Antony and I went to Dumpster after it had snowed quite a bit. We spent a moment shovelling snow onto the “running exit”. The plan was that I would do a ski base first and Antony would follow shortly after doing a sled-exit with a wingsuit (wooden sled with two metal rails).
The snow was sticky, and Antony mentioned that there was less snow than the last time he was there. I jumped first and exited with a lot of speed. Everything went well. Antony went second and I saw him in an unstable body position shortly after the exit. I stayed calm because I knew that Antony had trained to regain stability in wingsuits.
But then he showed no sign of making any effort to correct the rather slow spin. His head was resting against his chest as if he was already unconscious. He fell in this position until he hit the bottom of the cliff and came to rest on the talus.
Shortly before the jump, I asked Antony what he thought about me doing a front flip on skis. He told me that he was afraid of the first ledge which is about 30 meters below the exit. So, I decided to do a normal exit. When Antony did his first wingsuit sled-exit at Dumpster ( plastic sled, in a sitting position )he came close to this ledge.
A day after the accident, I walked down to Dumpster to check the tracks of the sledge and my skis. The tracks of the skis go straight, the tracks of the sled go about 2 meters to the left and end at a rock that’s pointing out at the edge of the cliff. Most likely Antony hit this rock at very low speed and was stopped immediately. He then hit the first ledge and was knocked out. That would explain why he didn't correct his instability and didn’t pull his parachute.
The police have found his camera and are still trying to watch the footage. If my theory is wrong, we will update this report.
https://www.instagram.com/antygravity_/?hl=en
https://www.police.be.ch/de/start.html?newsID=944cfd19-10d1-4874-ac48-70f63ae33921
https://mobile.plattformj.ch/artikel/229229/
https://www.nau.ch/news/schweiz/basejumper-in-stechelberg-be-todlich-verungluckt-66900729
Can you help us with incident interpretation? We are interested in any details regarding personal experience, gear, weather conditions and any other circumstances related to the incident.
