Parachutes And Parachute Jumping

When Joe Jennings jumps out of an airplane 13,000 feet above Rhode Island next week, he will turn on his camera and focus on his new partner, Patrick de Gayardon, who will be plummeting toward earth at 120 mph with his feet strapped to a board, performing a fast-paced routine for nearly a minute before deploying his parachute. But with Jennings in spirit, he hopes, will be another popular skydiver, his former partner and best friend, Rob Harris.

Members of the Canadian Forces Parachute Team paid a visit Friday to their pen pals at the South Bay Junior Academy in Torrance to talk about their daring canopy formations and what it's like to jump out of an airplane. This is the third year that the Sky Hawks, all members of the Canadian Forces regular or reserve forces, has visited the private school with 170 students in kindergarten to 10th grade.

A man parachuting illegally off a rock formation in Yosemite National Park fell to his death, apparently because his chute was loaded improperly, a park official said. Jeff Christman, 42, of Arizona narrowly missed two rock climbers sleeping on a ledge of the 7,569-foot granite monolith called El Capitan, Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said. "We think that his parachute was loaded backward, and when he deployed his chute he was spun around and sent into the side of the wall," Gediman said.

Chris Stokely walked the plank, happily stepping off into hundreds of feet of nothing but air and plummeting into the depths of the New River Gorge. "Thank you, West Virginia!" the 24-year-old from Houston yelled as he made a legal parachute jump from a four-lane highway bridge.

Three people who allegedly parachuted from a Universal City skyscraper pleaded not guilty Wednesday to misdemeanor trespassing charges, authorities said. John Marx Eagle, 26; Michael Taylor Muscat, 43, and Susan Hunt Runyon, 31, leaped from the Texaco building May 31, said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney's office. The three climbed an interior ladder to the roof of the 35-story structure about 4 p.m., Qualls said, then waited until 10 p.m. when they took the plunge.

Three BASE jumpers, as they call themselves, were charged Friday with trespassing following a May 31 event in which they allegedly leaped from the roof of the 36-story Texaco building in Universal City and parachuted to the ground, a deputy city attorney said. Michael Taylor Muscat, 43, of Van Nuys; Susan Hunt Runyon, 31, of Santa Monica, and John Marx Eagle, 26, of Hemet, each face a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine, said Deputy City Atty. Richard Schmidt.

Heather Hathaway reluctantly looked down 3,500 feet from her seat on the edge of a Cessna 206. Her eyes wide with terror, she swallowed hard and held on for dear life to the edge of the plane's cargo door. It was her turn to jump. Hathaway looked horrified as her feet dangled in the wind. "Go! . . . Go! . . . Now! . . . Go!" said Bill Reed, the sky-diving instructor on board. With each command, Hathaway held tighter to the rim of the doorway, her knuckles white from squeezing so hard.

In this damp, largely forgotten corner of the state, where loggers and former loggers live and drink in obscurity, the talk of the town has swirled around a dirt-stained clump of fabric recently unearthed not far from here. It turned out to be part of a nylon parachute that roughly matched the dimensions of the one used by legendary hijacker "D.B. Cooper," who leapt from a jetliner with $200,000 into folk-hero stardom 36 years ago. He is believed to have landed somewhere in this area.

A tangled, torn parachute found buried last month was not the one used by plane hijacker D.B. Cooper when he bailed out of an airliner over the Pacific Northwest, the FBI said in Seattle. Investigators reached that conclusion after speaking with parachute experts, including Earl Cossey, who packed the chutes provided to Cooper that rainy November night in 1971.

Thousands of people watched a pioneering parachutist from California jump to his death from a bridge during a festival Saturday when his chute opened too late, a sheriff said. Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered when he hit the water 876 feet below the New River Gorge Bridge during West Virginia's annual Bridge Day festival, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird. Schubert, from Alta Loma, Calif.