Honed. Rich Slater
the system was still in the test phase and suffered from what turned out to be a fatal flaw: catastrophic results from too much tow line tension and no way to see it coming. If the tow vehicle drove faster than the parachute could fly, or atmospheric conditions added tension to the tow line, the parachute would “lock out” and dive into the ground like a kite with no tail in a high wind. In other words, the situation would go critical before anyone could react to it – even when a “tensiometer” was installed to monitor tow line tension.
More unfortunately, the lockout accidents to date had been few and almost exclusively attributed to pilot or tow vehicle driver error.
One warm day in May, 1982, BD, Rob, Leonard Coyne and The Great Matt, another of Rob’s climbing partners, all assembled in a wide-open field on the east edge of the Rocky Mountains foothills near the infamous Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The plan was to put Verm Sherman, yet another of Rob’s climbing partners, under the towed parachute and teach him how to fly it. Naturally, BD would test the system to make sure everything would work right before putting a noob, or rookie, under the nylon.
A climbing rope was hooked on one end to a car, with the other to a carabiner attached to BD’s parachute harness. Then, with Leonard and The Great Matt alongside, the three of them ran down a road until the canopy filled with air and lifted off. BD was soon soaring more than 50 feet above the ground. Everything looked great until the tow car turned through a curve in the road, increasing the tension on the tow line. The canopy started bucking, locked out, tipped over and slammed BD to the ground.
“He hit so hard, we all thought he was dead,” Leonard Coyne said later. “When the parachute covered him and he didn’t move, we were sure of it.”
But BD was honed and he survived, though he spent a month in the hospital and another month in a body cast recovering from a broken back, shattered ankle, broken foot and separated shoulder. For Verm, watching BD crash and burn closed the door on any further thoughts of “non-traditional” parachuting schools – or parachuting at all.
“The only way you’re getting a chute on me is if the plane’s going down,” Verm concluded.
For Rob, thinking his friend BD was dead made his heart sink, but his spirit quickly soared when they raised BD’s impromptu parachute shroud to find that conclusions about his death were premature. A still-breathing though not-bleeding Black Death Heid blinked his eyes at them and said, “Okay, what happened?”
Rob spent hours at BD’s hospital bedside. Together they recounted the ill-fated events of that day with irreverent laughter. BD had taken it to another level and Rob had been there. They also discussed that, although BD hadn’t died that day, the towed-parachute training concept had. When news of BD’s accident reached the manufacturer, it immediately canceled the project.
“No reason to stop jumping, though,” said BD, with Rob, of course, concurring. Neither of them considered giving up skydiving or BASE jumping just because one parachute ride didn’t work out. Rob greatly admired BD and his renegade mentality and, while some members of Rob’s climbing team may have acted only in support of Rob’s periodic feats of apparent insanity, BD was brave enough to dance on the edge himself. For Rob to renounce this mindset while one of its most esteemed adherents lay in a hospital would have been an unconscionable act of betrayal. Rob and BD knew the risks and accepted the possible negative outcomes as a requirement of getting to that special place they both craved so much. Neither wanted or needed accolades, critique or sympathy. As Black Death Heid told me later, “People like Rob and I are more afraid of not living than we are of dying.”
While Black Death Heid cooled his heels in the hospital, Rob and RSL continued climbing together locally in preparation for their upcoming summer trip to Yosemite Valley, or “the Valley” as they called it, checking off route after route on their respective lists of Eldorado and Boulder Canyon climbs. During one of those climbs, Rob told RSL that the Black Canyon was a “Gumby jump” that hadn’t been nearly as challenging as he’d expected.
“Okay, then,” RSL riposted, “if that’s a Gumby jump, let’s raise the bar and make it more interesting. We’ll do a two-way – and then climb the wall instead of hiking out.”
Rob instantly agreed.
“That’ll make a great picture!” he declared, then added, “Plus it will be the world’s first jump-climb!”
Though the previous solo jumps RSL and Rob had made into the Black Canyon had gone off without a hitch, things went wrong fast soon after they stepped off the edge.
“We launched from the little ledge on Serpent’s Point that BD calls ‘The Serpent’s Tooth,’” RSL recounted. “I took the grip on Rob’s wrist because I had more experience and wanted the control in case something happened. I did the countdown and when we went off, Rob went head-low, so I let go.”
RSL started tracking and watched as Rob dove head-first down the cliff for a few seconds before he started tracking away.
“It was maybe the most vivid moment of my entire life,” said RSL, “watching the pegmatite stripes going by me, watching my buddy in freefall going past the stripes and the canyon just swallowing him up. I gotta hand it to Rob; I was really impressed by his ability there. He was totally under control the whole time, and totally aware of where he was and what he needed to do. Even as he tracked away, he kept looking over his shoulder to find me to make sure that we had enough separation to not hit each other on opening.”
Once Rob assured himself of good separation, he “dumped,” or deployed his chute, at 300 feet – way lower than he’d planned. Rob’s parachute opened facing back toward the wall. Because he opened too low to reach either sandbar, Rob now faced landing options that were only slightly less heinous than hitting the wall and experiencing a first-hand taste of the “Pinball Effect.”
Splashing down in the Grade 6 rapids was sure death by drowning. Crashing into a boulder-and tree-strewn hillside across the Gunnison River was just as sure a visit to the emergency room. Rob chose the least horrendous option of landing downwind at high speed on the south-shore sand bar covered with ankle-breaker rocks. Rob hammered in, badly mauling his foot, but was otherwise not seriously injured.
Maintaining his focus during those imminent-death moments as he plummeted toward the bottom of the canyon slowed down time for Rob. It enabled him to coolly process the situation and extricate himself from danger, all the while getting to savor the experience. Those moments were all his, in a special place and state that risk, determination, courage and focus allowed him to reach.
There would, however, be no effortless dry crossing of the rapids this time. Rob couldn’t even walk on the damaged foot, much less climb and jump between house-sized boulders. Rob was a strong swimmer and at first thought about just swimming across the Grade 1 rapids. After the battering he’d taken, though, he decided against it. Fortunately, they had stashed gear for their planned triumphant free climb up the previously aid-only 5.9/A3 Journey through Mirkwood route. RSL retrieved a rope and flung one end to the “madman across the water.”
But there was nothing mad about Rob crossing an icy, fast-moving mountain river with a bum foot – as long as he had a rope. After all, he’d been a captain of the high school swim team. It would be a piece of cake.
Rob pulled the rope tight across the river, then waded in, but was immediately swept straight downstream and across the strong current. He and RSL drew on individual strength and climber teamwork to get Rob to the north shore with no further damage. A piece of cake, just like he figured. Safely on the right side of the river, they then planned the rest of the trip out of the Black.
Free climbing Journey through Mirkwood, of course, was out of the question. They would have to get out of the Black Canyon through the SOB Gully, a two- to three-hour hike for strong young men with two good feet but a hideous, heinous, horrendous crawl through poison ivy, ticks and gnarly boulders if one is either figuratively or literally lame.
It took two days for them to get to the top. RSL could have hiked out and been back the same day with rescuers, but to Rob, that would have been poor style