We were a group of four jumpers on our way to High Nose. We took the 14:38 gondola from Lauterbrunnen and met Nicolas in the gondola. He told us he was planning to jump Nose 2. He seemed in good spirits, eager to jump after two days of rain. We exchanged telephone numbers to coordinate jumps, as we intended to jump from different exits.
He started the hike alone, a few minutes before us. That was the last time we saw him. All four of us had uneventful jumps. We stashed our gear and started walking towards Lauterbrunnen approximately 10 minutes after jumping.
Just after we started walking, we heard Nicolas’ canopy open. We turned around and saw that he had opened with line twists at a reasonable altitude. In addition to the line twists, he had an off-heading of between 120° and 150° to the right. From the distance, it was hard to tell the exact degree of the off-heading or the number of line twists, but it looked like more than one and above the risers.
After opening, he tried to correct the off heading by turning to the left, but it wasn’t enough, and he hit the cliff the first time. It wasn’t a hard hit, so we were hopeful that he would clear it. But due to an offset on his risers or an input from him, the canopy turned to the right again in a steeper turn. This resulted in a more violent second impact, likely fatal.
From then we didn’t see any further inputs. He fell the remaining 50-60 meters with a collapsing canopy with multiple smaller hits and came to rest at where the forest meets the cliff. Two of us ran to him, arriving in less than 10 minutes, but found him unconscious with no signs of life. We began CPR immediately and continued until the rescue helicopter arrived.
As we didn’t witness the actual jump, we can only speculate on what happened. The distance from the wall after opening suggests he didn’t track very far, but far enough to assume he didn’t fall off the exit unintentionally due to possible wet conditions. We cannot say if there was any camera on this jump. The Helmet had an anti-snag mount, but due to the circumstances we didn’t look closer if there were broken parts on the Helmet.
We don’t have any information about his age, experience of base and skydiving. If you have any information, please feel free to reach out and fill in the gaps. Even though we didn’t know Nicolas, he seemed like a nice and calm person. Our condolences and thoughts are with his family and friends.