The people in the photo are yours truly (front) and Robert Hutchinson (back)
According to the stats on Drop Zone, an authoritative skydiving website, about two Canadians die every year in skydiving accidents. So far, two Canadian skydivers have died in 2008. What better way to test the fatality odds than by trying it myself?
Dave Lundquist, a former skydiving instructor and friend phones me and offers to set me up on a tandem jump. What are the odds of dying? Slim, I’d reckon. Anyway, Dave is still alive. Odds of surviving are probably good.
A tandem jump means a novice skydiver is tightly harnessed to an instructor who does virtually all the work. Rather than completing a full day’s training and enduring the fear of screwing up royally on the initial jump, an initiate goes through a half-hour of ground instruction, gets pushed out of a plane, and places his life in the hands of someone considerably more experienced.
Plenty of Albertans assume skydiving is a fatal pursuit due to the controversy that dogged the defunct Skydiving Ranch. Located near Beiseker, five deaths occurred there between 1989 and 2003. It was sold in 2004 and renamed Alberta Skydivers. Last year, a British soldier died there while training.
Dave steers me towards Vertical Extreme Skydiving near Didsbury, the site of an Alberta Sport Parachuting Association (ASPA) tournament on this particular weekend. ASPA is the regional governing body for seven Alberta skydiving clubs.
I arrive at the drop zone. Dave is there. He is still alive. The odds continue to look good. I register, pay up and sign a legal waiver stating, essentially, that I, or my agents, won’t sue if I’m injured or killed. I sign and wait for my flight number to get called.
Overhead, skydiving teams break their formations, pull their chutes and glide back to the Earth. They land with air roaring against their parachute canopies. None of them crash.
An avid skydiver on crutches tells me about how she tore a ligament in her leg while miscalculating a landing earlier in the year. She is now out for the season. It’s the landing that gets you.
After several hours, my flight number is called. I put on a jumpsuit, helmet and goggles. A diminutive, jolly guy in an orange jumpsuit holds up a travel mug and says to me with a smile, “I have a coffee problem!” This is Robert Hutchinson — or Hutch, as the other skydivers call him. They speak of him with reverence. He has 6,000 jumps to his credit. He is not dead. This makes him a jumpmaster. My odds of survival increase. I will be harnessed to him for the 3,900-metre drop. I appreciate that he has a coffee problem.
(Weeks later, I learn that his old skydiving school in Gimli, Manitoba, was at the centre of controversy over the 1998 death of an experienced, medal-winning skydiver. This has no bearing on this day, however.)
Hutch runs me through the routine. He tells me what to expect, shows me pertinent equipment like his altimeter that tells us what altitude we’re at, and explains what is safe and not safe. He’s the expert. I do what he says. We are first aboard the Twin Otter, the preferred airplane of bush pilots. Twenty more experienced skydivers cram onto the two benches running through the back of the fuselage.
In 15 minutes, the Twin Otter reaches its peak altitude, and the experienced skydiving teams jump first. Hutch harnesses me in awkwardly close, inspects his equipment, and we walk awkwardly to the bay door. A vast expanse of Alberta farmland looms below. Looking at the edge of the airplane’s door makes my stomach feel queasy. He gets me to kneel on the edge of the plane with my arms crossed over my chest. Suddenly we’re out of the plane and falling.
Is it the nerve-racking, pants-pissing experience that one imagines? No. It is strangely calm, largely because I don’t have to worry too much about pulling the wrong chord at the wrong time. Besides, it’s happening too fast. It’s difficult to get a sense of the speed because the landmarks are on… the land. All we have is air rushing around us. It’s more like floating than falling. The free fall lasts for 45 seconds, maybe a minute.
Hutch pulls the chute. As predicted in his procedural run-through, I burst into hysterical laughter. From here on down, it’s smooth sailing. The instructor is in control of the steering. Demonstrating what a parachute can do, he rotates us 360 degrees, clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Then he gives more modest examples of how the steering straps can affect direction of the canopy. The objective is to guide the parachute smoothly to the landing area.
The rest of the ride lasts three or four minutes. Again, who’s counting at this point? We glide into the landing zone and stumble upon hitting the ground, but otherwise, it’s a soft landing. No injuries. Just the overwhelming feeling of “what the hell did I just do?”
The odds were in my favour. I’m not a negative statistic.
