Sunshine Superman Page #8

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I was grumping at him

that I didn't think that he should be

doing this because he must be tired.

And that was the way

I was expressing my feelings

and my intuitions about it.

If I had had 30 years more

of experience that I have now,

perhaps I would have expressed

my feelings in a different way

and understood that there was

a message there for me.

That it was not a good idea

for him to do this.

That's the honest truth about it. And...

I can only look at it in hindsight

from here.

There was two locals.

Friends of mine that followed them up.

And also Jean was aware

that he was going up, of course,

but somewhere on the route

they decided to go for Stabben instead.

His foot made much trouble for him

because I'd seen that

in earlier days as well,

that he was having problems when

we were walking up in the rough terrain.

It was quite rough

up in the back of the Trolltind.

And it was a decision he took

there and then

to get back down an easy way, I think.

The fact is we had done the record

jump, filmed it,

and not more than 12 hours later,

he had hiked back up there.

That didn't make any sense to me.

I don't know how that was possible.

The fact we heard he'd done Stabben

didn't make any sense

because we had agreed when we did

the rock-drop test that it was suicidal.

Nobody could survive that jump.

Why had he done that?

Why was it that

if he was going to go back up

he didn't ask Fred or I

to go up with him?

On Friday night I was on

Grand Hotel at Andalsnes

because Carl had borrowed a room

so he could pack his parachute.

So I and my brother was with him.

And they explained a lot about BASE

jumping and how to pack the chute

so it released quick

and things like that.

It didn't go well that day.

I have an impression that Carl,

more than most of us,

thought that God had a plan for him

that he had to fulfill.

I am a person who remembers in pictures

so I have a small glimpse

of what happened during the day.

Me and my brother,

we picked him up in my brother's car

where he lived with the Griiners.

I remember driving from the Griiners'

and up to Trollstigen.

It was not so good weather.

It was a little rain and quite windy.

We went not so fast because

he had the problem with his leg.

And then we went further up to Stabben.

We climbed up to the pinnacle...

...and sat there for at least...

it was more than a half an hour,

maybe up to an hour.

He started to throw stones

to measure the height of the wall.

We sat on top of the pinnacle

and chatted

about different matters of life.

On the top of the mountain he asked us

if we knew the story from the Bible.

The Temptation of Jesus.

The Devil brought Jesus to Jerusalem

and put him on the highest point

of the temple.

And he said that

if you throw yourself down,

God will send his angels

and carry you in their arms

so you will not hurt your foot

on the rock.

Jesus answered,

"Do not put the Lord on test."

Carl just had...

he had a particular laughter.

He pointed to his parachute and he said,

"This is my angel."

I think it's really amazing

kind of last words.

I don't know what it means

but it feels like it means something.

Finally, he said that he wanted to jump.

We prepared our cameras.

So I saw his jump through the lens.

I saw the back of the whole body

more like just his feet diving down.

His parachute was stalling

against the mountain.

He slid under his parachute

down the mountain

and stopped in some snow.

No signs of life.

No movements or anything

after the parachute stopped.

It was before the days

of the mobile phone.

It was decided my brother

would run down

to call the police

and start the rescue operation.

I waited, looking down on him,

on top of the mountain.

Police district Romsdalen,

on Saturday the 7th of July, '84

approximately 4:
35pm,

I received a call from Arnstein Myskja.

Arnstein explained he was calling

from Trollstigen Fjellstue

and reported that he had just,

at approximately at 3:50pm,

been a witness to Boenish, Carl Ronald,

jump from Stabben,

a mountaintop situated

between Trollveggen and Semletind

in Trolltindmassivet.

The jump had,

for one reason or another, failed

such that Boenish hit the mountain wall

and was suspended over the valley.

We had brought a camera each,

and we were taking pictures

when the accident happened.

You get so shocked

you started to think about...

That you don't want to sell the photos.

Why don't we have the photos

and just don't sell it?

It's not more difficult than that.

But we decided to destroy the pictures.

Just to open up

and pull it out of the cassette

so it was fully exposed to the light.

I went back to where I was staying

after we wrapped.

I think I just laid down. It was

probably still mid to late afternoon

and I didn't really get up

until the next morning

when Fred came hammering on my door,

saying Carl's been in an accident.

Fred came and got me. I got in the car.

We drove down, looked up,

saw Carl's body.

It wasn't moving.

But his red parachute

was sort of billowing in the air.

He was probably

three quarters of a mile away

and a couple thousand feet

up the flank of the bottom of the wall.

We went back to the police and said,

"We're going to have to try and figure

something out to get up to get him."

They're going to have to call in

a coast guard helicopter, and they did.

They had to fly up into the slab

at the bottom of the wall.

We couldn't really climb up to it.

It was sort of an isolated area,

but they recovered Carl's body,

brought it on the helicopter.

They flew that helicopter down

to the police station and landed.

Meanwhile,

we hadn't gotten a hold of Jean,

which was probably not fair to her.

Nobody got a hold of Jean

until the helicopter was on its way.

I was there with the police officer

and let me tell you,

one of the boldest things

I've ever seen anybody do,

was to call her up.

I mean, I'll never forget it.

This guy is talking on the phone.

He knew that the situation was bad.

And he's talking to her

and he was holding it together

with the last ounce of strength

that he had

saying your husband

had been involved in an accident

and it doesn't look good.

I'll never forget watching that. God!

That was awful watching that.

But...

That was just one of those things

where you just had to watch it

and deal with it, you know?

It was like, "This is happening."

"Is this really happening?"

Well, it was, you know?

The police had come. Two of them.

And I met them downstairs

at Griiners' hytter.

And they told me that Carl was dead.

Everybody in the room looked at me,

silently.

And I could tell instantly

that it was up to me and my response...

...to determine the entire atmosphere

that would surround everything

that would happen

subsequent to this announcement.

At first, I didn't understand

because it didn't make sense

because I still thought

he had jumped from Bruraskaret.

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