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Daredevil skydiver pushed limit too far on final jump




By Jesse J. Smith, Freeman staff December 09, 2002




Second of two parts.

KJERAG, A SHEER rock wall rising 3,000 feet over Norway's Lyse Fjord, attracts hundreds of people from around the world each year for one reason: to jump off.

Since 1994, the towering cliff has become a prime destination for BASE jumping, a form of skydiving that uses natural or manmade terrain features rather than an airplane as a platform. BASE is an acronym for Buildings, Aerials, Spans and Earth.

By Sept. 12, 2002, Salt Point native Rob Tompkins, 30, had spent eight weeks in the small village of Lyseboten, below Kjerag, living a BASE jumper's dream.

"Norway has the biggest cliffs and the most beautiful scenery," said Jim Jennings, a friend of Tompkins and his BASE mentor. "You can fly over ridges and close to cliff walls."

Tompkins and Jennings had been making the two-hour hike up Kjerag every day, sometimes more than once, for the thrill of short ride in relatively new piece of BASE technology, the wingsuit. Tompkins' Skyflyer 3000 model was, at the time, the most advanced "Birdman" suit on the market. Equipped with flaps of parachute material at the arms and legs, the suit allowed Tompkins to assume the form of a human wing gliding silently above the landscape for up to a mile before deploying a steerable parachute for a landing.

Requiring precise body control and keen judgment, the wingsuit represented a new level of challenge for Tompkins. As he had with skydiving and BASE jumping, Tompkins took on wingsuit flight with passion.

As the jumping season wound down in mid-September, Tompkins had made 92 wingsuit jumps, most over Lyse Fjord. While others had more experience flying the wingsuit from an airplane, Tompkins had more BASE flights than anyone in the world. Throughout the summer, he had tested the limits of the suit, making spectacular jumps from difficult exit points, most beginning with a backflip off the cliff.

"Rob wanted to show the world his talent," wrote Jennings in an online forum on Sept. 12. "Rob wanted to do things nobody could do."

Besides becoming proficient with the Skyflyer, Tompkins had another goal that summer: to bring back a video record of his exploits that would serve as an entrée into the elite ranks of Hollywood stunt men. With Jennings manning the camcorder, Tompkins planned jumps that would wow people who made a living off death-defying acts.

"He wanted to pioneer some things and, if he had stayed around, he probably would have," said Anne Helliwell, a friend of Tompkins and Jennings from Perris Valley, Calif., who has been BASE jumping for 20 years. "He was accelerating in the sport at that speed where, in a year, you either end up a hero or dead."

On Sept. 12, Tompkins' pioneer impulse brought him to a ledge on Kjerag that no wingsuit pilot had ever attempted. According to Jennings, Tompkins had been eyeing the untried exit point throughout the last month of their stay in Lyseboten. Located between two established exit points, a solid rock ledge the size of a football field extended from Kjerag about 600 feet below the top of the cliff. While other exit points offered jumpers a relatively generous 11 to 15 seconds of free fall before impact, Tompkins would have just five seconds to get enough lift beneath the wingsuit to carry him clear of the rock shelf.

"Probably two people in the world could do that jump," said Jennings. "But they wouldn't do it because it's a do-or-die jump. And they definitely wouldn't have done a back flip. But Rob was a dreamer and his dream was to make that jump."

Tompkins practiced at a nearby point with seven seconds of free fall before the ledge. Starting off with his trademark backflip, Tompkins made the jump eight or 10 times, Jennings said.

After studying video of those jumps, Jennings concluded that the five-second jump was not possible. Other wingsuit pilots agreed.

Jennings warned Tompkins to at least wait until next season, when he had more experience on the Skyflyer 3000.

Sept. 12 turned out clear and cold. Tompkins had just a few more days left before heading back to the United States. He was determined to try the new exit point before he left. But Jennings' misgivings about the jump grew stronger that morning, when the pair made a flight together.

"We planned to fly clear of a ridge, deploy over another ridge and land on a beach," he said. "We did the jump and we both just sank. I don't know if it was the air temperature, the humidity or both, but we both sank really fast."

As they hiked up Kjerag for the second time that day, Jennings again asked Tompkins to forego the jump from the untried exit point. By 6 p.m. Tompkins and Jennings had reached the cliff top over the ledge.

According to witnesses, Tompkins spent an hour-and-a-half stretching, looking out over the Fjord and waiting for the setting sun to light the rock face he planned to fly across.

At 7:30, Jennings and other bystanders trained video cameras on Tompkins as he stood, back to the ledge, and launched into a backflip.

"After seven seconds of free fall, Rob impacted on the talus ledge," Jennings wrote in the online forum for BASE jumpers that night. "He never tried to deploy his pilot chute, knowing that this would not save him. Rob believed he could outfly the ledge - til his death."

At home in Elbridge, N.Y., Tompkins' sister Melissa Stahl got the call from Jennings informing her of Rob's death. Accompanied by her husband, Frank, she drove south to Salt Point to break the news to her parents. It was the birthday of her father, Robert L. Tompkins.

"When I saw them pull up, I thought they were coming to wish him a happy birthday," said Rob's mother, Joan. "Then I saw Melissa's face and I knew something had happened."

News quickly spread on the BASE board online forum, and condolence posts poured in -some from close friends, others from those who had known him briefly or not at all. Among the platitudes about "blue skies," certain words and phrases keep popping up: "spiritual," "laughter," "loved life."

"We got sympathy cards from people who had met Rob once or twice saying what a positive effect he had on their lives," said Stahl.

Tompkins was the 11th or 12th BASE jumper killed this year, the third at Kjerag since June. While Jennings and others in the BASE community acknowledge that overconfidence and lack of foresight played a role in Tompkins' death, Helliwell says that, in a new sport, somebody has to test the boundaries.

"We are all pushing the envelope," she said. "Sometimes you get away with it and you win, sometimes you don't. But if you don't push the envelope, you don't advance and the sport doesn't advance."

For Tompkins' parents and sisters, there is no anger at the sport or anyone in it. Rather, they say, Tompkins' death was most simply a sad conclusion to a life lived just the way he wanted it.

"Rob wouldn't be who he was if he didn't do what he did, and he was someone really special, really great," said Stahl.

Tompkins was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Finger Lakes, where he first fell in love with the sky. Mourners gathered at the Obid drop zone, at Perris Valley and the Tompkins' home. But Joan Tompkins has plans for one more memorial to her only son.

"I want to go skydiving," she said. "On his birthday, or on Sept. 12. He had such passion for it, he was so happy when he was doing it. I want to understand that."

Reader Opinions

Post your opinion and share your thoughts with other readers!

Name: Antoinette Maranino
Date: Dec, 09 2002

BASE jumping is ILLEGAL and is NOT a sport. It is full of egomaniacs who are only concerned with themselves. This idiot was NO hero. He was selfish and his friend assisted in a homocide as far as I am concerned. Maybe the family would like to disguise their guilt and pain by hiding the facts, that is understandable. But hat is doing no one any favors, especially not the public full of impressionable young people. Is the Tompkins family some friend of the Freeman? Is the Freeman trying to boost Dutchess County subscriptions? Why is this story even written? A hero is someone who risks their life to SAVE lives. This egomaniac idiot was no hero. The pain he leaves behind was motivated by a selfish, cowardice act. He is NO HERO. BASE jumping is a harmful and illegal as drug use. And everyone who wants to see the truth will know that and speak that.

Nice huh?

Daredevil jumper lived - and died - pushing the envelope


By Jesse J. Smith, Freeman staff December 08, 2002


Tompkins skydives over Perris Valley, Calif.
ON A CRISP, late-summer day in Norway, 3,000 feet above Lyse Fjord, Dutchess County native Rob Tompkins stood at the edge of a sheer rock cliff, ready to fly.
First of two parts.


ON A CRISP, late-summer day in Norway, 3,000 feet above Lyse Fjord, Dutchess County native Rob Tompkins stood at the edge of a sheer rock cliff, ready to fly.

For the past three months, the 30-year-old veteran skydiver and aspiring stuntman had been testing the limits of the Skyflyer flight suit in jumps from cliff faces in Italy, Switzerland and Norway.

Fitted with material between the arms and body of the one-piece jumpsuit, the system allowed Tompkins to leap from a cliff and glide, often for miles, before deploying a parachute and coming down for a safe landing.

FOR TOMPKINS, the Skyflyer jumps were the high point of a lifelong love affair with human body flight. From his teen years in Salt Point, where he developed his acrobatic talents on the high-diving board and parallel bars, to the last year of his life, when he moved from parachuting out of airplanes to more thrilling and more dangerous leaps off cliffs and buildings, Tompkins always was pushing toward the goal of a purer form of flight.

By September, Tompkins had more experience making the state-of-the-art flight-suit jumps off cliffs than anyone in the world. Throughout the summer, he had pushed the envelope, making risky but spectacular jumps in hopes of bringing home video footage that would propel him into the ranks of Hollywood's top stuntmen, said friend and instructor Jim Jennings.

On Sept. 12, he pushed the envelope too far: Rob Tompkins died during a dangerous jump off a ledge above Lyse Fjord that no wingsuit pilot had ever attempted.

FRIENDS, family and Tompkins himself disdained the term "daredevil," but there was no denying his fearlessness and self-confidence in making jumps.

Tompkins' father, Robert L. Tompkins Jr., smiles when he recalls running across the yard of their rambling two-story home near Clinton Corners to the put the brakes on a perilous skateboard stunt.

"He and his friends built this skateboard ramp," the father said. "They pushed it up to the curb, and he was about to go off the ramp and jump over six kids (who lay in the driveway). He said, 'It's O.K., Dad. I always make it farther from the curb than anyone.'"

THE ELDER Tompkins, a computer engineer at Hudson Valley Data Systems, and his wife, Joan, recall Rob as an energetic kid who spent his days exploring the woods and playing with his two older sisters and a tight-knit group of neighborhood children.

"The people around here shared our values," Mrs. Tompkins said. "It wasn't like the city, where there's so much trouble a kid can get into walking the streets. ... He had a very safe upbringing."

Devout evangelical Christians, Tompkins' parents sent him to Upton Lake Christian School for a time and, according to family members, he never lost touch with his religious upbringing.

"My brother was very spiritual," said Tompkins' sister, Melissa Tompkins Stahl, 32. "He always felt he was being guided by God. He had a lot of trust in God."

AFTER graduating from Roosevelt High School in Hyde Park in 1990, Tompkins signed up for a five-year hitch in the Army, where he hoped to become a helicopter pilot. Instead, he was posted in Alaska as a ground-bound avionics technician. After his discharge, Tompkins moved to New York's Finger Lakes region, where Melissa helped him get a job as a handyman at high-end furniture maker Mackenzie Childs.

Tompkins thrived in the new environment. Meticulous by nature, he displayed a knack for detail work and soon joined the firm's special projects team, helping turn design concepts into reality.

IT WAS DURING this time that Tompkins began skydiving at a small drop zone in Obid, N.Y.

According to Chris Cowden, a skydiving instructor who jumped with Tompkins as a member of the Finger Lakes Skydiving Association, Tompkins was a natural-born flyer. Cowden said Tompkins quickly mastered the art of positioning his body in just the right way to control his movements while hurtling through the sky at 120 mph.

"He was the type of guy who comes through once every couple of years," Cowden said. "You don't see too many like him."

NOT SATISFIED with traditional skydiving, where jumpers move through the air on their bellies, Tompkins got into the relatively new, and much more demanding, sport of free-flying, in which jumpers use body control to perform aerobatic maneuvers. While friends say Tompkins was a safety-conscious jumper, he also was willing to test limits, both his own and the sport's.

"He was definitely not a reckless person, he just always wanted to take it to the next level," Cowden said.

FOR TOMPKINS, the next level was the skydiving Mecca of Perris Valley, Calif. Located in the desert just a few hours from Los Angeles, Perris Valley draws skydivers from around the world for its year-round clear weather and world's largest drop zone.

By 2000, Tompkins had set up a new life in Los Angeles that largely revolved around skydiving. By then, he was working as head carpenter on "The Christopher Lowell Show," a home-design program on television. But though he made more than enough money to have an apartment, Tompkins, to his mother's dismay, chose to live in a conversion van parked on the Universal Studios lot.

"He wanted to be mobile; he wanted to have that freedom to pick up and go anywhere," his sister said.

IT WAS IN Perris Valley that Tompkins spent most of his free time, guiding novice skydivers in exchange for free jumps. It also was where he met Jennings and threw himself headlong into the perilous world of BASE jumping.

BASE, an acronym for Buildings, Aerials, Spans and Earth, essentially is skydiving without the airplane. BASE jumpers will parachute off any suitable natural or manmade object.

While skydivers have about 60 seconds and an entire sky to work with, leaping off a skyscraper or mesa offers considerably less room for error. BASE jumpers may have as little as five seconds to deploy their chutes, and they must contend with wind gusts that can blow them back onto the object they jumped from.

Stay in the sport long enough, BASE veterans say, and you probably will get hurt. Most veteran jumpers can recite the names of friends or acquaintances killed in the sport.

WHILE SKYDIVING is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and overseen by the U.S. Parachuting Association, BASE jumping has no sanctioning body. Instead, the sport relies on a tight-knit community of jumpers, instructors and equipment manufacturers to dissuade the unprepared and guide novices.

When Jim Jennings met Tompkins in Perris Valley in the summer of 2001, he took an immediate liking to the talented skydiver and fledgling BASE jumper.

"When I met him, I instantly thought, 'This is a guy who respects me, who will listen to me,'" said Jennings, 33.

Over the next 12 months, Jennings, a skydiving instructor with 600 BASE jumps under his belt, schooled Tompkins in the sport, taking him to jumps across the country. "I brought him into my world. I took him on every trip for a year," said Jennings.

BY JUNE 2002, Tompkins fast was becoming a seasoned BASE jumper. And as "The Christopher Lowell Show" went into summer hiatus, Tompkins prepared for his biggest adventure to date. Over the next three months, Tompkins and Jennings would travel around Europe, making jumps from some of the world's most challenging and beautiful BASE sites.

Tompkins went to Europe with a plan, to master the Skyflyer suit and shoot a spectacular stuntman audition tape.

First, he returned to Salt Point to visit his family for what would turn out to be the last time. There, he discussed with his parents and sisters the possibility that he would not return from the towering cliffs of Lyse Fjord.

"We were very concerned," his sister said. "But Rob said, 'Every day is a bonus day.' He knew he could die, he wasn't flippant about it, he was just realistic. He had a grip on it."

Monday: Tompkins prepares for the stunt of his life.


©Daily Freeman 2002

Man - that Antoinette woman is tweaker.