by Scott Graham
Janelle took the lead, Chuck hiked in the middle, and Ponch brought up the rear.
“But no one would have been awake to see him,” Chuck said.
“He wanted it to be a surprise, unannounced. He was counting on a big viewer bump from posting the video online.”
“I take it you’ve stayed in contact with him over the years?”
“I’ve been one of his YouTube followers forever. I’ve always been fascinated by his flying. He didn’t miss a beat after he and Jimmy had their big split. The Pied Piper of Yosemite, they call him.”
“‘Big split’?”
“You know all about what a fixture the two of them became in the valley after the rest of us got on with our lives, right? They put up new routes on El Cap and Half Dome all the way into their forties. It wasn’t until age finally caught up with them and they couldn’t keep up with the younger climbers anymore that they went their separate ways. To hear Thorpe tell it—which he did online, regularly and loudly—Jimmy went over to the dark side. Jimmy and Thorpe had prided themselves on being the most rebellious Yosemite climbers ever. They went mano a mano with the rangers, protesting route restrictions, fighting bolting regulations, leading rallies in favor of limiting the number of tourists allowed in the valley in the summer months. Then, about the time the old-school Yosemite mafia rangers were giving way to a younger, more personable bunch, Jimmy flipped. He became an unofficial spokesman for what he called the new face of the climbing community, one that worked with, instead of against, the park and the rangers. He said his goal was to make sure there always would be room for climbers and climbing in the valley along with the increasing gazillions of tourists mobbing the place. He really threw himself into supporting Camp 4 in particular.”
The trail climbed through a thick stand of pines above Sentinel Creek. In minutes, Ponch was breathing hard. Even so, he kept up with Janelle as she took long strides up the trail, passing slower groups of hikers, her orange paramedic-kit backpack high on her shoulders.
Where the trail climbed through a cliff band, Chuck followed her up a short flight of hand-hewn stone steps. “Didn’t I see Jimmy on Facebook or YouTube or somewhere a year or so ago?” he asked Ponch. “In nice clothes, no less?”
“Yep. The footage bounced around online for a while. He attended the park superintendent’s holiday gala.” Ponch drew a deep breath after every few words. “He said he was willing to do whatever it took, including renting a tuxedo, to work with the park on behalf of climbers’ rights in the valley.”
“But Thorpe went the other way?”
“He’s always considered himself the ultimate rebel, to the point of being pretty uppity about it. It’s part of his persona.”
“His brand, you mean.”
“Yeah, that. After the rest of us moved on, Jimmy and Thorpe needed each other for the climbs they still wanted to complete. After they split, though, Thorpe, being Thorpe, wasn’t about to devote his time to anything that benefited anything or anyone but himself. With his big-time climbing days done, he had to find something else to keep his name in the public eye and hang onto as many of his sponsorships as he could.”
“So he started flying.”
“It turned out to be perfect for him. Instead of fighting gravity to climb cliffs, he put on a wingsuit and used gravity on the way down instead. Plus, wingsuit flying turned out to be ideal for the internet. He started flying at the beginning of the extreme-sport craze, when helmet cams were brand new. All his videos play up the rebel thing, which his viewers love. He capitalizes on the fact that it’s illegal to fly wingsuits in Yosemite. His most famous clips are the ones where he lands out in the open and gets arrested. When he had himself filmed while reporting to jail the first time—accompanied by one of his ever-present babes, of course—his viewer numbers went through the roof. That video spurred other fliers, all of them a lot younger than him, to come to Yosemite and try to outdo him with their own flights.”
“I assume that’s where his Pied Piper nickname came from.”
“It came later, actually, when the younger fliers started getting killed—or killing themselves, as Thorpe would say—by trying increasingly dangerous stunts. ‘I’m still here,’ became Thorpe’s tagline after each of his flights, while the body count built up around him. The rangers blamed him for the young fliers’ deaths. They said he set a bad example. But he kept flying, and the rangers got more and more frustrated with him until, finally, they zapped him with a Taser after one of his flights. The whole incident was caught on video by an onlooker, including the part where, after Thorpe was tasered and fell to the ground, he jumped to his feet and announced, ‘I’m still here!’ while the rangers led him away. The video went nuts online.”
From in front of Chuck, Janelle said, “So Thorpe and Jimmy went in opposite directions.”
“They’re not shy about it, either,” Ponch replied. “They trade barbs on their Twitter feeds, rip at each other on their YouTube channels. It’s a very public catfight.”
“But Jimmy invited Thorpe to the reunion,” Janelle noted.
“Of course. They’re smart guys. You don’t survive for long in Yosemite Valley if you’re not. Their feud keeps their names in lights. I’m sure both of them will play it up big time this weekend. It wouldn’t surprise me, in fact, if that’s not part of the reason Jimmy decided to get all of us together in the first place.”
Janelle rounded a switchback in the trail and stopped. She looked down at Chuck and Ponch, who halted on the stretch of trail below. “What, exactly, is wingsuit flying, anyway?” she asked.
Ponch hunched forward, breathing hard, his hands on his hips. “It’s pretty much just what it sounds like,” he said. “Fliers jump off cliffs, bridges, skyscrapers, that sort of thing. They fall straight down until their wings fill with air and they’re transformed from falling rocks into flying squirrels.”
“Except,” Chuck added, “they’re not really flying at all. They’re always going down.”
“But in controlled fashion,” Ponch said, straightening as his breathing calmed. “They’re gliding while they fall. They’re able to turn and adjust their flights and complete maneuvers until they get close to the ground, at which point they parachute in for a landing.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Janelle said.
“It’s extremely dangerous. Or, it was, then not so much, and now, today, it’s dangerous all over again.”
“How’s that?”
“In its first years, wingsuit flying was one hundred percent fatal. The first flier sewed some cloth between his arms and legs and jumped off the Eiffel Tower straight to his death. Other early fliers met the same fate. Then somebody had the bright idea of substituting airfoils for cloth wings. The foils—layers of fabric held apart by plastic rods—fill with air at high speeds and create lift. This was in the 1990s. All of a sudden, winged fliers could actually, in a sense, fly while they fell. The foils gave them a glide ratio of two to one, even two point five to one in perfect conditions.”
“Glide ratio?”
“How long they could stay in the air. A two-to-one glide ratio means fliers move forward two feet for every foot they descend.”
“So airfoils made the sport safe.”
“For a while, anyway. Fliers could glide for long distances and control their speed and direction. The sport really took off.”
“But then . . . ?”
“They got bored. By definition, wingsuit fliers are adrenaline junkies. And with so many fliers like Thorpe trying to make names for themselves, the ante kept going up.” Ponch pulled a liter of water from a side pouch of his daypack, unscrewed the top, and took a swig. “It’s testosterone-plus with them, the men as well as the few women fliers. It didn’t take long for someone to come up with the idea of proximity flying. Pretty soon, they were all doing it, Thorpe included.”
“Proximity flying?”
“That’s where they do fly-bys as close as possible to stationary objects. Videos of fliers zipp
ing within a few feet of ridges and cliffs and trees and buildings became internet sensations, and the fliers who starred in them started making real money. The whole thing became a game of can-you-top-this.”
“Which is when things got dangerous again?” Janelle asked.
“Right-o. And have stayed that way ever since. There’s even a world championship of proximity flying in China, where fliers complete a set course in the shortest time—or, often as not, die trying. The life expectancy from when a wingsuit flier takes up the sport until he or she dies doing it is roughly six years.”
“Sounds suicidal.”
“It is suicidal.”
“But Thorpe would disagree with you.”
“Thorpe Alstad is an anomaly in the flying world, the same as he was as a rock climber. When he and Jimmy climbed together, they never had accidents, never even got hurt. They said it was because of their intense focus combined with their willingness to turn back from a climb for any reason. They could do that because they were full-time climbers. They made money through their sponsorships. If a certain route didn’t go one day, they could always try it again later. Amateur, part-time climbers—which is to say, all but a small handful of climbers—don’t have that luxury. When they’re on a route, they face the pressure of knowing their attempt probably will be their only chance at it. They push things when they shouldn’t, and get in trouble as a result.”
“But Thorpe has stayed alive all these years as a wingsuit flier, too,” Janelle said. “That doesn’t seem possible.”
“He approaches each flight, especially each proximity flight, the same way he approached all his climbs with Jimmy. If things aren’t perfect, he turns away.” Ponch took another swallow from his bottle. “This year hasn’t been a good one for him, though. He’s known for his Yosemite flights. But his videos have become repetitive and his viewership is way down. The rangers don’t even bother to bust him when he lands anymore. That’s the worst thing they could do to him.” Ponch screwed the lid back on his bottle and returned it to the pocket of his pack. “He called me a month ago saying his sponsors were threatening to leave him. When I suggested maybe it was time to give up flying, he about shot me through the phone.”
“So you helped him instead,” Chuck said. “You were with him on Glacier Point this morning.”
Ponch blanched. “I shouldn’t have been there. The hand was as clear as any I’ve ever dealt, but I went anyway. He asked me to support him. I agreed. It’s as simple as that. I kept trying to find a way to bring up what the cards said, but I couldn’t.”
“Because you know they’re a bunch of hooey.”
“No,” Ponch said, his voice sharp. “Because I know what people like you think.”
“And people like Thorpe.”
Ponch dipped his chin. “And people like Thorpe,” he acceded. He tilted his head back and studied the ridge above them.
Chuck followed Ponch’s gaze. Somewhere up there was the rock-walled gap toward which Thorpe had been aimed when Ponch last had seen him. The sooner they got up there, the sooner they could put to rest the hogwash about the hand of tarot cards.
“Ready when you are,” Chuck said to Janelle.
She led the way on up the footpath. Where the established trail angled west around the base of the ridge toward Sentinel Falls, Chuck called ahead for her to leave the path and bush-whack straight up the mountainside. She hiked upward through the pines, quickly outdistancing Ponch. Chuck split the difference between the two of them, anxious to reach the gap but unwilling to leave Ponch too far behind. The mountainside steepened as they climbed. The distance between the three of them increased until Janelle reached a spot near the top of the ridge where the forest gave way to bands of granite stacked one atop another like the layers of a wedding cake.
“Follow along the base of the lowest cliff band,” Chuck yelled up to her from a hundred yards below, basing his recommendation on his memory of the map at the trailhead. “The notch should be just ahead of you.”
Janelle disappeared around a bulge in the cliff, turning sideways to slip past the trunk of a ponderosa pine tree growing close to the granite wall. Chuck reached the base of the cliff a minute later. He waited for Ponch, then led the way between the tree and cliff face, following Janelle’s bootprints in the dusty soil.
A cry from Janelle reached him from around the rock outcrop ahead.
“What is it?” Chuck called to her.
“A leg.” There was a long pause before she spoke again, her voice shaking. “A human leg.”
5
Chuck sprinted around the base of the cliff with Ponch a step behind him. He came to an abrupt halt beside Janelle, who stood where the cliff band gave way to a sun-splashed slope of tufted grass, spindly brush, and scattered ponderosas. Granite walls boxed the slope on both sides, forming the notch in the top of the ridge known as Sentinel Gap.
The leg was wedged ten feet off the ground between the trunk and lowest branch of a ponderosa growing in the middle of the gap, thirty feet ahead. Janelle reached toward the appendage, her hands arrested in midair.
Sunlight broke through the tree’s branches, speckling the human limb. The leg had ripped away from its body below the hip. A white sock and thick-soled landing shoe clad the foot. Otherwise, the leg was bare, its skin battered and bruised. Blood from a deep cut in the ankle soaked the sock and shoe. More blood from the place where the leg had torn free from its body coagulated on the pine-needle-covered ground at the base of the tree.
Chuck pressed his forearm to his mouth.
Beside Chuck, Ponch spoke, his voice trembling. “I should’ve stopped him.”
Chuck lowered his arm. “You suggested he quit.”
“He wouldn’t hear it.”
“He never listened to anyone when we knew him twenty years ago. I’m not surprised he wouldn’t listen to you now.”
“I should have told him what the cards said.”
“He wouldn’t have listened to that, either.” Chuck didn’t add that no one else in their right mind would have listened to Ponch’s tarot-card nonsense as well.
Ponch dug his phone from his pocket while Janelle approached the wedged leg, her steps slow but purposeful, her hands at her sides.
“We have to find him,” she said. “We have to make sure he’s . . . he’s . . .”
Chuck trailed after her, his legs shaky. He said over his shoulder to Ponch, “She’s right. Then we’ll call.”
Janelle stopped beside the thickened pool of blood below the suspended leg. She turned uphill, studying the gap in the ridge. Chuck eyed the gently sloping ramp between the rock faces with her. Somewhere in the notch, Thorpe’s flight had gone horribly awry.
Janelle turned a slow circle. “The same forces that brought his leg here—” she pointed at the battered limb in the tree above them “—should have propelled the rest of his body in roughly the same direction.” She pointed at the far cliff wall. “There. See?”
He looked where she pointed. “I don’t see anything.”
“More blood.”
He squinted. She was right. A streak of dark cherry shone in the sunlight, splashed across the quartz crystals that spotted the granite face.
She aimed a finger down the slope, where Sentinel Gap opened to the forested lower ridge. “And there,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Oh, my God,” Ponch moaned from behind Chuck.
A piece of red fabric was tucked at the bottom of a headhigh boulder resting on the forested slope below the opening of the gap.
Janelle side-hilled to the boulder ahead of Chuck and Ponch. She put a hand to the stone and leaned around it. “He’s here,” she said, her voice controlled. “The rest of him.”
Chuck looked over her shoulder along with Ponch. The piece of fabric visible from above was the corner of Thorpe’s wingsuit airfoil. Thorpe lay facedown on the far side of the boulder, his arms and remaining leg splayed. Blood was gathered in a small depression beyond and below his head.
Janelle dropped her medical pack to the ground. Donning a pair of latex gloves from an outside pocket of the pack, she knelt and turned Thorpe’s head to her. Thorpe’s black helmet encased his skull. Somehow, his camera remained affixed to the helmet’s crown. His goggles were smashed, his eyes, nose, and cheeks pulverized.
Janelle pressed two fingers to the side of Thorpe’s neck below his jawline, then rocked back on her heels. “No pulse, of course. But we’re always supposed to check.” Her gloved hands, cupped around one another, hung between her legs, her forearms resting on her thighs. “He must have died instantly.”
Ponch turned away and vomited down the slope. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he returned to studying Thorpe’s body with Chuck and Janelle.
“What’s this?” Janelle asked. She touched the suit’s lower airfoil, two swaths of fabric held a few inches apart by stays that lay on the ground between Thorpe’s left leg and where his right leg should have been. One of the swaths of fabric had separated along a seam in the airfoil, resulting in a V that extended several inches into the wing from the foil’s bottom hem. The separation had exposed one of the stays that held the fabric swaths apart to form the airfoil.
The stay, a plastic rod half the thickness of a drinking straw, stuck out from the fabric. The rod was white to its final inch, which was red, like the wingsuit.
Janelle ran her gloved finger along the last inch of the stay. Her fingertip came away smudged. “It’s blood.”
“The suit must have torn,” Chuck said, “when he . . . when his . . .”
“It doesn’t look like a tear to me. It separated. It came apart.”
Chuck leaned around Janelle for a closer look. A length of nylon thread extended from the top of the V’ed separation and lay crumpled on the ground below the loosed plastic stay. “No wonder it came apart, considering the forces involved.”
Janelle cleaned the blood from her covered finger with an antiseptic wipe from her kit. She continued to eye the airfoil and Thorpe’s corpse along with Ponch, but Chuck stepped away. He’d seen enough. The stench of Ponch’s vomit mixed in the air with the rank odor emanating from Thorpe’s mangled body. Chuck swallowed, his stomach heaving.