Lorenz and I drove together to Fürenalp and met up with another jumper at the gondola station. All three of us were well-rested and the mood was very good. We took the gondola up the mountain and hiked down to the exit together where we put our gear on. There were three of us standing at the exit. Lorenz jumped off first. We assumed that he was just flying straight out and opening high because the first jump was with his new LD5 rig that he had never jumped before. But, then he turned right and flew towards the gondola station and parking lot instead of to the standard landing area. We watched his flight and talked about how slow it looked, but it could also have been because of the headwind.

Then I could see him reaching backwards to try to get to his PC. At the same moment, he dipped his right shoulder, tipped forward, and dove head down. From that moment on, it was about two to three seconds until impact. About one to one and a half seconds before impact, I saw the red canopy come out of the container. Lorenz was too low for the parachute to deploy, so he spiraled into the bed of the stream next to the footpath without an open canopy. When we got to him, he was lying in the bed of the stream with the stretched lines and parachute next to him.

The factors that contributed to this accident were (1) deploying the parachute too late, (2) not being able to find the PC handle on his new LD5 as his previous Zack rig’s BOC was in a different place, and (3) not being very current at the moment. The last years he jumped a lot and he was highly current but that year he had been focusing on a paragliding course and not BASE jumping as much as he used to. With regard to the initial missed pull, I, personally, had the same experience with the LD5 -- that if the body position wasn't 100% correct, it was difficult to get to the PC.