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Show 4 I Fell 7,200 Feet and Walked Away! By PAT KIERSTEAD 2 as told to Hal Higdon By strange quirk of fate, this skydiveris still alive to tell what happens when you're falling at 120 mph—and your chute fails to open DENTURE WEARERS: ‘When messy pastes and powders’ fail »..get oe SECONDS before, I had jumped from an airplane at 7,200 feet. Arching my body, I had free-fallen most of the way to earth. PHOTO CREDITS Page 2: ABC; NBC; UPI; Bud Fraker. Page 5: The Yorkshire Post. Cunard Line. My speed was 120 mph when I finally pulled the ripcord of my parachute—and it failed to open! I looked down, 300 feet above disaster, and I saw the ground rushing toward me. I had made 139jumps without’a hitch. This, I thought, was mylast. I’m a skydiver. Some men relax with golf or tennis. I do it by dropping acrobatically from airplanes. The weekend before, halfway through repacking my chute, I'd stopped for a smoke. When returned to the chute, I made a nearfatal error. I failed to begin again at the point where I left off. During the week I planned to repack the chute again but somehow didn’t get to it. By the time I drove 2 Family Weekly, August 27,1967 to the airport near New Castle, Ind., that Sunday, I’d forgotten aboutit. I jumped into the back seat of our {essna 175. It climbed in tight circles toward 7,200 feet. At that altitude, I would have 30 seconds of free-fall, doing aerial acrobatics before opening my chute. I started to step out, but with one foot in space I hesitated a moment. It was as though subconsciously I sensed something wrong. I fell just like'a aver othe end of a high board. I did a right turn, a left turn, and a back loop, then arched my body to stabilize myself before opening the chute. At 2,400 feet I pulled the ripcord. I knew immediately something had gone wrong. The Para-Commander chute usually opens with a sock. But my slide down into the saddle—that is, into an upright position—had come agonizingly slow. I looked and saw my canopy wadded up in a big knot above me. The mal- function didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. Even if I couldn’t untangle the mess trailing above me,I still had a reserve chute on my stomach. I tried opening it. 1 don’t know what happened next. Maybe my reserve caught on my instrument panel. Anyway, it blew back in my face, pinning my left arm to my body. By then I knew I was in trouble. At the 120 mph I was traveling when I tried to open my main chute, I'd been passing through 1,000 feet every five seconds. My twisted canopy above probably had slowed my descent somewhat.Still, I had only seconds before I would splatter the landscape. Finally the reserve was free from my face and ready to deploy a second time. But time was gone. I saw the ground rushing at me. I realized I was plummeting into the woods. Instinctively, I pulled my elbows in, yanked my feet together, and covered my face with my hands. If I was going to smash into the ground, at least it would be in the right position. How can I explain what happened next? I'd been prepared to die. But suddenly I was hanging there, one foot dangling, the other barely touching the ground. My chute had snagged on one of the upper branches of a tree, and it had stopped me! The shock had been no greater than that of any chute opening. The full impact of what had happened didn’t hit me until several minutes later. If I had made my jump over another area where there were no trees below to catch me, I wouldn’t have ‘lived to tell about it. ‘Tf Thaan’t ‘hesitated for that in- stant in the plane before jumping 7,200 feet, I would have missed that one branch that saved mylife. But if I had been more careful packing my chute, nothing at all would have gone wrong! I had bruised my shoulderfalling through the trees. It was my only injury after that mile-plus fall, Don’t think I wasn’t worried— but not enough to keep me on the * ground. I’m back skydiving and loving it—and being more careful! @ ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE MIKOS |