connection deep in the mountains. You most likely will get a message through from the exit (depending how "open" the exit is) but very often the landing areas (and especially the areas where you might need to be rescued) are deep in narrow valleys shadowed by big walls and the SPOT proved to be very unreliable on those places.

I agree. Better use a PLB (such as the ACR ResQLink) or a satellite device such as the DeLorme (now Garmin owned) InReach SE. The Spot is very popular with paragliders for tracking crosscountry flights, where it works reasonably well due to an unobstructed line of sight to satellites. The Spot uses the GlobalStar network which features geo-stationary satellites - hence the problem in mountain valleys. The DeLorme on the other hand uses the Iridium network with its low-earth orbit satellites where you have a much bigger chance that at some point a satellite will come into view while you are sitting in a tight mountain valley.

Good tips, thank you!

I think that sometimes, respect is the only thing to have. Strange that when it is a girl, words are more hard.
In that "male" world it is not easy to exist for someone different. More when this world is "elitist" too and often looks like a "dick contest" of a schoolyard.
But BASE is a way of freedom and each one can walk on its own path, as the best we can do.
A lot have forgot, the mistakes they had made when they were beginners... What it is important is to grow better.
Sylwia Justyna have choose her way with courage and perserverance and she was happy and she was now better than many other jumpers she have crossed.
Fate caught up Justyna as many others. We never know the story of each one and its pains...
I think that she didn't care to be a base jumper in the BASE world, more to be free like a little bird. I hope that she have found peace and ready to play an other life.
Take care.

Globalstar satellites are LEO, not GEO. We use GS at work exactly because they can reach into deep valleys (but not visible many times per day, so I wouldn't rely on them for distress calls).

I have only know Sylwia the last year and a bit, so I can't really comment on her way into the wingsuit scene or if she took shortcuts.

All I can say is that since I've known her, the exits looked strong to me... crouched with a good hard push and I know it was something she was always working on. Her flights looked to be normal as well, equal in time and distance covered to many other jumpers from the same exits.

She was also at least current too. Whilst I know jumping solo might be of questionable use to improve your skills and learn where you are lacking in any abilities, she had been away and jumping for a large part of this year already.

Regardless of any of this she was my friend and I will deeply miss her.

Sorry, but i can't agree with that. You have to remember that BASE is a growing community and in many cases we all depend on each other. With each (especially stupid) death you are making a negative impact which may (or actually most probably will) lead e.g. to closing of jumping sites and in general putting BASE in bad light.

Acting irresponsibly is just selfish and destroying what many people have worked hard for.

Agreed! With freedom comes responsibility. Act accordingly. The world is not yours alone.

+1

I think that you misunderstood what I have said, and because you don't konw me too.

BASE jumpers make me laugting because they spend all their times to broke the rules to make their own rules... Because I know a lot of them who don't care about others, and don't care about trouble or if after them the site will be closed due to their selfish attitude. But this thread is not the place to speak about that.

What I say is that BASE jumping is a way of personnal freedom, a personnal exploration too, of course it is not suicidal so responsability, intelligence, respect, attitude, etc... the rules of art of this sport. But it is not a competition of "perfect super BASE", everyone has its own failures, and I hope that the good ones do just their best, but error is human don't forget that! So saying that a death is a black point for BASE community, this is shit! But that BASE jumpers can't regul themselves is a point, very interesting to dig... for community.

Take care