I did not know Kenn very well… In fact, I had just been introduced to him by a local climber about a month before this incident and only got to talk to him on the phone for an hour or so. He was a super nice guy and I enjoyed hearing some of his stories from when he started learning to skydive in the 80s.
He told me he wanted to jump Courthouse rock as a bucket list item and was happy that he finally had climbing friends to help him climb the face and take his gear down for him after he jumped. He invited me on the jump weeks in advance and seemed pretty confident with the exit point beta he gathered…
I never got to follow up with him about his currency or look up more details about the exit, like I would have wanted to, I decided not to go and quite frankly didn’t know if they were even still planning on going out that day. Unfortunately, Kenn died on this jump. I was contacted later by the climber and was sent the video to analyse what happened...
Kenn was in an original prodigy suit with a Velcro rig. In the video he looked extremely tired from the long climb/hike to the exit. It was also one of the first hot days this season so I’m sure that didn’t help with his fatigue. When he exited he had a solid push but after the first second he started drifting to the left a bit. There is a talus below the exit at about 800 ft that continues outwards to jumpers left… Instead of pitching or attempting to pitch as the talus got closer, he just kept going and tried to fly the suit… Kenn impacted the talus with nothing out at about 7.5 seconds. It honestly looked like he got object fixated, once his body was heading towards the rock, and he just froze. There was not any attempt at pitching at all… which is pretty hard to comprehend.
I believe that Kenn underestimated what this particular jump entailed and how much fatigue and being uncurrent can have a huge impact on decision making. Lessons learned: This jump is a technical wingsuit jump or a slider down exit. There is not much in-between. Kenn was the only base jumper on this jump with a bunch of climber friends who cannot be a resource to him when looking at the exit, the flight, lzs, gear checks… anything. He also didn’t ask many questions before hand. Somehow, I ended up being his only base contact in the sport and in our brief conversation a month before he went to do this, he didn’t ask me for any extra info and seemed confident in his approach to the jump. I had no idea what suit he was going to be jumping or what he was thinking doing this exit after such a long hiatus…
At the end of the day, it’s our responsibility to know what we are getting ourselves into… do the homework, ask questions, use your peers to talk about jump plans and stay current. Kenn was a great guy and will be missed.