Darcy Zoitsas

Darcy was using a PF tracking suit. He had been using it for some time and as most of the jumpers, he had experienced that he had to make some adjustments to his position and technique to get the suit really working. He was experienced big wall jumper and very current on this specific site. The jump in question was his first jump where he really nailed his track from the very first stages of the track. He really had his suit flying and he was motoring towards the LZ. (It must be noted at that point tracking to the landing area was not so common feat on this site). At the same time as he was tracking along the talus he was getting sucked lower and lower and he probably didn't experience normal ground rush as his track was really going at that point. So at the time he started to deploy he maybe didn't notice just exactly how low he was, he was not by any means too low but just low enough that his margin for error was getting thinner. At deployment time he experienced some unstableness in his position, tried to correct that and tumbled, from there he probably tried to gain stability before deploying. He eventually pitched but impacted the talus near line stretch. What must be noted from this fatality is that while the modern flying equipment is making BASE safer it is also is presenting us with new hazards. When going into tracking suits or starting flying wingsuits it must be remembered that you might not experience normal groundrush and you can easily get unintentionally sucked low. Also stability issues during pull time can be very different situations with big inflating clothing.