by Matt Higgins
The Bushmen who occupied the lee of the mountain when the Dutch arrived told of a god who had draped an animal pelt over the mountain to quench a fire. When the Dutch subjugated the San, they applied their own logic, describing a pirate puffing a pipe in a duel with the devil. Modern citizens understood the circumstances as part of a meteorological cycle, resulting in wind funneling into the superheated city at up to eighty miles an hour, a bad time to be flying a wingsuit from the mountain.
So, waiting for the weather to change, Jeb and Joby and the HBO crew—including a local cameraman named Chris and a soundman named Kenny—trooped around town, shooting B-roll and interviews till the wind died down.
• • •
From the cable car up the mountain there’s a breathtaking view of skyscrapers and the warped roof of Cape Town Stadium, the breakers beyond—clawing the long sands of Table Bay—and the tawny hump of signal hill, capped by Lion’s Head, another queer fin of rock lending the city its unique character.
On a clear, calm morning, Jeb and Joby rode up to inspect a ledge they had selected for their exit, a thirty-foot scramble below a platform where tourists took in the ample view. The ledge, filled with lichen-flecked boulders, yellow wildflowers, and stubborn vegetation, was a six-second rock drop.
Taking in the view, Jeb geared up on the ledge. On his first attempt, he hurtled along the mountain over Tafelberg Road, opened his canopy, and drifted to a landing area at a field on the verge of a residential neighborhood called Higgovale. “That was awesome!” he shouted. “It felt a lot more dangerous last time.”
Joby had no trouble on his flight either. Linking up at the landing area, they made their way back up Tafelberg Road to the cable car station, passing through knots of tourists. Somewhere in the crowd, a teenage boy with an American accent suddenly rushed up to his father. “I just saw a guy go off on a wingsuit!” he said, catching his breath. “My heart was pounding!”
“Where?”
“Up at the top . . .” Then the boy caught sight of Jeb and Joby strolling past, stash bags slung over their shoulders. “Mom!” the kid called. “There they are!”
Even without his parachute, on the mountain, at the mall, and in restaurants, people recognized Jeb. They requested autographs or asked for a photo. The “Grinding the Crack” footage and coverage of Tianmen Shan had made him famous. Encounters with fans puzzled Jeb, but he also drew energy from them. His mood improved from the fact that he had been flying ratios of 2.5:1 consistently. “I’m not scared of Table Mountain,” he boasted to HBO. “Table Mountain has now become my playground.”
Hiking a hot, dusty trail out from the landing area after one particular flight with Jeff and Joby, they all stopped to rest. Shading the display on Jeff’s camera, Jeb watched footage of his flight minutes earlier. “That’s right, bitches!” he called out upon seeing his image sweep past a boulder perched on a ledge. “I love that feeling. I’m going to touch down. I’m like . . . I could kick that rock right there.”
“I would try it on snow first,” Joby said, frowning.
All week, Jeb had talked of a touch-and-go, the next step in proximity flight, which would possibly pave the way for landing without any multi-million-dollar landing apparatus. Come March, somewhere in the Alps or possibly Alaska, he said he would soar along a slope, drag his feet in deep snow, and continue flying.
“It’s the next step for what we’re doing, for sure,” he said. “This idea of flying close to things and touching things—this will be the first touching things.”
First, Jeb had to finish the shoot with HBO. By Friday, January 13, the HBO team had returned to the States, but before departing, someone, he said, had remarked while viewing footage from that week that he thought Jeb would have cruised closer to the mountain. It was an innocent comment, not calculated, but the words stuck in Jeb’s head. He had been ten feet off the deck. Closer? he thought. Closer?! Well, if they wanted him closer, he would deliver a guaranteed showstopper.
A final flight sequence remained to be shot. Delayed for days by rain, Jeb used the additional time to cook up something special. He e-mailed photos of the mountain to Moose, with instructions on where to set up equipment and cameras.
On Saturday, January 14, Jeb packed his rig on the floor of the living room at his and Joby’s apartment, Marilyn Manson panting through a rendition of the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” in the background. The flight was all set for Monday and there was nothing to do but wait. The plan was in place.
By Sunday night, sitting around the apartment with Joby and Frank, sifting through e-mail, Jeb might have been thinking of Table Mountain, but his mind had traveled several months forward, fixing on the touch-and-go. Joby had worried about Jeb’s state of mind. Ever since hitting it big with “Grinding the Crack,” he seemed more grandiose than usual.
“I could drag my legs across the rocks on the mountain if I wanted to,” Jeb announced that night before the final shoot. “If I get below the knee,” he added about the depth of snow during a touch-and-go, “then I hit the ground. I don’t think I survive that uninjured.” He weighed the consequences further. “If I land, I’ll get hurt. I don’t want to get hurt. I think there’s a good chance I’ll live, but I think I’ll be broke up for a while.”
• • •
In the morning, Joby woke to sounds of Jeb in the kitchen. Jeb had insisted they rise at 6 a.m. to be out the door and on the road by 7:30. Looking at the clock, Joby saw they were already running late.
“You ready?” Jeb asked, an edge to his voice. “You ready?!”
“Yeah,” Joby drawled.
Gathering gear, they hurried out the door and into a rented white Toyota 4x4 pickup, making their way through the big, swinging security gate at the complex, into a bright sunny morning, turning left onto Main Road, the sea exploding with white foam on the rocks out the windshield. Surfers stroked into rollers at Muizenberg Beach, and warm, salty air rushed through the open windows of the truck as they passed barefoot black boys, heels kicking up golden dust along the roadway.
On the M3 they were halted by Monday-morning rush-hour traffic. Already late to meet their team on the mountain, Jeb sat in the passenger’s seat, head ticktocking in agitation with the passing seconds. Their route from St. James to Table Mountain skirted the mountains of the Cape Peninsula, through city streets, climbing Kloof Nek to Tafelberg Road. It usually took a good thirty minutes, but now they were stuck and Jeb fiddled with his phone. At 8:05, a text message popped up: “You at cable car yet?”
“No,” he typed, “we are in traffic.”
Moose and two trusted friends were already on the mountain. Moose had risen at 5 a.m., and he and his helpers had lugged their gear from a parking space on Tafelberg Road up the flanks of Table Mountain, carrying two metallic party balloons, one silver and the other black. It was not easy following Jeb’s instructions in the half-light of morning, but they eventually located a particular ledge, a giant fist of granite, knuckled with boulders. By the time they arrived the sun had emerged, and they were sweaty and exhausted. Temperatures that day would reach ninety, and the heat was already carrying a zing.
Mopping his forehead with his T-shirt, Moose stared down the mountain toward the city, where joggers and dog walkers traversed dusty trails in Table Mountain National Park. He did not know it, but down near the landing area, Maria von Egidy was walking back to her car. Having heard of Jeb’s plans to fly, she had come out in hopes of watching and possibly discussing plans for landing. She still hoped they could collaborate. But with Jeb running late, she needed to head into work for the day.
It would be nearly 8:30 by the time Jeb and Joby tooled up Tafelberg Road in the white pickup. At the cable car station, Jeff and his girlfriend, Taya Weiss, one of the rare female pilots, were waiting to buy tickets for the ride up. Jeb was in a sour mood from the combination of traffic, heat, pressure to perform, and the knowledge that Moose was waiting with his mates on a ledge, frying like strips of bacon. By the time he neared
the exit point, it was 9 a.m., and the observation platform was crowded with tourists and members of Kristian’s menagerie at Camps Bay, anticipating a show.
Iiro and his pop singer girlfriend, C.C., were there, along with Frank Yang and the camera and soundmen, tasked by HBO to capture the exit while Moose handled the money shot.
More than a thousand feet below, the sun’s rays exploded off the metallic balloons as if they were mirrors. Moose had developed serious misgivings about the balloons by now. Dancing in the wind on eight-foot strings, they continually snagged on rocks. Complicating matters, he and Jeb had forgotten walkie-talkies, and their attempts to communicate by cell phone kept getting interrupted by dropped signals.
When they finally connected, Jeb asked Moose how the ledge looked.
“I don’t feel good about it,” Moose said. He worried that if Jeb lined up on a balloon that was snagged on a rock, he would come in too low.
Jeb said the balloons were critical—not only as targets but as props for the shot. Eager to deliver a showstopper to HBO, he planned a close flyby, similar to the stunt he had performed at the Crack, and he was not going to allow a little wind to alter those plans.
“Dude,” Moose pleaded. “I’m not happy with them. I want to take them down.”
Jeb insisted they stay, promising to give the balloons a wide berth if the wind was a factor during his flight. How he meant to make such an assessment at more than one hundred miles an hour, he did not explain, but after hanging up with Moose, he, Joby, and Jeff began pulling on their suits and helmets as tourists stared at the spectacle from above. With six cameras stacked on his helmet and thick black sunglasses shading his eyes, Jeff appeared more machine than man.
Joby prepared to go first. Calling his wife for a few private words, he tucked the phone in a pocket and zipped his suit.
Exhaling loudly, he jumped without preliminaries, the fabric of his red suit fluttering faintly until air filled the vents and his wings pressurized, causing his trajectory to turn more horizontal. He shot like an arrow at the ledge, where the black balloon danced drunkenly in the wind. Roaring past Moose and his companions, Joby missed the leading edge of the ledge by about four feet, vortices trailing from his suit pulling hard at the balloon, like a dog on a leash refusing to heel. His heart pounding, Joby pulled high and came in hard under canopy—not at their landing area, but along the walking trail higher on the mountain. Shaken, but unhurt, he began stowing his gear in a stash bag for the return trip back to the cable car station.
At the exit, Jeb phoned Moose, spitting curses when the connection was lost yet again. When he finally got Moose on the line, Jeb announced that he and Jeff were going off in a minute. With the crowd watching expectantly from above, the toes of his black boots dangled over the ledge. Jeb had two POV cameras attached to his helmet, one on his belly, and yet another near an ankle. Jeff and his lenses lined up to Jeb’s right, ensuring complete coverage.
“You all right?” Jeff asked.
“Okay,” said Jeb, voice calm. Then, after a moment, “Three, two, one . . . See ya!”
The pair went off in tandem, opening their wings with a whoosh and racing in the direction of the ledge. From above it was difficult to track them. Jeb’s black suit and Jeff’s blue one both blended with the mottled rock as they shot away from the spectators. How close Jeb came to the ledge no one could say. But a terrific boom that everyone assumed to be one of the balloons exploding testified to his precision in nailing his target.
Joby knew better. Something strange had happened that he could see more clearly from below. He heard the booming sound, too, but saw Jeb veer hard to Joby’s right. He watched Jeff abandon his flight path and pitch high. An instant later, Joby saw Jeb’s black chute bloom dangerously low and collide with a cliff.
Joby dug in his pocket for a walkie-talkie. “I think he just crashed into a rock wall,” he barked, in a voice strained with panic. “He hit bad. Right fuckin’ now! Y’all come down!”
At the exit, Taya heard the message on her walkie-talkie. “On the way down now,” she replied in a quavering voice.
A moment later, Joby, a little delirious, discovered that he was unpacking the parachute he had just placed in his stash bag. Snapping to his senses, he began quickly to stuff the chute back in before pausing. I can’t believe this happened . . . I can’t believe this happened . . . I can’t . . . There was no reason to hurry. Jeb was dead.
On the ledge, Iiro was on the phone with Moose. “We have to leave as soon as possible,” he said in calm tones. “He had a pretty bad flight. At least that’s what it looks like from the bottom. All right, so we’ll start organizing and we’ll start making our way down. If you try to get to him fast, I don’t know how badly he’s hurt, but I think—”
“Joby says it’s bad!” Taya interrupted.
“Joby says it’s bad, so it might be chopper time . . . All right, bye!”
Moose did not take the news well. With his eye pressed to the viewfinder of his camera, he had watched as Jeb whizzed past at a hundred miles per hour, and he assumed the thunderous boom came from a balloon. But looking over, he could see the black balloon bobbing a few feet off the rock, string snagged in a fissure. The sight left Moose nauseated. His inattention had caused Jeb to clip the ledge and tumble over. He had killed Jeb.
Grabbing a bottle of water, Moose bounded down the slope. At the bottom of the ledge he found no trace. Scanning for black fabric, he leaped rocks, worrying over what horrors he might find. He wanted to stop and go no farther, but an internal voice urged him to press on. It was Jeb, after all. Carrying on, he finally spotted Jeb’s black parachute in the distance, in a rumpled heap at the base of a cliff and ran for it.
When he arrived, three hikers were already standing around, having watched the parachute drop out of the sky. “I hope there’s not a person in there,” an American woman in the group had said. They had found Jeb injured, lying in a clump of bushes, and helped him remove his helmet and gave him sips of water.
Moose was shocked to find Jeb talking and quickly called for a chopper from mountain rescue dispatch. He knew the protocol. He had worked there as a rescuer before starting a family.
Jeb was pallid and in obvious pain, although the extent of his injuries was unclear. You’ll probably want to film this, he whispered to a relieved Moose.
Jeff and Iiro arrived next, shocked to find Jeb alive. Jeff had landed on Tafelberg Road, among moving traffic. Ditching his gear, he sprinted up the mountain, nearly collapsing from heat and exhaustion, cajoling a bottle of water from a hiker he encountered along the way. Iiro had stared out the window of the cable car on its descent, scanning for Jeb’s remains and composing in his head how he would break it to Gigi that her son was gone. At the scene, he, Moose, and Jeff took turns tending to Jeb, giving him sips of water and using his canopy as a shield from the sun.
“I just want to sleep,” Jeb croaked.
“That’s probably not a good idea, buddy,” Jeff said.
The chopper came clattering up the mountain, a red bird, hovering feet from the cliff as rescuers and their equipment descended forty-foot lines to a trail. Jeb had been especially lucky—not only had he narrowly missed striking the cliff, but he landed on the only vegetation in an area filled with rocks. He was adjacent to the Contour Trail, which would only make rescue easier.
The rotor wash caused Jeb’s canopy to flap furiously, exposing his cadaverous skin to the sun. “Jeb, Jeb, Jeb, Jeb!” Jeff shouted, over the noise. Sweaty, Adam’s apple bulging, a few awkward seconds passed before Jeb turned his head slightly, indicating that he was still hanging on.
Rescuers cut him out of his wingsuit, revealing a gaping hole in his right shin, muscle spilling out of a football-shaped wound. His thigh, marbled with hematomas, had swelled to twice its normal size. There was one good sign: Jeb could feel his injured legs. “The pain is incredibly painful!” he howled as rescuers bandaged his wound.
“You’re gonna be famous, kid,” J
eff announced as the cameras rolled. By that time, the trail was crowded. The cameraman, the soundman, and various people wielding phones and professional-grade cameras darted between rescuers as they loaded Jeb onto a litter. The trail had turned into a circus. “You’re stepping on my fucking hand!” he screamed at one point. Moments later, someone else spilled water on him. “Oh, that’s too cold,” he gasped, chuckling. “Jesus Christ!” Finally stable, an IV in his arm, swaddled in blankets and strapped into a harness, Jeb was hoisted up above the crowd by ropes to the clattering chopper and flown to the parking lot at the cable car station.
There he was bundled into an ambulance. Joby piled in for the ride to Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital, where a white-bearded emergency room doctor, having heard the report of a wingsuit accident on the mountain, asked, “You know a guy named Corliss?”
“Yeah, I do know him really well,” Jeb said. “I am that guy.”
There would be more surprises. X-rays revealed that Jeb had broken both ankles. The right one would require pins. His left knee sustained ligament damage. And beneath the gaping wound on his right shin was a broken fibula. But doctors said he would make a complete recovery.
Having expected to lose both his legs, Jeb absorbed the bright prognosis just as the hospital’s marketing director, a woman named Michelle Norris, entered the room. Word of his crash was out, already on social media. TV satellite trucks were lined up outside. Reporters were prowling the waiting room, eager for comment. Would Jeb be willing to make a statement?
“Just tell them I feel better than I’ve ever felt,” he said.
• • •
SO THAT WAS WHAT appeared in the papers the following day, Tuesday, January 17. The Cape Times, an English language daily, made the biggest play, with a banner headline splashed across the front page, top of the fold: “Jump That Went Wrong.” A six-column color photo showed Jeb and Jeff taking off from the ledge.