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Outside magazine, April 1999

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Terminal Velocity (cont.)

OSMAN ASSURED HIM THAT ALL WAS SET and then took out his phone and called Fritsch and Gambalie, snowed in at Squaw Valley. "This is it," he told them, "I'm going big." He put the phone in a case on his chest and began his countdown. Then he stopped. "You got the spot?" he asked Daisher, who was crouched on the rock, ready to throw a coiled length of the jump line once Osman went over the cliff. "Got it," said Daisher. Osman began another countdown but stopped again and asked into the phone, "Did you guys say something?" No, they told him, go for it, and this time he finished the count and flew from the rock.

"I watched his headlamp disappearing into the dark," says Daisher, "going and going, and in about ten seconds I saw the rope straighten, heard it start to whip—what Dano called flossing the sky—but it didn't make the full whipping sound. Then I heard him

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yell—'Ahhhhhh'—and a crash like a tree had broken in half, and I thought, 'Holy shit, he's swung into one of them.' I pictured him down there hanging from a limb, injured and bloody. I yelled to him, got on the radio. Nothing. Quiet. Then I started freaking."

Daisher rappelled to the base as fast as he could and followed the beam of his headlamp through the rocks and trees until he finally saw the ragged rope end dangling from branches above him. Then he spotted Osman, lying peacefully on his side. He checked for a pulse and, when he found none, sprinted off through the boulder field to a parking lot pay phone where he made a panicked call to Fritsch. "Dano's dead," he said, crying. "He's on the ground, I just saw him, he's dead."

Fritsch and Gambalie told him they'd be there as fast as they could, and Daisher called 911 to report the accident. A coroner arrived with rangers who started toward the scene but turned back because of the slippery going over rain-soaked boulders. A while later they phoned Dean Potter at search and rescue and asked him to find the body and camp next to it overnight to ward off bears and coyotes.

Three weeks later, the rig was still hanging between the tower and Fifi Buttress, as was a long section of the broken jump line. Park authorities were involved in an investigation that was taking longer than Osman's friends thought it should, and in December a group of them retrieved the upper sections of the jump line and sent it to Black Diamond Equipment for analysis. The results, which they have since submitted to the Park Service, postulate a theory that seems to indicate not system failure but human error: In short, Osman had failed to realize that changing his jump angle would ultimately place an unbearable load on one of the knots that connected the ropes of his jump line. The rangers, who are still working on their report, have not yet confirmed the cause of the accident.

A memorial service was held on November 28 at Cave Rock. Osman's ashes were scattered over Lake Tahoe while more than 200 of his friends stood in the cold, snowy wind to speak loving words, place flowers, and organize a benefit and a memorial fund for Emma. And to absorb the shock of a death that shouldn't have shocked them at all.

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