British tourist died in base jumping accident, Oxford inquest hears

Andrew Drysdale, aged 34, from Newnham, West Northamptonshire died on March 23 last year.

‘Andy’ as he was also known, studied at Carterton Community College near Witney.  

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He was found with his parachute entangled in a tree on the side of a cliff, around 650 feet below where he had jumped.

Base jumping is an extreme sport that involves jumping from fixed objects and using a parachute to descend safely to the ground.

The incident occurred in the Isere department and Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France on March 22 at around 6pm.

The inquest heard that Mr Drysdale’s friends raised the alarm after they could not find him in the landing area.

Emergency services took Mr Drysdale to hospital, but he died the next day on March 23.

His cause of death following a post-mortem report was given as multiple injuries.

One of the 34-year-old’s fellow base jumpers, George Bartlett gave evidence at the inquest.

He said that the group had already done one jump from the spot where the incident occurred on March 22.

Mr Bartlett explained the plan was to do the jump again, but to deploy their parachutes after two to three seconds of free falling, rather than the eight to 10 seconds they had done previously.

He described hearing Mr Drysdale deploy his parachute, but said this was done later than planned, after around five seconds.

There had been previous discussion of whether the incident was due to a technical fault.

This would have made the canopy more difficult to control.

The inquest heard that there was no obvious explanation for this delay, and it was down to speculation.

Mr Bartlett said: “The parachute definitely deployed but it was a very hard opening.

“It is also possible that he opened the parachute off direction, facing the cliff, but it is all hearsay I’m afraid.

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“It could be that the opening was so hard he wasn’t able to control the canopy properly.”

Oxfordshire’s head coroner, Darren Salter ruled the death as an accident.

He told the inquest: “Andrew Drysdale was on holiday in France with friends to do base jumping.

“On March 22 having already jumped once from the same location, he jumped for a second time at approximately 6pm.

“But he delayed opening his parachute for a few seconds, causing him to crash into the rock face.

“He died the next day in hospital.”