Bachelorette contestant 32-year-old Eric Hill was a thrill seeker to say the least. He was a risk taker and an adrenaline junkie. He took his adventures all over the globe on his Global Odyssey tour.
Sadly contestant Eric Hill died in tragic accident on Wednesday. It’s being reported that he was paragliding in Utah, but I am wondering if he may have been base jumping which is exponentially more dangerous than paragliding.
Eric Hill paragliding in Italy
Source: instagram
Eric definitely was base jumping all over the planet including Utah.
The two sports are similar but one sport is extremely risky.
BASE jumping is an activity where jumpers jump from fixed objects and use a parachute to break their fall. It is considered an extreme sport because it is so dangerous and life-threatening.
Base jumping in Utah:
“After a few short days back in the US visiting some family in Chicago. I had some business to take care of and a BASE jumping parachute to pick up in Utah before I left the country again.”
Base jumping in Iceland:
“Not the way I wanted to start the next leg, but hey, I was on my way to Iceland! The BASE rig was mainly for a cliff I’d been dreaming of jumping for years in Norway, but since I had it, I figured I might get creative in Iceland with it. I ended up doing a type of jump that had never been done before in Iceland!”
This post makes it appear like Eric has Based jumped dozens of times:
“The biggest worry for this jump was that I wouldn’t get my body position right. Since most of you reading this probably aren’t BASE jumpers, just understand that I want to be falling belly down or the risk of things going wrong with the parachute opening go up significantly. Since we couldn’t get my harness out of the way, my face knocked it as I fell sending me backwards. I kicked at the air to turn around and got belly down almost immediately, I was in an extreme head-down position, which is also not ideal. So when the parachute violently opened… WHAP!… the lines which are connected at my shoulders sent my body into a snapping swing motion as if I was going to do a backflip from a handstand that sent my feet almost up into the lines. Man that was rough to throw my chute right then! But it was my only option. I only had four hundred feet to figure it out.”
Base jumping in the U.S.
“I had a BASE jumping event in West Virginia and some family to visit in a couple states before heading home. I hadn’t backed anything up since Nicaragua, but I figured I had the hard drive in my hands the whole time so it would be ok until I got home to back it up. I spent well over forty hours editing pictures and video prepping for the launch of the project. I was heading home from DC with the plan to back everything up the moment I landed in Salt Lake City. Earlier I had promised some friends I would do a BASE jump with them in Nevada the day after I got back, but because of some canceled flights I ended up making it back to UT just in time for my friends to pick me up from the airport and drive directly to Nevada.”
“I had the best jump of my life so far and I had the beginning of my dream come true on the hard drive in my backpack. I was on cloud nine. We stopped in St. George, Utah for a sandwich just four hours from my place. We took our time eating, laughing about the amazing jump we had just done. Little did I know, as I was sitting there enjoying my time the most important thing I owned was being taken away forever.”
Kevin Morroun, 35, died in March in a jump from an area known as ‘the sweet spot’ in Mineral Canyon. The second jumper died the same day in Zion National Park. One of them was an expert skydiving instructor. The incident speaks to the inherent dangers of base jumping.
So we still await more details of Eric’s story. I mean certainly it’s not a huge difference. It’s just that paragliding is really safe, it’s odd that he would have an issue with his canopy in a paragliding situation.
It would make more sense if he was base jumping. It’s just interesting that Eric was such an adrenaline junkie. He seemed dangerously addicted to this sort of risk-taking behavior.
ABC has never been in this situation before. We are still waiting to learn how the show will be edited to handle this.
Reality Steve says that Eric left the show under unusual circumstances so how will ABC handle this?
