Bad weather jumps

[propblast 0]

Hi all,
Hey the fact that the weather has gone blah again and i cant see 3 feet in front of my face gave me this question idea. Any one ever have any snow jumps. Has anyone ever jumped at the north or south poles before? Im a big time history buff thats why I ask these questions.
-e

[Aviatrr 0]

Bad weather? The weather was great today.. 75 degrees, clear skies, 10mph winds.. Made 6 jumps today and one last night.. More to come tomorrow.. Oh, wait.....you're not in Florida, are you?
Oh, and regarding the north pole thing.. Check out http:// www.north-pole-expeditions.com/north_pole_skydiving.htm
Mike

[propblast 0]

Mike,
Sounds like you had awesome weather. Of course its clear as a bell now and the stars are brite. Cold though. I cant seem to get that link open any suggestions??
-e

[Aviatrr 0]

Quote

I cant seem to get that link open any suggestions??

For some reason DZ.com put a couple characters in the address that shouldn't be there.. There's a " " or something like that in there that shouldn't be.. Delete that and it will work.. Or just type in the address displayed on the page rather than clicking on the link.. They do annual skydiving trips to the North Pole.. I believe they have pics and stories from the past several years.. I'd like to do that trip in a couple years..
Mike

[smkjumper 0]

I've jumped north of the Arctic Circle a few times as a Smokejumper (in Alaska), but it wasn't much different than any other jumps I've done. I spend about five and a half months in Antarctica (South Pole Station), and honestly have no desire to make a skydive there. Too cold!
As far as bad weather? I made a jump last year (again, as a smokejumper) into a rainstorm. It was'nt raining when I left the plane, and did'nt start until about 800 feet, but by the time I hit the groud, I was soaked!
-smkjumper

[propblast 0]

Cool I got it to work. Lot of Daylite to jump up there I bet.
-e

[smkjumper 0]

Yeah, it's crazy. I think my latest jump in Alaska was at about 11:30 P.M.
-smkjumper

[propblast 0]

Thats awesome. You still smokejump? Is it a fulltime or part time job? Ive seen some books about the Montana jumpers? Very intresting stuff.
-e

[lummy 4]

This may be a stupid question and no offense meant, I'm just curious. why would you need to jump into a fire zone when it's raining?

[smkjumper 0]

The deal on that particular jump was that the fire was about 3/4 of a mile a way - and it did'nt even rain there! We jump into the safest/closest place to the fire, which on this day happened to be into a clearing in the path of a thunderstorm. We kinda took cover until it blew over, then hiked up to the fire. We figured that if we would have been under canopy five minutes later then we were - things would have been really ugly!
Proplast-- Yeah, I'm still a smokejumper- starting my 7th season in April! (jeeze, I need to get a life!)
-smkjumper

[Iflyme 0]

Ya, I've jumped into snow before: Last April into blizzard at 5000 feet that was light rain by the time it got to the ground... landed in the field covered in snow (very cool)... and last time I jumped (2 weeks back) I pulled at 10'000 to watch the CReW guys... it was into snow and ice pellets. The stuff that accumulated on top of my canopy looked cool from below (snow is wet here, and it doesn't all blow off). My moustache was iced up, but by the time we got below 5000, it was nice and warm again!

[propblast 0]

Yeah,
My answer to that question was sometimes you got to jump where your told and sometimes you got to dig fireline in weird places.
7th season wow. Do you have a school you got to go through for that. Im reall curious. The whole red skys over montana thing when i was a little kid as never gone away.
-e

[Deleted 0]

We had a similar experience to Iflyme except we took off in the rain and exited at the base of the clouds for a altitude check (3500'). At that altitude it was snowing. After opening I checked my canopy and noticed that snow was accumulating inside the cells of the canopy. (It's not called a ram air for nothing) Hmmm what to do?? A canopy control check seemed like a good idea. When we landed the ice that had formed on the leading edge of the canopy broke off in pieces. The local jumpers seemed to be used to it, and suggested just shakeing the snow out of the cells.

[Deleted 0]

Enjoying this thread any others.

[skreamer 1]

Question for smkjumper :
Seeing as how they jump the North Pole, think you'll ever get the chance to jump Antarctica? I don't mean the South Pole, just the area where you work. BTW you must have the world's most extreme commute - summers in Alaska then 'summers' in the Antarctic. Must be great at parties when an accountant asks you 'So what do YOU do for a living?'
/s
[drop till you party!]
PS how was your holiday in NZ, did you make lots of jumps?

[PLFXpert 0]

Okay, I may sound a little dumb but that has never stopped me from asking any question before so:
What is a smokejumper? If I think about it literally, I think of someone who jumps into fires but why? Is it for the purpose of fire-fighting and if so where do you have your eqipment or anything if you're jumping into it?
As far as bad weather jumps, I have one. I used to have the mindset of, "as long as everyone else says it's okay to jump then I'm DEFINITELY jumping." Well, that mindset taught me a lesson one day. When we left the ground, the was a lot of cloud coverage but there was just enough holes to make it okay to take a load up. By the time we got to altitude, there were NO holes and the pilot wasn't even sure where we were as far as the spot, not to mention it was also extremely windy that day and come to find out, having just gotton off student status a couple weeks before this jump, I shouldn't have been allowed to jump in those high winds but nobody caught me and I didn't know any better so everyone in the plane just decided to trust the pilot to be "close enough" and jump out. So I figured, "okay, I'll jump too." As I said, I was fresh off student status so all I was doing was some flips and barrel rolls, ext. I had packed my chute myself for the first time and was a little nervous about it so I pulled at 4 grand just to make sure I had enough time to cut away (as you can see, I wasn't very confident about my pack-job.) When I opened, I was still in the clouds so I just held down one toggle to spiral down in place and not drift until I could see where I was. When I got out of the clouds, I was at 2,200 feet and the DZ was NOWHERE in sight. My canopy was collapsing and then inflating again from the strong winds so it was a really bumpy ride but I knew it wasn't my canopy b/c when it was actually open it was perfect. All that was below me was swamp and trees and 1 field, pretty far away but I decided to try and go for it. I *almost* made it, I was about 10 feet short of it and had to PLF into a tree. I was more worried about hurting my canopy than myself since my gear is my baby so I reached up after my feet hit the tree and tried to pull in my canopy so it wouldn't get caught. It worked and I slowly fell to the ground limb by limb. I was not hurt at all but covered in mud. Some friends at the DZ were watching for me and were actually waiting in the field in a truck calling for me when I found my way to the field. Turns out no-one from that load landed on the DZ and the few that got close landed around this pond pretty close to the DZ. It has been my only off-DZ landing and I have to say, it was kinda fun if you don't find that wierd. What's funny is that, even after that, after I checked my gear, packed it up, put on my RW suit (since my freefly one was covered in mud) I went for another jump. Still in high winds but by this time it was about an hour later and the clouds had cleared. It was a fun day for experiences b/c again, on the way down, my canopy was collaspsing and inflating again but I landed right next to the peas.....at first...he he he...before my canopy took off with me. I pulled in one of my toggles all the way and it was still going so I pulled my other one in all the way and it was still going so I had to pretty much launch myself on top of my canopy to get it to stop. Ha ha ha. Everyone was laughing at me and we had just done a pretty awesome 7-way w/ our DZ owner and he said "I forgot, the winds are kinda high for you to be jumping today." And I was all "Gee, thanks for the notice." All I knew from a student was to check which direction the winds were coming from. No-one had mentioned that certain winds may be too high for beginner or even some intermediate levels. Nevertheless, I had a GREAT time. Ha ha haMuch love and blue skies,
Carrie http://www.geocities.com/skydivegrl20/

[Tee 0]

Living in Alberta, Canada, if you want to jump year round you have no choice but to jump in the snow.
Tee

[propblast 0]

They are firefighters that are used to jump on hard to reach areas.
Smokejmpr can correct me if im wrong because im not involved with smokejumping and the only rigs of theirs Ive seen where old ones. Military rounds with belly reserves. I figure that they would carry thier equipment the same way as the US Army. It is tethered under the reserve and dropped down the line after they leave the aircraft. Am I wrong there smokejumper? If so please correct me. :-)
-e