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Last month my wife and I visited Alaska for the first time (beer) and we were blown away by the beauty, animals and people. Like our trip to South Africa, Alaska will get an encore visit. Besides all of the sightseeing, fishing, hiking and just plain relaxing, I took in a day at the local drop zone in Wasilla, which is about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage. Alaska Skydiving was putting on its Summer Solstice Boogie and had ferried in a Twin Otter from Kapowsin Air Sports. After making a couple of RW jumps with some of the crew from Kapowsin, I signed up for the glacier jump. This was definitely a jump that will not be forgotten soon. I boarded the Cessna 206 and within 25 minutes we were exiting at 13,000 feet above Knik Glacier. I deployed about 9,000 feet and just took in the view. We were surrounded by snow-capped mountains with two glaciers to either side. Directly below me was a lake filled with large chunks of glacier ice, a rock hill and a silt bed with a windsock. The view was almost unreal. Upon landing on the silt bed, I packed up and went hiking up the dirt/rock hill toward the lake at the base of the glacier. My wife had just landed with the pickup helicopter and we decided to stay behind to check out the lake and enjoy the view for a while. The view, as you’ll see below, was incredible. Every 5-10 minutes you could hear the thundering roar of ice breaking off the glacier and into the lake. A couple of jumpers went swimming out to touch a piece of floating ice. We were later picked up by a helicopter and given a close-up view of the glacier and surrounding area. The crevices and blue water/ice were beautiful. On the way back the helicopter climbed to about 3,000 feet and dropped up back over the drop zone. We packed up and headed to Anchorage for some fresh fish and microbrew beer. And that was only the first full day of our trip.

Weak reserve ripcord pins first found on Mirage containers earlier this year is quickly becoming an industry-wide concern as Skydiving Magazine reported a pin in a pilot emergency container broke last month during the closing process. Meanwhile, Jump Shack, makers of the Racer container, has issued a recall on all of its ripcords manufactured between May 15 and July 1, 2003. This latest recall further affects Mirage customers because the company purchased soft reserve ripcords from Jump Shack immediately after the initial ripcord recall from Capewell. Any soft reserve ripcord handles from Mirage with the serial numbers M006110, M006144 and M006123 must be returned to Jump Shack for testing. In its recall letter, Jump Shack says all of their pins were tested and passed, but “new information has come to light … indicating failures can subsequently occur even after the product passes multiple pull tests.” The pilot emergency rig pin breakage was discovered by a rigger in Washington State who had closed a Para-Phernalia Micro Softie and was rotating the pin when it snapped in half. Capewell is the actual manufacturer of the ripcord assembly for Para-Phernalia as well as Mirage. In fact, Capewell manufacturers ripcords “on practically every ripcord in use in the U.S.” according to Skydiving Magazine. This means the potential problem is far more widespread than originally thought. The 200 ripcord assemblies originally recalled in the Mirage service bulletin “were actually part of a batch of 60,000 pins, apparently produced over a long time span,” Skydiving Magazine reported. So all ripcord pins should be given a closer look by riggers during the inspection and repack process. The weak pins have broken under light loads and would probably snap in your hands if inferior. Jump Shack is recommending a visual inspection with a magnifying glass while Para-Phernalia says to “tweak and twist” the pins in your fingers.