Gabe Reilly

Gabe is an experienced and very current air sports athlete, active at a high level in speedflying, skydiving, and wingsuit BASE. He recently jumps many of the most technical wingsuit lines in the Wasatch Mountains, including Twin Peaks, the Y, and Squaw Peak, all within the last 2 weeks.

Our entire group has flown Squaw Peak the previous morning, and the group stoke is high.
His flying style is aggressive, low and fast on terrain.

Our group of 6 very experienced jumpers starts hiking at 5:30am and reaches the exit just after 8am. Our weather forecast shows a window between 8-10am where conditions are probably jumpable. After 10am, the winds are forecast to be strong out of the southwest.

Arriving on exit, the winds are stronger than forecast, at 3-7kt with a right quartering tailwind. Nobody likes the conditions, with multiple grass and foliage test throws showing poor conditions from over the back and cross. While not recommended at all, it is common knowledge in our group that this exit has been flown in variations of tail and crosswind conditions in the past. We all gear up, some only for warmth, with the idea to be patient and prepared if conditions improve. ‘Today’s strategy is patience’ is verbalized on more than one occasion.

Blacksmith features a prominent ledge (13m/-57m) requiring a solid exit, with mandatory terrain flying for at least 10 seconds. However, relative to the exits Gabe jumps recently, Blacksmith is easy. Gabe has flown this exit ~5 times and comments on the hike up that ‘Blacksmith puts you right on the terrain beautifully’.

Gabe is closest to the exit, and the most eager to jump. About 10 minutes after gearing up, he grabs handfuls of dirt to throw. They all show tail, cross wind, and occasional light thermals. With his intent obvious, we radio to groundcrew that Gabe is on exit to jump soon. Gabe aborts his first count. Another quick dirt throw shows similar conditions we’ve seen all morning, if only slightly weaker. Less than a minute after his abort, Gabe steps to the exit again and lowers his visor.

Gabe’s exit is powerful and precise, with perfect form. Due to the exit exposure, our group loses sight of Gabe after the initial push. At 6sec, many of us see Gabe fly into view. Gabe is approx. 1 wingspan above the terrain in full flight, his shadow clearly visible below him. My immediate thought is that this is NOT normal for his horizontal distance from exit. Within the first second in view, Gabe clips a bush, followed by impact with terrain immediately after. There is no question that death is immediate.
We mobilize local SAR, and a Lifelight helicopter responds to hoist Gabe off the talus.

Gabe’s camera and Flysight are recovered from the talus 2 days later with both providing uncorrupted files. Video shows a stable and powerful exit with zero heading or pitch deviations, with good suit tension and fast inflation. Gabe dives aggressively onto the terrain flight line immediately from the start with his Flysight showing 1:1 glide at impact, at 8sec (130m/-220m).
A frame by frame analysis shows Gabe missing a higher first bush by inches, then barely clipping a second bush, followed by more assertively clipping a third bush (the one we see from exit). So effectively, 3 bushes in a row at 1:1 glide.
The third bush is found with a couple of pinky-finger-diameter branches freshly broken. However, none of these bushes are stout enough to knock a wingsuit pilot out of the air. Our community has numerous accounts of pilots hitting substantial tree branches, even seriously damaging wingsuits, while still miraculously deploying and surviving. It is our assessment that Gabe’s trajectory leads to an impact even without him clipping these light bushes.

Thoughts:
1. On two separate dirt test throws, a minor upward airflow suggested a transient thermal passing through. These cycles proved brief, persisting for 20-30 seconds before prevailing tail and cross winds regaining control. His final throw immediately before stepping to exit appears to reflect one of these fleeting cycles, and he exited during that brief window. This is significant because isolated thermals are surrounded by sink along their boundaries, and do not alter overall prevailing air masses. A pilot might experience false confidence with strong initial performance, only to encounter severe sink upon exiting the bubble. Recognizing this dynamic is critical for preventing jumpers from being misled by localized updrafts on technical exits requiring favorable flight-span conditions. A brief thermal inside of a tailwind/crosswind is not a jump window.

2. Gabe dove aggressively onto the terrain directly in the start arc. Flysight data suggests that Gabe most likely had the necessary available lift to fly a much shorter start arc than he actually flew. When combined with sinking conditions, the immediate dive onto terrain erased his margins. The combination of an aggressive dive with an abrupt “level-off” attempt to match terrain is sadly a recurring topic on the Base Fatality List.

3. We also need to be honest with the patience/group mentality contradiction. We all disliked the conditions, and more than one of us mentioned it. We all geared up, with a voiced intent to exercise patience, but then Gabe, the youngest in our group, decided to jump. We know this exit has been flown in a tail and crosswind before, but was Gabe feeling any pressure? There were some highly respected names in the community on exit, and later conversations with Gabe’s father would reveal that, only just the night before, Gabe was over-the-top super excited to be jumping with us for the last two days. Maybe there was an inner voice of ‘I’m super excited to be jumping with names I’ve known for years’ that pressured him into stepping up to the plate prematurely. From the opposite perspective, for those of us choosing to wait, Gabe’s recent flights from far more difficult and technical jumps perhaps gave us a false sense of confidence in Gabe’s ability to assess his own requirements. This unknown element may be the most useful lesson in our whole debrief. Raising awareness about how conflicting and unspoken momentum and pressures can build within a group could help others in the future, and is as vital as weather conditions and flightline analysis.

In summary, the true learning points from this tragedy can be distilled to the recognition of factors that lead to:


1. Sending it into a conditions window that isn't there.
2. Aggressively attacking a terrain line in the start arc, and
3. Possible internal pressure to jump.