Incident Report07 August 2016
Brevent - Chamonix, France

Weather was pretty much ideal. Sunny,
no clouds, 30C, slight breeze on exit, but nothing significant. Dave was jumping a Freak.At 16:15 on Sunday, Jumper was doing his fourth jump of the day on Brevent.
His previous three jumps that day had all been solos in line 3, where he started off doing a high pass, and was gradually working on feeling out the line,
familiarizing himself with the terrain, and getting slightly lower in it. On this jump, a second jumper was following him.
Dave exits first, nothing unusual, and the second jumper follows about a half second behind.
The second jumper cuts the corner around the pillar and catches up to him quickly,
hits the brakes a little too hard and looses the speed necessary to stay on Jumper's glide ratio.

The second jumper turns slightly left to go for a lower point on the ridge.
Dave maintains his intended flight path, aiming to cross the ridge at the highest point of line 3, as he had done on his previous three jumps.
He is slightly lower on this jump though and he does not have the necessary speed to make the ridge.
He sinks out and impacts as he's crossing the ridge, nothing out.

Dave survives with no major bodily injuries, but severe brain trauma.

He is flown, unconscious, to the hospital in Annecy where he is officially pronounced brain dead at 17:30 the next evening.
On Tuesday morning he is operated on for organ donation. His organs saved six lives.

Being a late afternoon/early evening jump, there was less lift than on the previous jumps of the day.
On his previous jumps, Dave had been 10-15 meters above the same point on the ridge. The highest possible entrance point to line 3 is very committing though, as the ridge is flat at that point.

If you realize too late that you're not going to make it, you can't just bail and cross the ridge at a lower point,
you would have to make a sharp 90-110 degree turn to the left.
And if you're already sinking out, that kind of a turn would likely be difficult or impossible to achieve without sliding or dropping into the terrain.

The biggest lessons to take away:
1.Don't fly committing lines in the afternoon. There is less lift and it's more turbulent.
2.Never operate in the highest margins of your own ability.
3.Just because you've made a particular ridge or point on previous jump, don’t assume that you will make it again.
4.Speed is everything. Don't ever lose focus on your speed trying to get a certain amount of glide.