Scarface007

To everyone from the last few posts - the story DOES take place around Victoria Falls, in Zimbabwe. The person that put that review there i think got confused because I do refer to Angel Falls in the book where the character talks about Angel Falls. "The BASE jump from across the falls was about 355 feet" ..... (here i am talking about Vic Falls)... "and I had previously done jumps that were just as crazy but much higher. My attempt at the Angel Falls in Venezuela was at around 3000 feet. " That helicopter scene takes place over about 4-5 pages so i can't post it all here - but here is some of it. "I estimated my exit point and looked at where the bridge was in relation to the helicopter. I let go of the helicopter and simply fell down towards earth. I was falling fast and was getting my heading correct and reached back to my BOC and released my canopy. It jolted me upright after a second and I was about another five seconds from the bridge at this point." then some other stuff happens and then later.... "Without thinking, when I had seen her hitting him, I jumped over the railing as well and in one swooping motion reached out and grabbed Greg by his left leg. We were plummeting 355 feet down towards the raging river below and falling at a lower speed than a normal skydive. It might be at a slower speed but I knew at this height we had four or maybe five seconds at the most before we hit terra firma. Since we both had a poor fall off the bridge we had less aerodynamic control and I knew I wouldn’t be able to stabilize us both in the critical few seconds we had before we fell to our deaths. Two seconds had passed already and I decided to deploy my PR reserve anyway, accepting the risks of it either not opening or tangling. I reached for Greg again with my right hand and tried to grab his leg with both hands. As I did the reserve chute had full deployment about one and a half to two seconds later. Greg was trying to pull himself up to grab hold of my hands too but the ground was approaching too fast and I couldn’t steer us away from a bad landing zone as I had hoped. I knew I would have an off-heading opening but I knew there was a small enclave in the river to the left where it had created a small semi-circle and I hoped and tried to land in that section of the river. However our weight and the wind pressure on us was making our landing zone further to the left and closer than I had hoped. In the critical last seconds we had, I yelled as loudly as I could to Greg to lift his head and almost immediately we both landed with a hard crash into the rocks below. I heard bones breaking and felt my leg bend under him. The last thing I saw was a large black boulder out of the corner of my eye and then everything went dark."

Yes it is, thank you for asking! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086Q8J7HR/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_apa_i_-9qIEb7HJAC1X?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=c34091ba-ab97-4e63-8cb0-c356fb026987

Thanks for the continued replies guys! I really appreciate the great feedback and detailed information. I know a lot of this is common knowledge for some of you but I appreciate you sharing it with me, it helps tremendously.

Thank you very much for all the information! I do appreciate it!

Hi – I have zero jumps. I am doing research for a book and need some specific info I haven’t found online yet – or links if possible. I realize from a helicopter it’s not a BASE jump and that it is a skydiving jump: 1. Can you/should you however use BASE gear when doing a low altitude heli jump? Or would there be specific gear for this. 2. What is the lowest possible jump that you could do from a helicopter. (100ft, 200, 300, more?) 3. Could you/would you have a reserve to do another low altitude jump (350ft) immediately after doing the heli jump? 4. Would you be able to jump from a bridge right after someone jumped and catch up to them on a 350 ft. jump and still have time to open a reserve at 80-90ft. (I've seen online this is the lowest recorded) (I realize it’s pushing critical limits for deployment) – or is this beyond the realm of reality? This will be into a river. I expect one character to (likely) die and have no problem giving the other one broken bones. Thank you for any help!