Why not 3 parachutes?
Q. I’m new to the sport and really want to know why skydivers use only two parachutes. Every year some skydiver or skydivers die when their reserves fail. If there were two backup parachutes, skydiving would be almost foolproof. A. Over the years a few extra-cautious jumpers have routinely worn a second reserve, usually by adding a chest-mounted reserve to the front of a piggyback rig. The practice has never caught on because the accident record shows that very few jumpers die because of a bonafide reserve malfunction. It’s incorrect to say this happens “every year,” at least in the U.S. When a jumper does have a problem with his reserve, it’s the result of a main-reserve entanglement or simply pulling it too low or not at all. Wearing multiple reserves wouldn’t help much in those situations. “Tertiary” reserves used to be popular with CRW jumpers. A “tersh” is a pilot-chuteless round canopy packed in a deployment bag and worn on the chest. It is connected to the jumper’s harness by a
