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An overlook in Australia's Blue Mountains National Park. Tuesday's incident happened in Blackheath on the western edge of the park.
An overlook in Australia's Blue Mountains National Park. Tuesday's incident happened in Blackheath on the western edge of the park. (Photo: Hasitha Tudugalle)

Lucky Chance Dies in a Rope Swing Accident

The climber, leaper, and all-around "stunt monkey" lived and thrived on an impossibly dangerous edge

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An overlook in Australia's Blue Mountains National Park. Tuesday's incident happened in Blackheath on the western edge of the park.
(Photo: Hasitha Tudugalle)

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During the editing process, we introduced an error into the headline. And during the production process, we uploaded a URL that was off-base.聽翱耻迟蝉颈诲别听regrets the errors.聽

The Australian climber, BASE jumper, and circus performer Lucky Chance died Tuesday in Australia鈥檚 Blue Mountains after hurling himself off of a giant rope swing known as the Death Swing. Lucky鈥攂orn Toby Benham鈥攆irst came to prominence in 2011 when he survived an earlier scrape with the Death Swing. That incident, which was ,听showed his chute wrapping around his ankle as he somersaulted through the air only to disentangle and open just 30 feet above the ground. Lucky called that episode, 鈥淎 really good adventure.鈥澛

The following year, he survived another close shave with death, but this one was much more costly. After jumping from a cliff in France, he struck a ledge more than 450 feet down and managed to open his parachute canopy at least partially. 鈥淗e wound up suspended, unconscious, from his canopy, which was caught in a tree 300 feet above the grassy landing zone. He suffered a fractured jaw, a broken pelvis, open fractures in his left femur and heel鈥攁nd a traumatic brain injury,鈥 wrote Elizabeth Weil in a 2012 国产吃瓜黑料 profile聽of Lucky, several months after he awakened from a coma. At that point he had $280,000 in unpaid medical bills and rods in his left femur that should have prevented him from attempting to land a parachute. But on Tuesday, he returned to Blackheath, in Australia鈥檚 Blue Mountains, and again swung from the 90-foot rope swing attached to a feature known as Hanging Rock. This time he clipped a ledge and sustained fatal head and chest injuries.

Many BASE jumpers believe that they are actually risk managers rather than risk takers鈥攖hat included聽Graham Hunt,听Dean Potter, and Sean Leary,听all of whom died in a spate of high-profile deaths in recent years.聽Lucky Chance, however, was almost universally viewed as a risk taker and few will be surprised by his death. Lucky was 32.聽

Lead Photo: Hasitha Tudugalle

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