Surviving a risky jump can make the next one deadlier
A veteran jumper says the deadliest moment is not the first leap, but the flight you survive without understanding why.
Andrew Huberman · The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy StumpfAndy Stumpf, a former Navy SEAL turned wingsuit flyer, was talking about why people die jumping from cliffs in fabric suits that let them glide. A wingsuit is sewn with wings between the arms and legs, and in BASE jumping a person leaps from a mountain or cliff rather than an airplane. The question on the table was whether jumpers become more dangerous because they keep pushing farther, or because they are novices.
His answer came as a question he thinks every jumper should ask after a good flight:
"But did you nail it or did you get away with it?"
Stumpf argues that the killer is what psychologists call the Dunning-Kruger effect. He is pointing to the early part of the curve he described, when a little success makes people overconfident, which matches the textbook pattern where people with little experience overrate their skill.
Stumpf warns that after such a flight, the dangerous thing for the jumper to say afterward is nailed it, when he may only have been lucky about wind he did not understand. He described ripping around a corner and saying nailed it, without thinking through how the air was changing along the way.
He gave the example of wind. A jumper may leave a west facing slope and feel strong lift at the exit, the kind that helps performance, much as planes leave the ground facing the breeze. Farther down the mountain, Stumpf said, three quarters of the slope may be covered in shade and the thermals, the shifting air currents, may have switched along the way, so the jumper starts to feel pressure Stumpf described as "almost a hand on your back."
That middle stretch, he believes, is deadlier than the start. He said he worries less about the veterans he calls the titans of the sport, and more about the person in the middle who thinks he has everything under control.
His friend Alex was in that middle. Stumpf had jumped with Alex for years and watched him survive close calls that Stumpf would like to think corrected him. He associates Alex's death directly with that curve. Of Alex, Stumpf said, "I think he had gotten away with it more than he had nailed it."
Stumpf said he wishes he could go back and "slap him around a little bit" to make him pay attention. Stumpf recalled his helicopter instructor saying, "Listen, once you know better, you can do better."
Questions people ask
What exactly is BASE jumping?
BASE is short for building, antenna, span, and earth, the four kinds of fixed objects jumpers leap from. Unlike skydiving from an airplane at about 13,000 feet, a BASE jumper may have only a few hundred feet before the ground, so there is far less time to fix a mistake.
What is the Dunning-Kruger effect?
It describes how people with limited experience in a skill tend to overestimate their ability, because they lack the knowledge to judge themselves accurately. Confidence peaks early, then falls as people learn how much they do not know, and only rebuilds slowly with real competence.
How do people normally learn to wingsuit BASE jump safely?
Instructors usually recommend about 200 skydives before ever putting on a wingsuit, which takes most nonprofessionals a year or two. From there, jumpers progress from smaller, slower suits to larger ones, and from skydiving to jumping from cliffs only after extensive coaching.