Farewell Shane McConkey

Last night, a routine check of facebook led to a sudden terrible feeling in my stomach, when I noticed that one of my friends had joined the group RIP Shane McConkey. I opened up a new tab, and a quick google search confirmed the terrible news.

For those of you who don’t know who I’m talking about, which I don’t expect many of my readers to do, Shane is nothing short of a skiing legend. He is probably best know for mixing BASE jumping with big mountain skiing. Although he wasn’t the first skier to do this, he was the first to popularize it. I first saw Shane in MSP’s Ski Movie, and since then, he has been a skiing hero of mine. Whenever I skied, I tried to emulate his slightly different, yet aggressive and effective style.

I even own a Shane McConkey figurine…the infamous Huck Doll.

Shane died while doing what he loves, which is more than a lot of people can ask for. He will be remembered for always skiing with a smile, and inspiring many young skiers.

Here is an account of his last moments, as observed by his friend and fellow extreme skier JT Holmes:

Yesterday, March 26, 2009, Shane died while skiing in Italy. There are some technical aspects that are left out from this statement, and it does not touch upon the beauty of the Dolomites and the skiing we shared before the accident or Shane’s typical shining persona, full of adventure, humor and life experience.

We chose to ski off of a cliff with our wingsuits and fly them away from the cliff wall before opening our parachutes for landing. We skied and hiked off of the Pordoi cable car to a spot Shane had base jumped once before, in the summer. We spent a bunch of time preparing for the jump, building a kicker, helping each other gear up, and finally we were pleased and prepared and went for it.

Shane did a double back flip in perfect McConkey style. As planned, afterwards, he went to release his skis in order to fly away from the wall and safely deploy his parachute. This is where the jump went wrong. He was not able to release either of his skis. He remained focused on releasing them by reaching down towards his bindings. This put him into a spin/tumble/unstable falling style, that may have appeared out of his control, but in reality, Shane was not concerned about flying position or style; just concerned with reaching those skis so that he could get them off and fly or deploy his parachute. He succeeded in releasing both of skis and immediately transitioned into a perfect flying position; then he impacted the snow, and died at that moment.

The whole thing took place in about 12 seconds. Once he released the skis, he was immediately in control of the flight and would have only seen the ground and imminent impact for a tiny fraction of a second before he hit. Shane’s parachute did not malfunction; it was never deployed.

—jt Holmes
March 27, 2009

Even If you aren’t a skier, check out some of his skiing: