Cutaway

BASE Jump Cutaway FAILURE!!~ 1% Luck

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• published: 15 Feb 2015
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I honestly can't really believe I am ok after this; probably should be dead! Anyway, that didn't happen so you guys can at least laugh at me and talk shit, which is almost more fun. Anyway, stupid shit like this shouldn't happen with proper planning. I was being dumb for sure, mega fail points. However, this does have relevance to the base and skydiving communities. This accident was entirely my fault (most likely do to lack of gear maintenence), and I am lucky that there were a couple things that saved me. My slider held my cutaway riser, which held tension in my lines to give me 3 inflated cells to land under, as well as being able to see and brace for landing on the soft hill side seconds before impact. We learned a few things from this incident. After an accident, if you are going to jump after the person, take 30 seconds to do a gear check, grab first aid gear or a beacon, and go over a short plan of attack etc... Also, and more obviously, make sure to pre-test and lube all your gear more than never. Especially before intentionally using the technology. I did not. This is most likely the cause for the jamming of my cutaway cable; built up sand and dirt, as well as maybe water landings could have been a colprit. This is what happened after some inspection and investigation over the last days. I was going to pull my cutaway with just my left hand. After my first attempt, I realized there was too much tension to release with one hand. (this was probably the pull that jammed the cable initially, unless it was just frozen from something else previously). I thought that this was normal because I was weighting the canopy and I just needed to tug harder. I grabbed the handle again with both hands and gave it another strong pull. I leaned into my harness and pulled REALLY hard.... you can hear the ferrule fail in the video (pop) as I pull the handle entirely off my cutaway cable. This ended up dragging my first cable out of the routing and releasing the one side of my canopy... now i am falling under only have half a canopy, spiraling, and my cutaway cable is really stuck and my handle is off... I think pitch anyway... but my imaging my canopy tangling even more and me spiraling into the ground from 600ft stopped me. I immiditately thought I only had a few seconds to disconnect so maybe i could pull the cable the opposite way against the blockage but because there was no more handle, my hands were drenched in fear sweat... not a chance. Then I thought maybe I could release it just below the loop attachment... thats when I knew i only had a few seconds and they were already gone.. I had lost partial altitude awareness,even if it was just for a couple seconds... I realized i was too low... low and Spinning.. and losing altitude fast. Now I realized had to keep this canopy, there was no choice. if had just disconnected even a few seconds earlier, i would most likely have been too low and would have just went in... I fucking hated the idea... I fucking grimaced and I pitched my pilot chute, hard. I tried to get it to inflate away from my 3 cell mess... but It immediately blew through my lines... literally the worst pitch ever... great... I watched the angle of the bridle pulling around the lines... my canopy wasnt going to deploy. I grabbed the bridle above my head, followed it to my pins pulled my canopy out of the top of my container and threw it above me... I watched it slowly swirl into a bigger mess of lines as i the ground come up fast.... My tail gate didn't even break, and all I could do was try to keep balance under my 3 cells as much as possible to try to counteract the spin as much as I could. I came around and was able to spot where I was going to land, and braced for impact. I hit hard on my side and knocked the wind out of myself. Other than that I was uninjured... Luckily alive... and very very shocked.