{"id":25035,"date":"2020-05-14T10:25:56","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T10:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skydivemag.com\/new\/?p=25035"},"modified":"2020-05-14T10:26:16","modified_gmt":"2020-05-14T10:26:16","slug":"cypres-saves-wexis-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skydivemag.com\/new\/cypres-saves-wexis-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Cypres Saves: Wexi’s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The day Cypres saved my life…
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At the start of 2020, Wexi Skurnik\u2019s \u2018totally-normal WS solo\u2019 turned into a wingsuit \u2018oh-no\u2019. Thanks to his Cypres 2<\/a>, he survived to tell the tale. Here\u2019s Wexi\u2019s story, in his own words, to go with his video…<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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The storyteller Wexi Skurnik<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I learned to jump in Finland in March of 2017. My goal was always to wingsuit, so that\u2019s what I was doing when I had my Cypres ride…<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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“It was just a normal day, otherwise. I was going jumping with my wingsuit. A solo jump, because my home dropzone just has a Cessna 182 and only a few wingsuiters. The weather was getting a little bit cold here in Finland, so I had a little more on than I normally wear under my Barracuda Power.<\/em>
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“The wingsuit I was jumping was not tailor-made for me. It\u2019s a stock wingsuit, so it\u2019s a little bit tight in the upper body. During one previous jump  \u2013 when I also had more clothes on \u2013 I had a similar problem. On that day, it was also colder, so my hands were a little frozen.<\/em>
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“When I did the opening movement, the handle got obstructed by the wing fabric as my arms’ paths of movement were a bit off. Then I made a mistake. I didn\u2019t go through the whole opening movement again at the end. Instead, I started digging for the handle. During the digging, my body position, including my eyes, went down, and I ended up spinning quite a bit.<\/em>
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“Since the wingsuit is a bit too tight, the reserve handle has a tendency to go inside; this time, it didn\u2019t go inside, but instead got stuck just a little bit out of the wingsuit, so figuring out how to extract it was tricky, and that was made much worse because the spinning was so aggressive.<\/em>
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“First, I grabbed the cutaway handle. Just when I did, I thought that this won\u2019t do me any good as I had not deployed the main. At that point, I had my thumb in the reserve handle and was just beginning to pull it \u2014 but then the altitude was so low that my CYPRES activated. I was going head-down at 200 KPH, so I just thought: I sure hope this German tech works. And it sure did.<\/em>
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I just thought: I sure hope this German tech works”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Stats at the opening moment… scary…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I was over a train yard, and my wingsuit wings were still closed. There was a big warehouse directly beneath me and, because I was so low on opening, I was heading for the roof. Luckily for me, I managed to avoid that.<\/em>
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“But then there were so many other obstacles in the train yard around it that I was about to hit something else instead. I managed to steer the other way. I wasn\u2019t injured, though. Honestly, I\u2019m really surprised that I didn\u2019t actually hurt myself \u2014 just some minor bruises. But I didn\u2019t.<\/em>
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“To this day, I\u2019m surprised that I didn\u2019t at any point in the jump get the idea that I was about to die. A friend of mine told me that maybe \u2014 if I had \u2014 I would have pulled my reserve earlier. That\u2019s a possibility. At any rate, it\u2019s a good thing that we have the AADs, because I think if you get too accustomed to jumps and everything always goes to plan, you\u2019re in a difficult position from a skills standpoint when you find yourself in a situation that deteriorates quite rapidly. I can\u2019t think of any good reason to normally jump without a Cypres.”<\/em>
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I\u2019m surprised that I didn\u2019t at any point in the jump get the idea that I was about to die”
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Wexi’s Cypres Save on Video<\/em>
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