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Saw this on the web... Not a jump I guess, but still sad.

https://www.kmvt.com/content/news/Family-and-friends-ask-for-publics-help-in-searching-for-missing-man-571412411.html

https://www.kmvt.com/content/news/Search-for-missing-BASE-jumper-called-off-571410181.html

One of my friends dropped him off for the jump. Jumper is Austin Carey (family notified, name is public) and he apparently was planning on doing a double jump near pillar falls with a friend. Both jumps were under 130' from what I've heard. His friend mentioned the water level looked high where they had to swim across but Austin said he was going to jump regardless so they both went for it. Reportedly Austin threw his water off the cliff rather than jumping it down and was unable to find it after his first jump (may have contributed to trying to swim rather than waiting for a boat). They completed both jumps safely and when they got to the water Austin didn't want to swim with his gear. His friend made it across fine and I heard he was heading back to town to get a pack raft to retrieve Austin. At some point Austin flagged down some kayakers and gave them his stash-bag including his phone and had them bring it across which they ended up giving to my friend who was waiting to pick him up. He told the kayakers he was planning to swim across. That was the last he was seen. A search by police boat and powered paraglider happened that evening to no avail followed by another search by boat and drone the following day before efforts were called off. There was reportably no way out from the side of the canyon they were on. No body found yet but they are working on slowing the river to help with locating and retrieval efforts. An unfortunate but avoidable accident.

I'm going to move this to General, and leave a pointer in Incidents, because this is not a BASE incident.

The jump ain’t over until you are in the bar. This is a BASE fatality sadly.
In my world, anyway.

Tom is technically correct, but when I was doing the BFL I always had trouble with the concept of when a BASE jump begins and ends.

Johnny Jumper is approaching a cliff launch point when he slips and falls to his death. His rig is still in his stash bag. Is this a BASE fatality or a hiking fatality?

Willie Whuffo thinks a cool idea would be to attach a packed parachute to a jet ski and ride it over Niagara Falls. (This is a real event.) However Willie knows nothing about BASE jumping, parachuting in general, or parachute rigging. And during deployment the parachute detaches and he is killed. Does he go the BFL? (I've forgotten how we settled that one.)

And here's something that happened to me. I'm standing on a tower 2000-feet above a Florida swamp at night. My rig is on my shoulders but my leg straps aren't done up. My jumping partner said something hysterically funny and I doubled over laughing while moving backwards and almost went over the edge where a section of railing is missing. I barely caught myself from going over. If I had fallen to my death – did I die BASE jumping or did I die laughing?

Where I get hung up is if BASE jumper Austin Carey had woken up that morning and decided to do something else besides BASE jumping he most certainly would be alive today. But he'll go into the books as a swimming fatality. And since he won't be on the BFL - ten years from now it's possible no one except family and close friends will even remember him.

But on the other hand if Peter Peckerwood gets into his car to drive 100 miles to make a BASE jump and ten miles into the trip he gets flattened by a semi-truck - that really can't be called a BASE jumping accident.

When I started the BFL in 1989 my purpose is two-fold. To educate & memorialize. So to make sure I got the memorial part right I started a second section of the BFL called, 'BASE jumpers who Died Outside the Sport' to cover all the above gray area fatalities.

In the end I went with the traditional wisdom of a BASE fatality being something that happens between launch and landing when using a packed parachute. But also wondered what I'd do when someone went in on TARD or other type of un-packed jump. (However, I don't believe that's ever happened . . . yet.)

I throw in one more (real world) example from another sport. Twenty people board an airplane to skydive. Just seconds after rotation the aircraft rolls over and plunges nose first into the ground and sixteen jumpers are killed. In my head I know technically this is an aircraft accident. But in my heart I will always remember those people, most of them friends of mine, as being killed while skydiving.

After a safe landing from that Florida tower, and almost falling off it, I was livid with myself for being so fucking careless. And my jumping partner said, “The funny part is, after dying like that, you wouldn't have even made your own list!” And technically he is right. And ten years later no one would have remembered me either.

BASE jumping is a physical act but it's also a state of mind. And that's why I tend to agree with weathergirl, "The jump isn't over until you're [safely sitting] in the bar."

NickDG
BASE 194

https://bfl.baseaddict.com/record/BFL381

Excellent post Nick, heartbreaking but it helped chill my spinning thoughts on this subject. And this from a dude who's never looked at anybody's BFL and never will, I always already know what happened anyways..

The comparison in my mind was Katie Connell and Rami Kajala.

Katie landed in the surf under canopy and drowned. I see that as a BASE fatality.

Rami landed safely and chose to enter the water afterward (to attempt to rescue her). I see that as a heroic rescue attempt resulting in his death, but not a BASE fatality.

In my mind, a BASE fatality results from a problem on the BASE jump itself. So Katie landing in the surf (canopy flight problem) is a BASE fatality, and Rami landing on the beach and then choosing to jump into the water is not a BASE fatality.

I see this incident the same way. If Austin had landed in the rapids and drowned, that would be a definite BASE fatality (like Rick Stanley, and many others since him). But since he landed safely on the jump, I think it does a disservice to his memory to call it a BASE fatality (same as Rami). His BASE jumping judgement and skills didn't fail him on this jump. His white water assessment and swimming skills failed him _after_ the jump.

In much the same way, I would consider Richard Heaton (died of exposure after getting lost trying to climb out from an unfamiliar site in sub freezing temperatures) not to be a BASE fatality.

This sort of situation is why the current iteration of the list includes a "BASE related" section. I think that's where this incident belongs.

How long do you have to get to the bar, though?

What if someone landed from a jump from the same exit point, and then camped overnight before heading back home. Then drowned on the way back in. Is that a BASE fatality?

What if the camping was in no way required by the jump, but just something they did for fun, and they drowned that afternoon while swimming in the river, with every intention of returning to their camp site to sleep overnight following their swim?

I think the 'exit to landing' rule is the only real way to draw a line. Otherwise it all gets too fuzzy.

I don't think that we can ignore or forget the related fatalities at all. I just think they belong in a different section of the list (which is where they are now).

Agree 100%.

agreed.

Once after landing from a jump, (not flight = a long time ago), off 1/2 of a rock in yosemite, we landed closer to a mama bear and her two cubs than made me comfortable.
We were fortunate she wasn't too antagonized so Gary and I were not candidates for any list.

Hi Tom, all agreed. One way or another the examples cited were put in harm’s way by BASE jumping, and it killed them. Let the glib amongst us read and reflect on that somewhere and the list(s) are doing their job.
Dave M

What happens if it’s in Glasgow and you get stabbed to death in the bar?

Laters,

Then you deserved it for being English and being in Glasgow.

Hahaha! Harsh.

Jools has some form in Glasgow, being roughly manhandled by the authorities and so on.

But you're more likely to be stabbed in London.

Just an update on my previous post. I mentioned the issue with unpacked jumps like Tards or Tard Overs ending in a fatality with respect to the BFL. And I said I thought it hadn't happened yet.

Well obviously, I don't pay as much attention to BASE fatalities as I used to but I do read them when they pop up on FB. But somehow I missed #381. And from the description it sounds like a Tard Over fatality which I think is the very first one. I tried to look through the current BFL for another one, but the BFL is now so difficult to navigate I gave up.

Carl Boenish defined a BASE jump as being made from a fixed object with a packed parachute. So by rights #381 shouldn't be on the BFL. And that's what I want to talk about. First off, I believe #381 should indeed be on the BFL. But if I could go back in time and ask Carl Bonish about it I think he would say no. And here's why.

Carl didn't live long enough to see Tard Overs being done. And when he was figuring out what the BASE objects were to be, and what type of rig configurations were in alignment with BASE jumping he didn't figure on them. However he did have some experience with un-packed fixed object jumps. I know he is with with Phil Smith, BASE 1, when Phil is jumping rather tall cliffs into the water holding two small round parachutes unpacked in each hand. And I'm sure Phil logged those jumps as BASE jumps.

Another time is when Carl visited the bridge in Arizona in the very early 80s. He fabricated a large metal hoop, to which he attached a round parachute with clothespins. And attached to the parachute is Richie Stein, who later became BASE 74, standing on the bridge next to the hoop. When Rich jumped - at line stretch the clothespins released the already open parachute and Richie floated down safely. (Richie called these 'Coney Island' jumps.) And I believe it was these type of jumps Carl thought shouldn't be counted as BASE jumps.

But I think if Carl was alive today and saw people doing Tard Overs he might change his mind and agree to call them BASE jumps too. While not packed into a container the parachute is at least partially packed in the sense it is orientated to face the right direction and the canopy itself is at least flaked out in semi-PRO fashion, with the lines in the center, just like the start of any normal pack job. Add to that if you mess up it can be a very dangerous jump. And I think we've all seen enough vids of ugly Tard Overs where the jumper got away with it, but they could have easily ended in a fatality.

And Lastly, Atsutoshi Hanashima had made 400 BASE jumps before the jump that killed him. And he deserves to be on the BFL not because it is in any way a badge of honor, but because it's also how we memorialize our brothers and sisters. And he was definitely a brother in BASE.

NickDG
BASE 194

https://youtu.be/JDfHrZEEfKg