by Steph Davis
Alan showed me how to waddle over to the door of the plane, face the wing with my arms pressed into my sides. and hop out with my legs together and my head high.
“So when you’re in the air, open your arms and legs. If you start to spin, cross your arms over your chest and arch, so you’re like a badminton birdie. That should get you out of it. Don’t try to fly out of the spin. Just close up and give it a little time. If you’re spinning when you deploy, your canopy lines will twist up completely and you might have to cut away. That’s not really ideal.”
That didn’t sound good. I resolved to stay symmetrical and not make any sudden moves. I wondered how easy it was to get out of control and go into a spin.
“You should do some practice touches to make sure you can reach your pilot chute and the wing fabric doesn’t get in the way,” Alan went on. “And watch your altitude. Pull high, around five thousand feet. As soon as you pull, cross your arms over your chest and pull your legs up so you don’t get into twists as the canopy opens. Then you can unzip your arms and legs. Where you can really get into trouble is if you have a canopy malfunction and you can’t get unzipped fast enough to get your arms free. If that happens, pull these handles on your hips. That will yank out the cables and the wings will come free. So make sure you do a lot of practice touches on these cutaways too so you can get to them fast if you need to. You have to pull them pretty hard to get them free. You may even want to use the cutaways instead of the zippers to free your arms at some point after you’re under canopy, just to see what it feels like. But probably not on the first jump—you have enough to think about.”
“Okay,” I said, imitating Alan’s movements.
“And the other thing to know is that you need to do a flight pattern so you can avoid the jump run where everyone else is opening their canopies below you. You’ll get out last since you’ll be higher than everyone else when you pull. But you don’t want to follow the jump run of the plane where everyone else is. So you’ll need to fly either a left-hand pattern or a right-hand pattern. It’s kind of like your landing pattern with your canopy, because you will be covering a lot more distance than you’re used to. So get out, turn left, fly a little, turn left again, fly a little, and then turn left again toward the DZ. And the most important thing is, you’ll be pulling high anyway, but make sure you know where you are so you don’t end up flying away from the drop zone and landing out somewhere. That’s a big no-no for the wingsuits. You need to stay aware of where you are, because you can get pretty far away in the suit, way more than tracking. If you just get out and fly straight, you could end up a couple miles away from the drop zone, and you definitely won’t be able to make it back under canopy. So be careful and remember to try to fly a box pattern—stay off jump run and near the DZ. And that’s about it. So just remember your exit position, the practice touches, and what to do if you get unstable.”
It was a lot to digest. “It’s a bummer you can’t go with me since I’m wearing your suit,” I said.
“I know, but you’ll be pretty busy with everything anyway. It’s almost better to do the first jumps without any distractions.”
“Alan, thank you so much. I can’t believe this is really happening!”
“Well, I think you’re more than ready. And I know how much you want to start flying a suit. I’m psyched to see you start to fly, Steph. I think you’re going to do fine. Go to manifest and tell them it’s a wingsuit jump so they can mark it on the pilot’s flight sheet. And remember, you need to get on the plane first since you exit last.”
“Thanks, Alan, really!”
I walked over to the manifest counter and looked at the screen on the wall. The next load was in fifteen minutes. “Can I get on the next load?”
“Sure, what’s your number?” the girl asked. Emily wasn’t working today, since she was at her law firm on weekdays.
“Oops, let me go check, I always forget. And it’s a wingsuit jump.”
“Okay, you’ll be on Otter four in fifteen minutes.”
Alan helped me get into the suit, a somewhat awkward endeavor with the weight of the rig on the back. I straightened the fabric under my shoulder straps and tightened my leg straps. I pulled up the two long zippers along the body and left my arms and legs unzipped, as I’d seen the other wingsuiters do until they got in the plane. I felt dressed up and costumed, like something between a superhero, a prom queen, and a football mascot.
I strapped my altimeter to my wrist and went back toward manifest to check the time on the computer screen, passing a long-haired guy in a worn baseball cap. He worked at the drop zone doing various odd jobs, though I’d never actually seen him jumping, and he never talked much. Generally awkward at starting conversations myself, I always made a point of saying hi, because I thought maybe he was shy.
“How many jumps do you have?” he asked bluntly.
“One hundred and thirteen,” I answered, thinking about how I’d be learning to base jump pretty soon.
“You can’t get on that load.”
“What do you mean?” I said, startled. “There’s still slots.”
“There’s no wingsuit jumps with less than two hundred jumps. You can’t fly that.”
I looked around for Alan, confused and kind of angry. I wasn’t sure what was going on. This was the first I’d heard of such a rule at Mile-Hi. I knew several guys who’d started jumping a wingsuit there in the last month with less than a hundred skydives. A lot less. Alan and the long-haired guy stepped off to the side of the hangar and got into a heated discussion, the first time I’d ever seen Alan in a disagreement with anyone. A few minutes later he walked over to me, his darkly tanned skin flushed red with suppressed anger.
“I’m really sorry, Steph. Apparently the owner of the DZ is on vacation and left this guy somewhat in charge while he’s gone. So he’s digging in his heels on the USPA recommendation about wingsuit jumps, which is ridiculous. First of all, it’s a recommendation, not a regulation, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because I’m a certified wingsuit instructor. So I can give you wingsuit training with less than two hundred jumps if I feel you’re qualified, which I do. But he refuses to let you go unless we can get a direct okay from the drop-zone owner. Which is completely absurd, because I have the authority to give you the jump training. I’m totally frustrated right now.”
“Okay,” I said. “So let’s call the owner.”
“He’s in Spain.”
“Seriously?” Disappointment was starting to sink in. I was still wearing the black-and-blue Phantom, feeling a little sweaty in the nylon fabric. I heard the speaker come on from manifest: “Otter load four, this is your five-minute call.”
“I need to get off the load,” I said.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to reach him or what the time change is,” Alan said, visibly irate. “It might not be today. This really burns me up. At least you know what to do, since we went through the training.”
“Yeah,” I said, slowly unzipping the front zippers of Alan’s wingsuit. After all the excitement, I felt deflated. “This is one thing I really dislike about jumping, all these people getting carried away with all their rules. I just don’t get it.”
“Well, not to mention this is completely within the rules and that doesn’t seem to matter at the moment.” Alan frowned darkly.
“I think I’m going to go climbing or something. I’m really sorry for all the hassle, Alan, it’s really nice of you to go through all this.” I was embarrassingly close to tears.
“Like I said, Steph, you’re totally ready to fly a wingsuit. We’ll work it out.”
“Okay. Thanks again, Alan, and I’ll see you later.”
I gathered up my gear and walked out of the hangar, feeling more dejected as it all sank in. What really got to me was being stopped from doing what I wanted to do for basically no good reason, by someone who didn’t know anything about me. I loved climbing because it was an escape from artificial restrictions. When climbing up
the side of a mountain, the restraints were natural and clear, not arbitrary. Storms, darkness, strength, fatigue—those were real limitations I could accept and knew how to yield to. Contrived, human-created limitations made me crazy. They always had.
I seethed as I loaded my skydiving gear into the truck and tossed out the remaining water from Fletcher’s bowl. I felt aimless for the first time in a long time, catapulted straight back to the empty place I’d thought I’d left behind. It scared me to see how much I needed to jump right now, and how fragile a solace it was. As usual, I was dependent on the whims of others.
Normally I wanted to skydive all day, and now I didn’t even want to be at the drop zone. I watched the trailer rattle past, with all the jumpers smiling and laughing around the sides, the load I was supposed to be on. Fletch and I got in the truck and started to back out of the parking area.
Alan came rushing across the gravel to my open window. “Steph! We got the owner on the phone, and he gave the go-ahead for you to jump the suit. Let’s go!”
What an emotional roller coaster. I could have done without all the drama. Even worse was the helpless frustration I felt at being singled out and stopped from making my own decisions. After being hit by a wave of negative emotions, I found it hard to shrug them off and get back to the headspace of simple excitement and all the things I needed to do right on my jump. I decided to just forget about those feelings, let them go, force myself back to the moment of newness and good feelings. I also decided that in the future I wouldn’t answer casual queries about how many jumps I’d done. This counting business had gone from petty and annoying to downright unbearable. As soon as I had whatever USPA licenses I needed to jump without ever being hassled for anything, I wasn’t even going to count my skydives anymore. That wasn’t what I was looking for in the sky.
I pulled my bag back out of the truck, refilled Fletch’s water dish, and walked back into the hangar. This time I hooked the wingsuit up to my rig myself while Alan supervised. I rehearsed all the procedures again and got on the trailer. As the jumpers and the tandem passengers lined up on the wooden planks around me, a grizzled, older tandem master slid in across from me and glanced at my wingsuit.
“So, how many jumps do you have?” he asked offhandedly.
I no longer saw this question as a common, somewhat annoying conversation starter. I saw it as a metal-toothed coyote trap. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said, with steely nonchalance. “Enough. How about you?”
He dropped his gaze and turned to his customer. I looked toward the open fields ahead, feeling my unzipped wings flutter behind my elbows as the trailer picked up speed.
I wondered what it was going to feel like. I did have a tiny bit of doubt after all the fuss that had been made. Would I burst into flames the minute I left the plane? I knew that Alan would never hear the end of it if I did mess up somehow. I hopped off the trailer and shuffled over to the plane, the long leg wing swishing between my legs like a heavy skirt. I felt a little clumsy climbing up the four-step ladder into the Otter’s open door, treading on the leg wing and getting slapped as the arm wings flapped wildly in the propeller blast. I bent my head and walked all the way to the front of the plane and took my seat on the bench just behind the pilot. Having a climber’s lean build had the unfortunate result of making me chilled as soon as a plane climbed up a few thousand feet, while everyone else was hot and yelling for the door to be opened. The wingsuit felt comfortingly protective, like a one-piece Gore-Tex suit or a bivouac sack. I was comfortably warm, and it made me feel more relaxed than usual. I leaned over to close the leg zips down to the foot booties and touched both of the cutaway handles on my rig, the right handle to release a malfunctioning main parachute, the left handle to deploy the reserve. I reached back and felt the hacky sack on my pilot chute, pushing back the fabric of my arm wing to get to it. I hoped I wouldn’t have a problem reaching for the pilot chute while I was flying. But if I did, I could always go for my reserve handle.
The Otter climbed. I watched the needle of my altimeter move like a clock hand on fast forward, half aware of everyone else in the plane jostling and talking. The most important thing was to leave the plane in good, stable flight and to remain stable and controlled. My limited experience had shown me that the exit from the plane often set the tone for the rest of the jump, for better or for worse. Above all, I did not want to tumble or get thrown into a spin as I exited.
My altimeter needle climbed past nine thousand feet. The tandem masters started to turn on the bench and pull their passengers onto their laps to clip their harnesses securely to the rigs.
The needle moved toward eleven thousand, and the fun jumpers began fastening their goggles, helmets, and video cameras, leaning down the aisle to hand-slap and fist-bump as many people as they could reach.
I zipped my arm wings shut and reached back again to touch the hacky-sack handle. I heard the familiar sound of the Otter slowing, the loud roar changing frequency to a lower sound. The red light over the back of the plane changed to yellow, then to green. Someone threw open the door and the cold wind rushed into the plane. Alan’s wingsuit was like a full-body wind jacket, protecting me from the sudden chill at thirteen thousand feet. The fun jumpers dropped out in groups of two and three, and the tandems slid down the benches to the open door. I watched the emotions tear across the tandem passengers’ faces as they crouched in the door for a few loud, hectic seconds, then tumbled into the air, the tandem masters and camera fliers nodding and shouting to one another. Within a minute, the plane was empty except for the pilot up front. I stood in the door with my hands together at my waist, keeping my arms firmly closed in.
I looked up at the rivets on the airplane wing to make sure my head was high. I took a quick breath and hopped out left into the sky, watching the plane get smaller above me.
Leaving the Otter and not bursting into flames
I was stable, moving forward, and I didn’t seem to be spiraling into a spin or bursting into flames. Instinctively, I opened my arms and legs. With a jolt of delight, I felt my wings inflate and catch air for the first time in my life. I felt the sudden lift under my body as my fall rate slowed. The air rushed past my face with forward speed, as it would on a motorcycle or on skis, making my eyes tear a little behind my goggles. I was flying!
I reached back to touch my pilot-chute handle, doing it with both arms to stay symmetrical. It was right there, where it should be. I touched it again, to make sure, as I’d been coached. My altimeter seemed to be working in slow motion as I flew. The normal fall rate of a human body is about 120 miles per hour. Even with no skill in the wingsuit, the extra surface area had decreased my fall rate to about half, turning the speed to forward motion. I kept checking the dial, expecting to be a thousand feet lower than I actually was. Still, there was so much to think about. I had only a minute or two to take it all in, trying to be aware of the sensations of flight at the same time that my brain kept track of all the things I needed to do. The time was elongated but at the same time so fleeting.
The altimeter said five thousand feet, and Alan had instructed me to pull high so I would have time to deal with any problems. I reached back, pulled out the pilot chute, and balled up quickly, hoping I was doing it right. I felt the parachute snivel behind my shoulders, and it popped out into a clean square above me, ending my fast flight through the sky. Now I was floating sedately through the air under my canopy, unzipping my arm wings. I noticed I was breathing fast, maybe from excitement, or maybe I’d just forgotten to breathe for the entire minute of speeding flight with the wind tearing across my face. I watched the other parachutes come in to land below me and started my own landing pattern at the edge of the field.
On the grass, I stood for a moment and looked up at the sky. With the same certainty I’d had sixteen years before, when I’d taken my first step onto a vertical wall, I knew I wanted to fly for the rest of my life.
I walked into the hangar with my canopy bundled up over my shoulder and the lo
ng blue tail wing swishing around my legs and gave Alan a rib-cracking hug. “I love it. I mean, I love it. Thank you, Alan, really.”
His smile lit up his face. “So it went well? I knew it would. Do a few more—you’ve got all day.”
I made jump after jump with Alan’s suit. I made my turns carefully, like a kid on a bike with the training wheels just off, not wanting to lose control or get into a spin. With each jump, I was able to take in a little more, get some awareness that I was actually flying through the sky, as close to being a bird as I could get in this body. I couldn’t imagine ever skydiving without a wingsuit again.
The next day, Brendan walked in with his Birdman Classic suit. “I think this will fit you better than Alan’s. You can just keep it for a while; I have another one now.”
The suit was dark gray, with small black wings. It had a white Birdman patch on the arm and large-toothed metal zippers up the front. A handful of companies sold wingsuits now, but Birdman had been the first to produce suits for commercial sale in 1998. The gray Birdman Classic was an early model, vintage and tiny now in the accelerating pace of wingsuit innovation.
“Brendan! Thank you!” I stepped into the booties and zipped it up. It fit me much better than Alan’s Phantom, and the small wings meant it would be easier to fly and safer to manage, a perfect beginner suit. “It’s the gray sparrow,” I said without thinking. I had a fleeting mental flash of the silvery blur I’d seen in the sky on Half Dome when the wingsuit jumper had flown past me. He must have been flying a gray suit.
“It fits you well. Have fun,” said Brendan.
Flying changed everything. I thought I loved skydiving before, but it was nothing compared with soaring across the sky as the air streamed along my body. People who really knew how to fly wingsuits could pop barrel rolls, fly side by side or stacked on top of each other, float up or dive down, change their speed and loft. For a few minutes at a time, a human could feel like a bird. My freefall time had just doubled with the suit on. I amused myself by calculating that my skydives had just become half as expensive. Being up in the air twice as long suited my climber’s sense of speed, which was innately so much slower than a skydiver’s. I relished the time to look around, think, and refine my body position. Each time I slipped out of the plane, I flew straight toward the Diamond, watching it float on the horizon ahead of me until I turned around to fly back to the drop zone. With every flight, I became more confident, understanding how to move my body more efficiently. Now I continued the flight down to three thousand feet before throwing out my pilot chute.