Team Geared Up

LONDON (Geared Up Blog) - Kudos to TCAL for spotting this one (we missed it!).

A sky diver’s helmet cam shows how his shoot doesn’t deploy, and he’s lands at 80mph in a forest but survives with some broken bones and punctured lung. Nice.

His friend films the whole thing too from behind him, and then lands in the undergrowth beside him.

It began as a routine day last December for Mikey who was instructing a group of trainees who set off in bright sunshine from an airbase.

He said: “There were 16 people on the plane, the usual mix of students and instructors. It was a routine jump from 15,000ft - about a minute’s freefall and then opening my main canopy when the altimeter on my wrist showed 5,000ft.

“When I pulled the ripcord, I realised there was a problem almost instantly. Usually you get pulled upright and look up to see the canopy but this time I was just spinning. The parachute hadn’t opened.

“I didn’t think that was a big deal. That’s why you open at 5,000ft - it gives you time to sort these things out, untwist the lines or whatever.”

The video shows that Mikey spent 46 seconds trying to free his main parachute by reaching behind him to unsnag the fine cords between the harness and the canopy. It’s a manoeuvre he had successfully completed several times before.

“This time I couldn’t do it,’ he said. “It still isn’t a worry because you’ve got a cutaway cable, a cord which you pull to detach the main canopy from you, so you can open your reserve chute.

“It’s happened to me seven times before in 7,000 jumps and countless times to others around the world. The system is very safe. I had complete faith in it.

“Actually it’s just a bit of fun, because going back into freefall is a nice feeling and then you open your reserve chute.

“The only thing that slightly annoyed me at that time was that I would have to go to look for my main parachute, which costs £1,600, in a forest.

“So I pulled the cutaway at 3,500ft…and nothing happened. It was in that second that all hell broke loose in my mind. The lines had snagged, so the main canopy was still there.

“At first I thought they were caught on my clothes. I was wearing a hooded top that day and I thought the hood was the problem, so for a few seconds I was reaching behind me trying to clear it.

“But it wasn’t that either - the cords seemed to be catching on part of the parachute container on my back, which is a one-in-a-million chance.

“We carry a small knife to cut the parachute lines if necessary but there was no way I could reach them. I was being thrown around like a rag doll, spinning in the air so quickly that I was nearly blacking out.

“I knew that if I opened my reserve chute into the mess of my main canopy, it could slow my descent rate down so I might not die.

“But on the other hand, it could make things worse by wrapping itself round the main chute, reducing the drag and causing me to descend even faster.”

At 700ft - just seven seconds before impact - Mikey had no choice but to pull the reserve cable.

“That was the last shot. I’d left it late so there wouldn’t be much time, if it didn’t work, for me to speed up. And it didn’t work.

“Nothing changed. So at that point I thought, well, I’ve got my camera and I’ll wave goodbye. There’s nothing left for me to do…”