Published: Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Beautiful flight, rough landing
Carrie Holmes, president of the Snohomish-based Seattle Skydivers, was part of a group of skydivers to make the first-ever jump in the shadow of Everest. Unfortunately the spectacular ride came with a price.
-
Photos courtesy of Carrie Holmes
Top: Carrie Holmes walks to the airplane before her practice jump at 18,000 feet. Above: A skydiver in Holmes' group prepares to land after a jump in the Himalayas.
-
Courtesy of Carrie Holmes Walking to airplane – taken during walk to airplane before 18K jump
SNOHOMISH -- On the plane ride up to 29,500 feet and during those first exhilarating moments of free fall, Carrie Holmes was awed by the spectacular views of the surrounding Himalayan Mountains, including towering Mount Everest only a few miles distant.
The vast, vivid and extraordinary scenery that was part of her Nepalese skydiving adventure is something Holmes expects always to remember.
What she cannot remember, even now, is her landing.
The 30-year-old Holmes, who lives on Mercer Island and is the president of Seattle Skydivers based at Snohomish's Harvey Field, participated in the historic first Everest skydive in early October. Along with some two dozen other jumpers from around the world, she left the plane at roughly the same altitude as the summit of Everest, the world's tallest peak, and parachuted to a remote landing area some 17,000 feet below.
Unfortunately for Holmes, a sudden cloud cover obscured the drop zone during her descent and kept her from making a gentle touchdown. Because of the dense low clouds, she had little sense of where she was or how fast she was falling in those final seconds -- until she noticed herself rushing past a nearby tree.
"And that's the last thing I remember," she said.
Traveling at an estimated 20 mph, Holmes landed with enough impact to shatter her right heel bone and cause two compound fractures in her right ankle. She also fractured her back in seven places and was unconscious for a time after her head slammed against the ground, breaking her helmet.
She was airlifted through a thunderstorm to a hospital outside of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, where she underwent surgery on her foot the next day. She remained hospitalized for another 14 days.
Holmes had an additional foot surgery after returning to Seattle in late October -- she now has nine pins holding together the pieces of her shattered heel -- with a probable third operation sometime in the future. In the meantime, she expects to be on crutches until sometime next spring.
Now, all this might seem like enough to spoil any trip, but Holmes insists she has no regrets about doing something that was, she said, "really unique and different and special. It was a one-of-a-kind thing."
Holmes took up skydiving about three years ago, "and when I started I never imagined going to Nepal and Everest," she said. Her journey included sightseeing in Kathmandu for a few days after her arrival, a flight to the town of Lukla in the Himalayan foothills, and then a nine-day trek into the dirt Syangboche airstrip on a hillside above the villange of Namche Bazaar at 13,000 feet.
There was one practice jump at 18,000 feet, which went smoothly, followed by the second jump at 29,500 feet.
The entire experience, for which Holmes paid around $30,000, was more than "just a skydive," she said. "I got to meet a lot of really great people along the way. I also I learned a lot about myself, and all of that is really just unbelievable to me. So I don't regret it. I think I'd regret it more if I was sitting here and hadn't gone.
"It's unfortunate that I got hurt. But it's even more unfortunate that so much of the focus is on my injuries and not on everything else. A lot of people didn't understand why I was doing this and they don't understand why I'd ever want to jump again. All they can see is 15 days in the hospital in Kathmandu and six months on crutches."
Her back injuries are healing well and have gone from being painful to now just occasionally uncomfortable. Her foot and ankle injuries were more severe -- she might eventually need to have one of her ankle joints fused -- and are the reason Holmes will probably skip skydiving for at least another year.
"I'm taking it doctor appointment by doctor appointment," she said. "Maybe physically I'll be able to jump before I'm mentally able to jump, because I need to be at a place where I'm more than comfortable landing on (the injured) foot and where I'm not so concerned about a hard landing.
"And I need to understand what the risks are. Because if I have a hard landing on it, what does that mean? Am I crippled for the rest of my life?"
Given the medical uncertainty, Holmes realizes there is a chance she will never skydive again.
"I'm sure that's a possibility," she acknowledged. "But mentally it's really hard for me to sit here and say, 'That was my last jump.'"
The other troubling aspect of her mishap is the anguish it caused her family and close friends after they initially learned she was hurt. Because she misplaced her cell phone, the early calls were coming from people at the hospital and the information being passed along was sketchy.
"The hardest thing emotionally is knowing that I did something that made everybody here worry as much as they did," she said. "Understanding what they went through in those first 48 hours because of the lack of communication, that was the hardest thing. That makes me feel bad."
But when the talk turns to skydiving and the chance to jump again someday, it is obvious her passion for the sport is undiminished. Her desire to be in the air, under canopy, is no less now than it was that day in the Himalayas.
"At this point, I don't like something to be taken away from me, no matter what the reason is," Holmes said. "So am I deterred from jumping again because of this experience? Absolutely not."
The vast, vivid and extraordinary scenery that was part of her Nepalese skydiving adventure is something Holmes expects always to remember.
What she cannot remember, even now, is her landing.
The 30-year-old Holmes, who lives on Mercer Island and is the president of Seattle Skydivers based at Snohomish's Harvey Field, participated in the historic first Everest skydive in early October. Along with some two dozen other jumpers from around the world, she left the plane at roughly the same altitude as the summit of Everest, the world's tallest peak, and parachuted to a remote landing area some 17,000 feet below.
Unfortunately for Holmes, a sudden cloud cover obscured the drop zone during her descent and kept her from making a gentle touchdown. Because of the dense low clouds, she had little sense of where she was or how fast she was falling in those final seconds -- until she noticed herself rushing past a nearby tree.
"And that's the last thing I remember," she said.
Traveling at an estimated 20 mph, Holmes landed with enough impact to shatter her right heel bone and cause two compound fractures in her right ankle. She also fractured her back in seven places and was unconscious for a time after her head slammed against the ground, breaking her helmet.
She was airlifted through a thunderstorm to a hospital outside of Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, where she underwent surgery on her foot the next day. She remained hospitalized for another 14 days.
Holmes had an additional foot surgery after returning to Seattle in late October -- she now has nine pins holding together the pieces of her shattered heel -- with a probable third operation sometime in the future. In the meantime, she expects to be on crutches until sometime next spring.
Now, all this might seem like enough to spoil any trip, but Holmes insists she has no regrets about doing something that was, she said, "really unique and different and special. It was a one-of-a-kind thing."
Holmes took up skydiving about three years ago, "and when I started I never imagined going to Nepal and Everest," she said. Her journey included sightseeing in Kathmandu for a few days after her arrival, a flight to the town of Lukla in the Himalayan foothills, and then a nine-day trek into the dirt Syangboche airstrip on a hillside above the villange of Namche Bazaar at 13,000 feet.
There was one practice jump at 18,000 feet, which went smoothly, followed by the second jump at 29,500 feet.
The entire experience, for which Holmes paid around $30,000, was more than "just a skydive," she said. "I got to meet a lot of really great people along the way. I also I learned a lot about myself, and all of that is really just unbelievable to me. So I don't regret it. I think I'd regret it more if I was sitting here and hadn't gone.
"It's unfortunate that I got hurt. But it's even more unfortunate that so much of the focus is on my injuries and not on everything else. A lot of people didn't understand why I was doing this and they don't understand why I'd ever want to jump again. All they can see is 15 days in the hospital in Kathmandu and six months on crutches."
Her back injuries are healing well and have gone from being painful to now just occasionally uncomfortable. Her foot and ankle injuries were more severe -- she might eventually need to have one of her ankle joints fused -- and are the reason Holmes will probably skip skydiving for at least another year.
"I'm taking it doctor appointment by doctor appointment," she said. "Maybe physically I'll be able to jump before I'm mentally able to jump, because I need to be at a place where I'm more than comfortable landing on (the injured) foot and where I'm not so concerned about a hard landing.
"And I need to understand what the risks are. Because if I have a hard landing on it, what does that mean? Am I crippled for the rest of my life?"
Given the medical uncertainty, Holmes realizes there is a chance she will never skydive again.
"I'm sure that's a possibility," she acknowledged. "But mentally it's really hard for me to sit here and say, 'That was my last jump.'"
The other troubling aspect of her mishap is the anguish it caused her family and close friends after they initially learned she was hurt. Because she misplaced her cell phone, the early calls were coming from people at the hospital and the information being passed along was sketchy.
"The hardest thing emotionally is knowing that I did something that made everybody here worry as much as they did," she said. "Understanding what they went through in those first 48 hours because of the lack of communication, that was the hardest thing. That makes me feel bad."
But when the talk turns to skydiving and the chance to jump again someday, it is obvious her passion for the sport is undiminished. Her desire to be in the air, under canopy, is no less now than it was that day in the Himalayas.
"At this point, I don't like something to be taken away from me, no matter what the reason is," Holmes said. "So am I deterred from jumping again because of this experience? Absolutely not."
Comments
(