Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  Being the channel for people to have these experiences was life altering. It was a lot of work, and it was extremely intense. Mario said from the beginning that he’d never do more than two tandem base jumps per week, even if the business boomed—which it quickly did. With the inherent risk of the sport, he felt that from a mathematical standpoint, there must be a certain number of jumps at which an incident is inevitable, and he wanted to set a limit and keep the number low in hopes of staying within those parameters of inevitability.

  Through the business, Mario was also offering courses for new base jumpers who wanted to be thoroughly instructed on the safest techniques for cliff jumping in Moab, and he was guiding traveling jumpers who wanted to be shown to the best cliff sites in the area. I pitched in by guiding jumpers up desert spires, for those who were more experienced and had some climbing skills and wanted a more exciting adventure. The tandem business was getting a lot of attention from the media, including the New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, and Outside magazine, and Moab Base Adventures was taking off in every way.

  Life was very busy by the summer of 2013, and as August approached we kept procrastinating on buying plane tickets for the annual Europe summer trip. Things were so hectic this year with the business growing and everything else that it seemed hard to leave on vacation. But wasn’t this the whole point of having our own business? To have even more freedom to get out and fly our wingsuits and travel? In early July, I checked flight prices to Switzerland and said,“Mario, we need to pull the trigger—or not go. I could accept either way, but the tickets are just going up, and we need to decide now.” We agreed that it could be nice to stay in the States and travel to the northwest to jump Mount Baring and climb at Index in Washington, a trip we were always talking about doing. And finally, without either of us actually deciding, we went ahead and bought tickets to Zurich. We knew that if summer came and went and we weren’t flying wingsuits in the Alps or the Italian Dolomites, we’d regret not going.

  We arrived in Lauterbrunnen in the first week of August to torrential rain, more than we’d ever seen in Switzerland. We’d decided to tent camp on this trip, and the tent was flooded on the first day. Mario was uncharacteristically exhausted, from teaching and guiding groups of jumpers in Moab up until the very day we left for the airport. After a couple of wet days in Lauterbrunnen, we fled to Brento, Italy, where the weather is always better. Damian and Jay joined us, on their way home from a similarly stormy stint in Norway, and we all stayed in Brento for a week, flying when the storms allowed and watching the weather forecast in the Dolomites, where the weather was equally unsettled.

  Mario and I had jumped in the Dolomites on our last two summers in Europe, and it had become one of our favorite places. Our skills, and the sport itself, were advancing exponentially in the last few years. The goal had shifted from simply flying straight out from the cliff into open air, to terrain flying: intentionally turning and diving to get closer to the rocks and trees on the ride down a mountain. More dangerous, of course, but even more amazing to experience.

  With just a few days left, the four of us drove to the Dolomites and pooled our euros for helicopter rides to the summits of two lofty limestone spires. The week in Brento had been fun, but the first day in the Dolomites was phenomenal. Damian was wavering on the edge of changing his travel plans and staying with us for a few more unique jumps. Jay didn’t have an option to stay: they were traveling in the same car to the airport, and finally Damian decided to stick with the plan and leave with Jay. But we all agreed that we’d meet back in the Dolomites the next year for a good long trip together, and we’d fly everything.

  Mario and I had only two days left, because we’d planned to go and visit Robi in Slovenia at the end of the trip. We’d jumped a nearby mountain called the Sass Pordoi a couple of years before, and we needed only one car to access it, which was key now that we were on our own. We could camp anywhere in the forest near the landing area and hike an hour up a trail to get to the cable car that would take us the last 3,000 feet to the top of Pordoi. To top it all off, the landing area was a grassy meadow beside a charming hotel and restaurant. The weather had cleared, and with the short hike and the inexpensive cable car ride, we could easily make several jumps at this idyllic site in our last two days.

  We got to Sass Pordoi on August 18, pitched the tent by a wooden picnic table, and set off to the cable car. The enormous summit was just as we remembered, a sprawling limestone mountaintop decorated with whimsical cairns and alarmingly deep crevasses near the sides. Random pitons and bolts dotted the edges, left there by climbers taking different routes to the top. Panoramic views of distant blue and gray dolomitic peaks extended around in all directions, almost too beautiful to be real. A tall metal cross stood at the exit point, guyed up with metal cables.

  Curious hikers and tourists clustered around watching as we geared up and stood at the exit, which made for a slightly distracting feel, a little more like a stunt jump than vacation. We made two flights that day, Mario choosing to go through a large notch feature on the side of the mountain, while I flew around outside the notch, not wanting to be so committed until I got more familiar with the site.

  That evening we sat side by side at the wooden picnic table, chopping vegetables for dinner, a glass of Italian wine at hand, and paging through the climbing guidebook. A French jumper camping nearby in a small European-style RV came to visit and was delighted to discover that we could chat in French. His name was Jean-Louis; he told us this place was his paradise. He came here every year to climb and jump but was not feeling confident jumping right now, so he was only climbing. He offered to drive us up to the cable car the next day. After these last two weeks of rain and clouds, we wanted to savor the nice weather and the relaxing time of walking uphill for an hour before getting into the cable car. We told him we might take him up on it for the second or third jump.

  I woke the next morning on my air mattress, cuddled against Mario. Part of me just wanted to stay in bed, enjoying the feeling of lying close together and waking up slowly, the kind of thing you might do while on vacation. Being in the base jumping business in Moab meant that days started before sunrise; a chance to sleep in for a few hours had become all too rare. But finally we had incredibly beautiful weather, and this was our last day in the Dolomites, and we didn’t want to miss out on such a perfect morning. We drank some tea, shouldered our packs, and set off up the hill. As we walked we talked about how nice it all was, and we agreed to stop in at the hotel restaurant for apple cake and coffee after we landed, to take advantage of all the small joys of Italy one last time.

  On top, I’d never seen such perfect conditions. There was no wind, the sun was shining, the air was warm yet crisp. A group of birds flew past in a magical cloud as we stood at the exit in our wingsuits, chatting with a group of Italian motorcyclists who had ridden the cable car up for the view. Mario asked me if I wanted him to follow me and shoot video on the flight, as he often liked to do. Although we’d jumped twice the day before, I still felt first-jump-of-the-day jitters, just a little. “No, let’s just take it easy on this first one. You don’t have to follow me too close,” I said.

  “Okay, I probably won’t,” Mario said with a chuckle.

  I pushed off the edge, watching the notch that seemed so far ahead as I transitioned into flight, trying to gauge the distance and my height. I did want to fly through it at some point, but I needed to build confidence, and I didn’t want to get committed. I decided to head just right of the notch again, and to look more carefully this time to estimate how high I was above it as I passed: another scouting run. Maybe on the next jump I’d fly through, provided I had plenty of altitude to dive down and stay in control. Mario had gone straight through the notch on both jumps yesterday, but he was much more confident with gauging his height and getting close to the terrain. Though I’d become a seasoned wingsuit flyer in the last five years of obsessive jumping, I was still far less confident and far less exp
erienced than Mario. Again, I flew around to the right of the pillar that formed the right side of the notch formation, pleased to see how comfortably high I was above it, and then turned out toward the landing area.

  When I deployed my parachute, the shock of opening was abnormally forceful. Stars flashed across my eyes and for a moment I wondered if I’d fractured my neck. I cautiously moved my head around, squeezed my eyes shut hard a few times, and then forced myself to focus on flying a correct pattern around the tall trees surrounding the hotel. I touched down in the grassy lawn, rattled, and looked for Mario beside me. He wasn’t there. Confused, I looked around in the air and then back all the way toward the gray mountain, trying to make out the tiny cross up at the exit point. Had he waited so long, still chatting with the motorcyclists?

  Jean-Louis rushed toward me with another couple, talking fast in French. “We saw Mario jump right behind you, and he seemed very low. He flew to the notch, and then we did not see him again.” I stared up at the mountain, not understanding. I called his radio. Silence. Was there some way Mario could have flown left of the notch, into some huge gully in the mountain I somehow had never seen before, and around to the other side of Sass Pordoi? I looked up at the mountain. It was a solid mass of stone. I’d seen it from above, from below and from all sides. There was no other way left of the notch. I called the radio again, refusing to let go of confusion yet, asked Jean-Louis to repeat what he’d said. “He jumped behind you, right after you, and he was very low. We saw him flying, toward the notch, but I did not see him come out.” The radio was silent.

  I pulled out my phone. “We need to call a helicopter now.” Suddenly the task of making myself understood in any language was too much. I handed the phone to Jean-Louis, and we rushed over to the campsite, to the rental car. Mario had hidden the key under a rock just before we started walking, as we always did according to policy. Otherwise it would be in his pocket. “We need to get to the cable car station, we need to talk to them,” I said, fighting to control my rising panic, the anxiety swelling inside my chest. Jean-Louis drove up the endless switchbacks. I couldn’t speak. I knew.

  The day before, I was buying our tickets for the cable car, and Mario stepped away to take a photo of a man and his son with their camera in front of the station. When I turned around, he wasn’t there, and I was gripped by a completely inexplicable panic. Mario and I had never been angry at each other, but I was so upset I almost yelled at him when he came back around the corner. “You can’t just disappear like that! I didn’t know where you were, and I couldn’t find you—you don’t have a phone here, and you can’t just disappear!” He was startled by my vehemence. I was startled too.

  The next morning we made a joke of it when I went to buy the tickets. Mario took my hand gently and said, “I’m going up to the bathroom to put my contacts in, and I’ll be up there, and then I’ll wait right outside the bathroom for you until you get there.”

  I laughed and kissed him. “I just need to know where you are all the time!”

  Now I ran to the ticket booth, barely able to breathe, and the woman inside recognized me from our last three trips up. She could see we were jumpers, buying one-way tickets up and carrying packs, and had smiled sweetly each time, telling us to have a good flight. I explained that a helicopter had been called, but I didn’t see one in the air, and I wanted to make sure they were actually coming, please, could she call again to make sure it was coming? I was trying hard to speak calmly, to stay calm, to be someone she’d want to help. She assured me that the helicopter had been called. They were flying on the other side of the mountain searching, so we couldn’t see them. Mario was in a black and blue wingsuit, hard colors to spot in a huge landscape of dark limestone. I couldn’t hear the chopper and was nearly out of my mind with anxiety. I knew in my heart that Mario was dead. But what if somehow he was just badly hurt and each second mattered? It was driving me insane not to know where he was, not to be able to do anything. I sat on the curb and watched the empty sky, tears running down my cheeks, down my neck.

  My phone rang. Jean-Louis had ridden up the cable car to try to help from the top, to explain to the crew where he’d last seen Mario flying. “I am sorry,” he said in English. “They found him. I am very sorry.”

  It was all surreal after that. Driving eternal switchbacks with a uniformed man to a high, grassy meadow, far across from the Sass Pordoi. Standing at the side of the road there, not knowing why. The landscape was like some kind of movie scene, too beautiful to be true. Not real. The helicopter coming down, a body bag in the grass. Kneeling next to Mario’s body, not knowing what to do: how could he be in there? Someone leading me away, the helicopter rising up, everyone gone. Down in the city, in the town office, explaining that both our passports were around Mario’s waist, the safest place we had. Two men walked in and handed me his wedding ring, the passports in his cloth hip pouch with the strap sliced neatly off from each side. The sympathetic women in the office, looking at me, waiting for decisions. What language to write his death certificate in, which form to use, which embassies to call, what to do with his body. In America, it was four in the morning. No one answered the phone.

  I went outside and sat in the rental car. I couldn’t do this. I looked at Jean-Louis bleakly. And then I seized my cheap Europe phone and scrolled to Matt, an American who’d been living in France for ten years for the flying, one of the most together and efficient people I’d ever met.

  Matt answered immediately, his voice expectant and happy, “Steph and Mario! You’re in Europe!”

  “Matt, Mario’s dead.”

  His voice dropped instantly, brusque, military-style. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at Sass Pordoi. I’m down in the town at some office. It’s near the mortuary. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “These nice French people who are helping me, we just met them yesterday. Matt, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “We’re camping by the landing area.”

  “I just got home from Spain. I can start driving in a couple of hours. Get help finding a hotel room, have someone else pack the tent if possible. Otherwise I can get it tomorrow. Don’t stay in your tent by yourself. Text me the hotel and the room number when you get it. Keep your phone charged and call me anytime for any reason. I’ll be there at midnight.”

  At five p.m. the skies opened. The window of my room looked directly at the Sass Pordoi, barely visible through a curtain of rain, and I almost couldn’t bear the agony of it. Of all of this. Of waiting. Sitting in this room alone, like being in hell. There was nowhere to go. Rain pounded on the roof and I was furious. Why hadn’t it rained like this eight hours ago, to keep us from jumping? Why had it been so beautiful? I couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t fair. This morning I was waking up in our cozy tent, with my head on Mario’s shoulder and my leg curled over his stomach, thinking of flying and apple cake and driving to Slovenia. Why hadn’t it been me? It should have been me. I was less experienced, less skilled, less good than Mario in every way. Why hadn’t I been the one to die? I wished furiously it had been me, and then immediately I thought, no, I would never want Mario to be doing this right now. Mario should never have to do this. But I was angry that I was in front and didn’t see him go in. My brain locked on this new unfair thing. I was cheated of the chance to dive down and follow him, why couldn’t I have seen him? But I probably would have automatically flown to safety in the second it took to understand, leaving the terrain behind, and now be sitting here hating myself for not choosing to follow him.

  I just couldn’t understand how Mario could have hit below the notch. He’d flown through it twice the day before with plenty of altitude. It wasn’t difficult or cutting-edge for him to make that flight. He wasn’t trying to push the envelope, he was simply flying an enjoyable line that he’d already done easily. From what Jean-Louis told me, it sounded like Mario had an unusually
bad start into flight and was pretty low when he started flying. But that happens sometimes, and it shouldn’t have mattered at all on this jump. Even with a bad start, Mario wouldn’t have flown to the notch if he thought he was too low to pass through it. He would have just headed right and flown around it, as I was doing. But the idea that he turned toward the notch thinking he was high enough to pass it when he actually wasn’t didn’t make any sense at all. Mario understood his altitude and proximity to terrain better than anyone. He’d been piloting every type of flying device almost every day for thirty years. The helicopter medic told me he’d impacted ten feet below the notch. How could he have made such a huge mistake? He didn’t make mistakes. It didn’t make sense. None of it made any sense.

  Suddenly my stomach clenched and I saw us back in the landing area in the sun, yesterday afternoon. We’d just landed from the second jump, and Mario stood beside me holding his goggles in his hands, looking into them.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I think my contact might have popped out of my eye. It’s strange, maybe it’s in the goggles,” he said.

  In the few months before this trip, Mario had decided to try contacts instead of glasses for the first time, and rather amusingly battled with getting them in every morning, often calling me into the bathroom to help him get the slippery little plastic disk in place. Half the time it folded, slipped off, and got lost, or slid around the side of his eyeball.

  I was always mystified at Mario’s attitude to his vision. He loved fixing things, keeping his equipment in perfect condition, and never neglected or rushed through any type of maintenance. He gave his full attention to even the smallest and most uninteresting tasks. But the vision in his left eye had been steadily degrading since he was eighteen, and he was always procrastinating about keeping his prescription up to date, as it changed every year. What could be more important for a pilot than vision? Why was he so uncharacteristically lax about dealing with his glasses and his changing prescriptions? In a way, his left eye seemed almost to annoy him, an obstinate member of the team that refused to do its job correctly like everyone else and that tried to seek attention through bad behavior.