Survived Long Enough To Activate An ELT, Call His Wife

An experienced BASE jumper appears to have struck a rock outcropping on Mt. St. Helena in northern California resulting in his fatal injury.

The jumper, 35-year-old Walden Grindle, reportedly lived long enough to activate a personal ELT and call his wife. When rescuers got to the scene 30 minutes later, he had died.

The New York Daily News reports that Grindle told his wife Danielle, to whom he had been married less than a year, that he thought he had broken his hip. She called 911 to report the accident, according to Napa County Sheriff's Captain Leroy Anderson.

Grindle was reportedly using what was described in media reports as a "speed parachute" for the jump from the 3,400 foot peak. He had apparently hiked up a fire trail to his chosen jump site wearing the chute that was designed to deploy as his feet left the ground. Authorities say he appears to have glided around the edge of the mountain before striking a rocky outcropping.

Grindle had in the past been arrested for BASE jumping from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

(Walden Grindle pictured in capture from a YouTube video of previous jump)

FMI: www.countyofnapa.org/sheriff