Mission Accomplished!

Sometimes it felt like it really just might not come together, but after many miles of trekking and a lot of time at the airstrip preparing for the jump it finally all came together today!

I did a test jump a few days ago from 16,000ft and it went better than I could of hoped.  I jumped with Dean and Leigh and I would say our test load was the best of all of them!  All stand up landings all on target.

Today I was manifested on Load 3 with Carrie, Chris and Derek(JM).  We got off the ground sometime after 9am. The morning weather had been great with no real hints of the clouds from the previous days.  As we took off there was a high cloud layer but nothing serious.

On the way to altitude we flew past Everest 3 times!  That things is just HUGE!  The landscape of the Himalaya at 29,000ft is just hard to describe, the tallest and most jaggerdy peaks I could ever imagine, like a martian landscape of some sort.

I was first out and before I exited I got a great eyeball on Namche, the river fork and roughly where the airstrip was.  We were too high to see detail but the clouds were patchy.

Freefall lasted 62 seconds, I did a bunch of 360's and checked out everything many times.  Peaks, peaks and more peaks, but about this time I noticed things were getting more cloudy.  I opened around 5,000ft and had a great visual on Namche and got to where the airstrip was, then things started getting very cloudy!  

I lost all my bearing in the clouds and kept waiting to breakthrough the layer, at 2500ft I realized things were just a tad off plan and the airstrip was no longer the only place to land.  I kept close to a couple of the other canopies but at 1500ft I decided to go it alone.  At an altimeter reading of 700ft I started to spot land but boy was it a lot closer than 700!  I spotted through a haze a little grass area, like an oasis.  Lucky for me I made a decent decision and went for a landing there.

I slid is in between some tree to be greeted by 4 local folks giving me a very funny look.  Some fella had just come out of a low cloud and landed in a Yak field with full oxygen gear on!  

Sherpas ran up to me within a few minutes and it turned out that the clouds had come up from the valley within just seconds of us leaving the plane and the visibility was very low.  The plane had to go and land at Lukla.  2 folks had got to the landing zone with just feet to spare.  I, it turned out had landed at the Royal Yak Farm, pretty much the ONLY field like area in the entire upper region.

The worst injury on the load was a bust up ankle and for once not on me.  What excitement!

The afternoon was spent waiting for the clouds to clear before jumping on a chopper to Lukla and then a Twin Otter to Kathmandu!  Off to Thailand tomorrow for a few days recovery.

Simon