Honed. Rich Slater
parachute moved through the sky and how he could control its direction, rate of descent and landing force by using the toggles at the end of the control line on each side.
“Without the chute you bounce,” RSL told Rob, “but do it my way and landing will be like stepping off a phonebook.”
Next, RSL had Rob lie on the hood of a car and assume the basic “arch” position used by all parachutists to stay stable in freefall. With arms and legs spread a comfortable distance apart, back arched, head high, hips thrust downward, the arch allows for the unimpeded and all-important proper deployment of the parachute when it came time to “pull.”
“Skydiving’s pretty easy compared to climbing,” RSL told Rob, “but you can’t screw up any of the four or five things you have to do right. It really is pretty basic: Arch your back, if you start spinning, dive out of it and re-arch.” If something went wrong, he could correct a problem before bouncing.
Under RSL’s watchful eye, Rob practiced his arch until he’d developed enough muscle memory for it to feel reasonably natural and comfortable. He also practiced putting his gear on and off, “checking his handles,” and doing all the other things an experienced jumper would know and do by heart. Satisfied Rob at least acted like he knew what he was doing, RSL matriculated him from the LAFFS ground school and began outlining his first-jump dive plan.
Rob would jump out and assume the arch position, followed shortly thereafter by RSL. Rob would try to maintain the arch position, hold a heading and check his altimeter until he reached an altitude about 3,500 feet above the ground, the standard pull altitude for less experienced jumpers. It provided several more seconds to open the parachute or, if there was a problem, jettison the main parachute and deploy the reserve.
Pulling at 3,500 feet would also give Rob a longer parachute ride and more time to figure out how to control it, get it aimed in the right direction and have plenty of time to line up and otherwise prepare for landing.
RSL stressed the importance of staying stable – but also the even greater importance of pulling at 3,500 feet no matter what.
“Even if your parachute malfunctions because you’re not stable when you pull,” counseled RSL, “you still slow things down and that’s better than trying to get stable all the way to cause of death – impact.”
“Cause of death: panic and impact-and being a pussy,” Rob added, laughing.
Then he had Rob mentally practice his landing approach and “flare” – simultaneously pulling down both toggles to slow the parachute’s forward and vertical speed. Rob practiced his landing procedures and even stepped off the curb and a phone book to cement the visualization in his mind.
When RSL deemed Rob ready to jump, he presented him with a blank skydiver logbook, used by jumpers to faithfully and honestly record the dates, locations, altitudes, and free fall times of their jumps. Like pilot flight logs, they are sworn records of accomplishment that are not to be trifled with lightly, and are used by parachutists to officially document their skills and experience when they go to commercial parachute centers.
Of course, no parachute center would allow Rob, with his four static line jumps and no freefall experience, to get on a plane and jump out of it at 10,500 feet. A paper record was needed to match what RSL considered to be his actual ability. That little technicality seemed a not insurmountable problem for persons of intelligence and ingenuity, which Rob and RSL certainly believed themselves to be. Rob sat down, logbook and pen in hand, and forged entry after entry of bogus jumps he would claim to have completed.
When his list topped 50 jumps, he tucked the log book in his pocket, loaded his chute in the car and set off with his friend The Leavittator to the jump site at the Loveland-Fort Collins Airport 40 miles northeast of Boulder to the Sky’s West Parachute Center. Rob’s bogus logbook passed muster at the manifest counter and RSL and he soon found themselves climbing aboard a Cessna 206 jump plane with four other jumpers.
About 20 minutes later and 10,500 feet higher, the first jumper slid open the segmented Lexan jump door and looked out to “spot” the aircraft. At the appropriate moment, the sky divers would jump out where they had the best chance to land on target.
When the blast of air hit him, Rob knew he was about to literally plunge into a new and exciting part of his life. But the thought passed quickly. It was time to do exactly what he had learned at the LAFFS, all ending with a “…step off a phone book.”
The first step was a lot higher. After flashing a big grin at RSL, Rob dove from the airplane and instantly found a freedom and exhilaration he had never before known.
It didn’t seem like Rob was falling as the plane floated up and away from him like a balloon, quickly becoming a small dot against the sky. As he hurtled toward the earth at terminal velocity of 120 miles per hour, Rob felt the wind against his body. In his peripheral vision loomed the square summit block of Long’s Peak and the other great mountains of Colorado’s Front Range. Rob was suspended in space and time, centered, and totally happy. He felt free.
Rob also felt stable and didn’t tumble or spin. When it was time to pull, he was in a good body position to allow the parachute to open properly.
Reluctantly, Rob reached for his main parachute’s pilot chute, a 30-inch diameter round mini-chute that begins the main parachute deployment process. He had already learned the only “ripcord” on modern parachute systems is on the reserve parachute.
Rob threw the pilot chute into the airflow, where it inflated and served as a portable, in-air anchor for the parachute that stretched out below it as Rob fell earthward. When the main parachute reached “line stretch,” Rob felt the hard, comforting jolt of a parachute that opened perfectly.
“It’s hellacious,” he said later, “to look up and see that it’s open the way it’s supposed to be.”
Rob grabbed the toggles and steered his parachute through the sky toward the drop zone landing area at about 25 miles per hour. Sometimes he turned left, other times right, to compensate for the wind and stay aimed at his target. He also practiced his flare several times by pulling the toggles down until the wind noise stopped as he momentarily floated motionless in the sky.
After a final practice flare, Rob let up on the toggles. The parachute resumed its normal speed as he lined it up for a landing into the wind to give himself the lowest possible groundspeed at touchdown.
Rob flared at just the right time and successfully concluded his first-ever freefall jump and airfoil parachute landing. Moments later, RSL touched down beside him.
“You were right Randall,” Rob grinned. “It was just like stepping off a phone book.”
As they gathered up their parachutes, Rob couldn’t help but to look back up at the blue of the empty sky and think back to the El Cap jumper who had flown past him, sparking his immediate vow to someday fly. Now he had flown too. It had been an indescribable rush – but it wasn’t the end of his parachuting road. Rob didn’t want to just jump out of airplanes at commercial parachute centers. He had much more in mind.
Rob made nine more jumps with RSL, after which RSL pronounced Rob to be the first graduate of the Leavitt Accelerated Free Fall School. Rob was now good enough to load onto an airplane at any drop zone and competently handle himself in the wide-open skies above. But to successfully jump El Capitan, he needed to learn more than RSL could offer.
“I was more into climbing than jumping,” RSL recounted, “and I was still on probation from my El Cap jump, so I couldn’t take Rob all the way through his first BASE jumps. I thought it would be better to hook Rob up with someone who was a better fit for that part.”
RSL introduced Rob to Robin Heid, an experienced skydiver, skydiving instructor and pioneering BASE jumper – a parachutist who jumps from Buildings, Antennae, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs). Robin was one of the first 50 people in the world to jump with a parachute from a fixed object and had already jumped El Capitan twice. Most recently, Robin had been part of a six-jumper group that made the first-ever descent into Colorado’s notoriously dangerous Black