bfl-440

John Lavis

BFL# 440 (21st of the year)

Name: John Lavis
Date: 18th Sept 2022
Nationality: Australian
Location: Nose 3, Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
Object Type: Earth
COD: Cliff Strike / Impact
Clothes/Suit: Slick - wearing a onesie Pikachu
Gear/Parachute: LD3 Adrenalin - OSP2 - 245'
Age: 40
Skydive Experience:600
BASE Jumps: 550
Years/Seasons: 9 seasons (FJC - 7th Oct 2013)
Time of day: Unknown
Other factors: Unknown
Exit Altitude: 1670ft (510 metre's)
Conditions: Perfect
Winds: No wind on exit - Snow on ground
Description:

Saturday Morning, we got on a 10.30 train with all our friends to celebrate the wedding of two beautiful humans. It was a beautiful morning, and the mountains and trees were covered in snow. We watched them marry on the bottom of the Eiger, under the mushroom. The ceremony was beautiful, we caught up with a lot of friends we haven’t seen in ages. Jonno and I hadn’t seen each other in a week, so we sneaked out of there super early without saying goodbye (sorry guys) and took the train back home. We got out off the train at Kleine Scheidegg around 4. There was a half an hour layover, and we walked out a bit and got into a huge snowball fight. Not far from us was an Asian couple taking Instagram, perfect loving snow shots. They looked at us in shock and I just said, ‘well there’s two types of relationships.’ Where after we continued attacking each other with snowballs. We were home in Lauterbrunnen at 5pm, had a chilled night, made some chicken burgers, drank some healthy fruit juice, and watched Pirates of the Caribbean in a massive beanbag, laughing about being old.

The following morning, we got up around 8, had some coffee and homemade banana bread and tried to visit Sandi to cuddle the baby cows. They said Nadja really wanted to see Jonno, and she’d be back a bit later, so they asked us to come back in the afternoon.
We decided that we’d go for a jump first. Jonno wanted to do a 2-way. I suggested he take his wingsuit, but he wanted to go slick, so I asked him to at least wear some drag. He pulled the Pikachu onesie out of the cupboard, and I just laughed. We took the 10.38 gondola up, followed by the train to Winteregg. We stopped there had some coffee on the terrace and watched the view. He took some photos for an Asian couple and went full focus on that. Those that know him will laugh at this, because you can just picture him trying to get the perfect framing and instructing them on how to pose and where to stand.

We slowly walked down to Nose 3, he joked about doing a gainer and I said that was a stupid idea as he only ever jumps his wingsuit. When we got there the conditions were perfect. We both started gearing up and I routed the Pikachu tails through the left side lateral of his rig, because I was afraid it might be a snag hazard. We gave each other gear checks, kissed, and walked down. We got to the exit, called Air Glacier, and got clearance to jump. Jonno did the countdown, I did a flat and stable exit while looking under my right shoulder, I could see him do a gainer, go unstable and tumble. From the footage and what I’ve seen, we gathered the following:
12.39pm
0 sec: exit + gainer
2 sec: starts too over-rotate
4 sec: unstable drops right side of body
6 sec: turned 90 degrees to the right and pitches
7 sec: Jonno is facing away from the wall
8 sec: Canopy fully inflated, 180 degrees facing the wall.
9 sec: He grabs the rear right and front left risers. Then drops the rear right riser and starts to pull down on the front left riser.
10 sec: Both hands on front left riser. Pulling hand over hand, up the lines.
11 sec: First impact.
13 sec: Canopy collapses. Still holding front left lines.
14 sec: Second Impact. He lets go of the front left lines and they wrap around the Insta 360 unicorn extension. The canopy is still facing the wall. The front risers have (swoop/dive/Louie) loops. The left riser loop snags on the lower unicorn mount bolt (6cm long), at the helmet mount.
15-18sec: He slides down the wall.
19 sec: He tries to unhook the riser loop.
23 sec: Third impact. Lines twisting up.
27 sec: He pops the right brake.
28 sec: Fourth impact.
32 sec: He’s still trying to clear the malfunction. Front left riser loop is still snagged on the lower bolt.
33 sec: The camera mount snaps at the helmet but is wrapped in his lines and slider. The canopy turns to the left.
36 sec: Fifth impact. He seems to lose consciousness and the camera falls away.
We spoke with a few jumpers who saw the incident from the ground. They said that he then fell to a ledge, where he was hanging for about 5 minutes. The canopy released from the wall, and he fell to the top of the talus.
Jonno was a legend and a beautiful human. He will be dearly missed by all who had the privilege to meet him.
UPDATED INFORMATION 27TH SEPT, 2022
We wanted to add an addendum to the report that includes our takeaways regarding what went right, what went wrong, what could have been avoided, and what we can learn from Johnno’s jump.
Let’s first address the concern of a late night or partying, which was already addressed in the write-up but deserves to be reiterated. Johnno left super early (almost rudely early according to my sensitivities, as he still owed me a dance) so suffice it to say this was not in any way a factor on the jump the following day.

The next concern is the Pikachu onesie he wore. The onesie was a costume onesie, not a jumping suit, so akin to going slick. Our consensus was that the suit itself played no role in the incident. Jonneke even meticulously routed the tail of the suit through the left-side lateral to avoid any interference, and there was no suit-related interference. It was, for all intents and purposes, a slick jump.

Which brings us to our first concern, and what we have learned from his jump:
Going slick from Nose 3 has been done countless times, but it is still heads-up considering the large dihedral face because an off heading opening close to the wall can potentially put you into the wall on jumper’s left. In determining risk assessment, this is a factor to consider. Johnno almost certainly did consider this since he was known to be a careful and meticulously planned jumper.
The next and probably primary concern is the unicorn mount for his 360 camera. It was 7 inches/18cm long and mounted atop it was the ~12 cm long Insta 360. In order to mount it, he used the normal GoPro peg-screws, one at the bottom, one at the top. The bottom one would eventually catch his left-front-riser dive loop, undoubtedly contributing to his fatality. Some people tape around these screws to encourage lines/risers/dive loops to slip off of them, others use specialized mounts. Many do not, and in seeing this incident—how steadfastly the riser, lines, and dive loop could have and did catch on one of those pegs—it seems prudent to take that into serious consideration on any jump. This is especially true when doing aerials.
So now we need to consider the individual jumper and his personal proclivities and experience.
Johnno was most experienced/current in WS BASE, and while he had done aerials before, he wasn’t necessarily current with them. He also was not as current going slick on slider-up jumps. These two factors together could have contributed to his over-rotating the gainer. The gainer itself was clean, and likely would have worked well on a normal slider-down jump where he would pitch as he comes out of the rotation, but in his attempt to track out of it, he began to over-rotate and go unstable.
The video shows at this point he begins to bring his knees toward his chest—the opposite of arching. Given the amount of altitude he had, it is my opinion that if he had instead tried to arch out of it basically going into box-man position, he might have been able to wait for air-pressure to build up enough to reposition himself and then start his track properly. Instead, it looks like as he over-rotates, he brings his knees toward his chest which seems to only exacerbate his bad positioning, eventually causing him to dip extremely right-side low, and then yaw ~90 degrees right, where he pitches.

It seems plausible that his right hip/shoulder being low contributed to his 180 opening. His canopy opens pretty much fully 180, however there are no initial line twists. He is quite close the cliff though.

As noted in the report, his right hand reaches up first and holds his right-rear riser, then his left hand grabs his left-FRONT riser. He does not appear to pull on the right-rear at all, only the left-FRONT. This puts him into the wall at a high speed. He doesn’t drop it, and instead doubles up both hands to his left-FRONT riser.

This was almost surely a mistake on his part as I think he would know better than to grab the front riser in this situation. It is likely he intended to grab the left-REAR but didn’t realize he had the front instead. We never know how we will react in those situations until we are presented with them—the best we can do is try to somehow prepare for that muscle memory, probably on a bridge.

Which brings us to another concern: that Johnno was not a very experienced slider-down jumper. While this jump was slider-up, the situation he found himself in is one more encountered by slider-down jumps—close to the wall, 180, needing to grab the appropriate riser/risers/toggles to fix it, and quickly.

The speed at which he hit, especially considering the (heavy) front riser input, was compounded by him being packed in shallow brakes. Obviously, that is normal for most slider up jumps, and I’ll leave debate for the comments, but let it be known he was packed in shallows (slider-up) and therefore he was moving faster when he hit.

He continues to fight, but his efforts become almost moot once the front-riser dive loop (left-side) becomes snagged on his lower go-pro mounting peg.

So, to break it down:

What went wrong:

• Slick jump from Nose 3 with little currency going slick
• Aerial (gainer) from Nose 3 with little aerials currency
• Over-rotates gainer on slider-up and slick jump
• Rather than arching and building airspeed, he brings knees toward chest, making position worse
• Once canopy is extracted and facing wall, he pulls left-FRONT riser rather than one or both rear-risers, or possibly toggles (again, a debate I’ll leave to the comments) (In my opinion, this was the biggest mistake of the correction process—giving serious input on a front riser that close to the wall, which then led to multiple impacts and caused the riser to snag on the gopro mount)
• Wearing a unicorn mount (and a very large one) also with exposed mounting pegs
• Maybe some kind of over-excitement from his renewed passion for BASE jumping, which could have contributed to him making decisions to do jumps he otherwise wouldn’t have (just speculation)
What went right:
• He was a notoriously competent and cautious jumper
• He did have an impact rated helmet (the Cookie G4)
• Given his position after over-rotating, I would speculate to say he made the right choice to pitch when he did, despite having a 180
• He initially grabbed a right-REAR riser, and did fight to grab another riser—it just happened to be the wrong one for the situation
• He fought like hell despite multiple impacts
• He kept fighting
• He seemed to be making cognizant, cerebral decisions as he continued to fall, noticeably trying to clear the hung-up riser from his go-pro mount
• Weather conditions were good
• He was in a good state of mind, capable of making wise decisions
• Had previously discussed with his jumping partner and others in the Valley how to handle an emergency situation
Take from it what you can, and feel free to add more insight. We are sharing this in an effort to spread more awareness, and only doing so since it is a closed group. We’re all one family, and if there is one thing that I would want to follow my own incident, it’s that others could learn from it and not make the same mistakes, and I know Johnno would have wanted that too.

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