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Accidents in Wingsuit Base Jumping

• August 2015
• Hi Steph Fly

Hi Steph,
I had no idea who you were a month ago. I’m from Louisiana where we hunt and fish,not any mountains or cliffs around. My son got interested in rock climbing while attending Rocky Mountain University in Utah. We were having dinner one night and he mentioned he had taken a clinic in Yosemite last year. A few days before I had seen a news report about the tragic death of 2 base jumpers in Yosemite. We Googled the story and that’s where I saw your name and began reading about you. You certainly have been thru a lot with the loss of your husband and friends. In reading your blog you seem to have a clear vision for your life and I’m sure you are admired and looked up to for your courage and determination even outside the climbing community.
I have looked at some of the wing suit video and it’s amazing how close they come to the trees and cliffs. There’s been quite a few wing suit deaths over the past few years. I was surprised that many were very experienced and world class. Do you have any thoughts on what can go wrong on these flights?
Best of luck in all your endeavors! You are an inspiration!
Sincerely,
Richard

Hi Richard,
Thanks for writing, and I appreciate your thoughts. I know you just started researching wingsuit base, but you’re asking the same questions the community is asking itself. When I started base jumping wingsuits about 8 years ago, there weren’t as many deaths. And most people who were flying wingsuits were flying away from the cliffs, or beside them. In the last couple of years there have been a lot of people dying. And of course we are asking why. There are three things that I see, when I think about this question.

First of all, there has been an explosion of popularity of base jumping and wingsuit flying in the last few years. So there are more people doing it, and there are more people getting into it very quickly without a lot of experience. That accounts for a lot of the accidents. This makes sense, so those of us who jump a lot aren’t as confused by those numbers, because it’s clear to see what happened in the tragedy.

In the last three years, suits have been getting better and people have been shooting and posting up an endless stream of POV footage on the internet. Now people are not just flying close beside rocks and trees, but right over them and getting down as low as they can, often just a few feet above terrain. New jumpers see that footage and think it’s the norm. And then you have the competitive personality, wanting to always push one step further. When you are flying a few feet away from the ground, there is very little margin for the unexpected. Wingsuits only go down, because we don’t have an engine. There is a limit with how close you can fly, especially with having terrain under you. At a certain point, the next step is impacting the terrain–this is why I don’t see this type of flying as progression. To me, progression means there’s no limit, but in this style of flying, the limit comes when you hit the terrain. So in the last few years, we’ve also had an epidemic of people flying in “no out” situations and often it works out fine, but when it doesn’t work out there’s nowhere to go.

In these first two situations: seeing accidents with very inexperienced jumpers and very experienced jumpers, one thing we have in common is that the person is pushing it. The inexperienced jumper is pushing it simply because he doesn’t yet have the experience, not really by choice. The experienced jumper is pushing it because he is looking for progression. I think that it takes a lot of time in the sport to develop decision making skills, and that it’s important to reduce outside influence as much as possible–i.e., large groups on jumps together, looking at what others are doing or posting on the internet, creating situations of competitiveness or external pressure in any way. I have always drawn many parallels between free solo climbing and wingsuit base jumping, and I treat them very much the same way. The way I climb with a rope is completely different than the way I climb without a rope. I don’t assume that because things have worked out in the past that they are guaranteed to work exactly the same next time, and I’ve learned to always expect the unexpected. When climbing without a rope, I give myself much bigger margins for error or unexpected occurrences, and this is also how I fly near terrain.

And finally, there’s the “x factor” or random factor, as Mario called it. Wingsuit base jumping is dangerous, like everything else we do in life including eating, driving, working, using power tools, managing money, playing sports, traveling and going into the mountains. Sometimes you can really make a big mistake in decision making or execution and you can get away with it. Sometimes you can do everything right and have a catastrophic accident that no one could have predicted. We see very very few incidents that fall into this category, but these are the ones that affect me the most. Mario’s accident falls into this category.

Recently Robert Pecnik, one of the most respected wingsuit base jumpers in the sport, posted a link to this article on Facebook, with the comment that it’s a good read for any base jumper as it has a lot of parallels with wingsuit base. The concepts of humility versus baseless confidence, normalization of deviance, destructive goal pursuit and groupthink resonated with me very much, and I think are all important things to examine carefully and honestly with any endeavor that has high consequences.

After this sort of conversation, often people say, “why?” Usually mountain people don’t. The best analogy I have is fire. We have to treat fire with respect and with care. And fire can destroy, even when it is treated with respect. Sometimes fire destroys randomly, regardless of safety efforts or human agency–sometimes lightning ignites acres of forest. Most people consider fire a necessity to life. The other thing that is a necessity to life is death. I’m not sure why our culture at large seems to think that people will live forever or that people should live forever, and that it might somehow be possible to erase anything that might inadvertently cause death to happen and take away the assumption of immortality. Death is part of life. What matters most is living a good life and a curious life, one that is beautiful and true to one’s heart. For me, a human who walks on two legs, to stand at the edge of a cliff and launch off into flight is one of the most magical, indescribable experiences I have the privilege to live. Like everything precious, it can cost a lot. I hope that through respect, humility and good luck I’ll be able to keep living it during my time.

Thank you Richard for your interest and for your email,
Steph