Yes, he is walking, and talking. He had some sort of cervical fusion and is healing.
So this was a real serious, permanent damage one that happened some time ago and - very conspicuously - hasn't been reported by ANYONE involved. That sound fishy to anyone besides T** at K*** S******?
Reasons for not reporting serious injury incidents:
a) don't give a flying fuck about the sport and its participants
b) something to hide
c) all of the above
It's damn near always...
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=20756
How is Zach Etheridge doing?
Bob Flynn - 2011/02/04 11:26:34 UTC
Lookout keeps this kind of stuff under their hat. You never hear of accidents there. But every time I go there, I hear about quite a few. Blown launches, tree landings, etc.
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1081
Platform towing /risk mitigation / accident
Sam Kellner - 2012/07/03 02:25:58 UTC
No, you don't get an accident report.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30971
Zach Marzec
Jim Rooney - 2013/03/07 18:24:58 UTC
You're the one speculating on Zack's death... not me.
Hell, you've even already come to your conclusions... you've made up your mind and you "know" what happened and what to do about.
It's disgusting and you need to stop.
You weren't there. You don't know.
All you have is the tug pilot report, who himself says he doesn't know... and HE WAS THERE... and he doesn't know.
..."c".
The data point is that wheel landings are not a panacea.
Well DUH!
If they were then you could spend half an hour in the morning at Dockweiler teaching a first timer to foot launch then take him up to Kagel in the afternoon and throw him off into strong thermal conditions. There's stuff you've gotta learn to do that happens PRIOR TO the final four seconds of the flight.
One of those things is to come in with enough speed to handle whatever conditions you're dealing with - gusts, lulls, thermals, shifts, rotor, shadow, gradient. This person didn't do that.
I think there would have been less physical damage if upright...
Bullshit.
...but who is to say?
I am - in no uncertain terms.
Recently, a pilot making a wheel landing and proned out, got popped near the ground.
He got popped because he wasn't carrying enough speed for the conditions. Since he was proned out he then had the option of stuffing the bar to the glider's certified configuration limit. Assuming he started doing things right at that point - and he probably did - it was too little too late.
And if that's the case we're not talking about a landing from that point on. We're talking about the best options for crashing. And, as I've said zillions of times before, I have zero interest in Dave Hopkins discussions on the best crash strategies.
The only thing worth discussing on this one was AIRSPEED. There's no argument that he had enough of it and, with all of the total unbelievable lunacy that's accepted as indisputable fact in this sport, NO ONE - not even Dennis Pagen, Davis Straub, Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney, Ryan Instant-Hands-Free-Release Voight - claims that you can get higher airspeed easier by being upright.
He would've indisputably been in WORSE shape to regain control of the glider if it been upright.
Could he have been in better shape to survive the inevitable CRASH at that point? I doubt it 'cause you're gonna go in head first no matter what and if you're ALREADY prone your had doesn't have all that potential energy to convert to kinetic while it's rotating down and forward. But... Possibly. But... Who the fuck cares?
This guy let himself get stalled at six feet off the deck and paid a very heavy price. But ANY of us can teach ANY Day One student the zero skill procedure for one hundred percent bulletproofing himself from that possibility.
While we don't have a report on this one beyond the two short sentences you gave us seven posts back we DO have a total DREAM report on Mike Harper's incident in the form of a beautiful high definition video and his...
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=31279
How to break a heel
Mike Harper - 2014/05/22 04:45:26 UTC
I landed with a quartering tailwind of a maybe five miles per hour.
...account of the conditions in the LZ. (He undoubtedly means starboard stern quarter given his approach pattern/intent.)
In that case wheels and the intent to use them would've been a TOTAL panacea for every relevant issue:
- wire entanglement - times two
- resulting inability to fly the intended pattern
- downwind final
- crappy runway option
- overly aggressive flare
- underly aggressive flare hold
- whack
And wheels and the intent to use them would be a TOTAL ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PANACEA for damn near every landing incident you wanna name - including this one:
(if he'd been intending to use wheels he'd have never been considering a waist high wheat field as an option) - and the vast majority of the serious incidents in this sport overall.
I read fairly regular and refer folks here, occasionally.
Thanks for both. We're never gonna have any participation beyond what we have now but at least WHEN people who've been referred here fuck themselves up bigtime we can say, "Tough shit, motherfucker. We tried to warn you and you had the opportunity. Sometimes choices have consequences."
Nice view.
That way when a weak link breaks on you, ITS A NON-ISSUE. Genius huh??? 
