Quote of the week

[Tree]

Dude, your pilot chute!

Huh? Oh sh-t. Fully extended bridle and inflated PC, pin one goes pop, pin two goes pop. Lots of fun at 120' up a frozen ghetto tower. Manage to wiggle out of harness without canopy falling all the way out. Stuff into stash bag and promptly toss overboard. Climb down, go to bar, drink.

This has never happened to me, nor have I seen it happen, but it does happen. Too cold and and too much of a hurry I guess. The moral of the story? Party more and jump less when the entire field is one big ice skating rink. We both fell down 4 or 5 times hiking in to that damn mess.

Tree :)

[imported_Tom Aiello]

I had the same thing happen a while back, partway up a tower. I managed to catch the bridle and stuff the PC down my shirt before the pin extracted.

You should have seen the look on Tattoo Buckaroo's face when I got up to the platform and said "hang on, I've got to take my rig off and do some re-packing..."

--Tom Aiello
tbaiello@mac.com

[JJ]

ON a sketchy LZ tower with a tight climbing cage two weeks ago and was climbing down due to high winds at opening altitude and suddenly felt a pop on my single pin at about 100 feet in 15-20 mph winds. I looked behind me and found my bridle fully extened and my pc lodged in a corner of the structure. What did I do? Well, I carefully pulled my pc down, wrapped the bridle around my pack job (which was barely hanging there by the multi - another good use of the multi) and me three times and continued to climb down.

Moral of the story: stuff the pc in the BOC so the handle doesn't stick out or wear your rig on backward or keep it in the hide-a-bag until you get to the top or don't jump towers...

JJ
:-)

[Bryan]

Thanks for the excitement. Solid ice on top of snow sucks. Hey M, too bad your in Florida sucking up the sunshine or you could have busted your A$$ as well.

Quit calling her a "ghetto tower" or she'll keep pulling your pilot chute out..
:P

[Ronald Overdijk]

Just a thought, when climbing or descending, just put the COMPLETE PC into the BOC, including whatever you use to extract it. No snatching possible.

Of course, the downside is that if you fall of at a survivable exit altitude you have not PC handy.

Ronald Overdijk

[Tree]

I had just packed it and it was stuffed all the way in. I was shocked when I saw it at bridle stretch.

:o