IN MEMORY HAYDEN ROWAN

Hayden Rowan

20/09/82 to 13/02/08

Hayden Rowan was tragically killed in Moshi, Tanzania, in a plane Crash, while working for Skydive Kilimanjaro. Hayden was just 25 years of age.

Hayden did his first Skydive in January 2006 at Taupo, after his parents gave Hayden and his younger brother Michael a skydive Voucher for Christmas 2005. Hayden was working as a motion Graphic designer in Wellington when Michael found details of the Diploma in Skydiving Course at Methven and Hayden then decided to pursue a career in skydiving.

He started the 8 month Diploma in April 2007. As part of the course, it's traditional for their 100th jump to do an "undie jump" Hayden wrote the following about his undie jump

"For your hundredth jump it is traditional that you do it in your underwear. Lucky for me it was a warm day (+1 at 12000 feet) and we were in the warm plane. I also joined in with some other people's (I dunno why) but the temperature on these jumps was -19, then you have 200 kph windchill to take into account, it was torture!"

After completing 170 jumps while on the course, he decided to go to Moshi Tanzania to do his 3 months and 30 jumps work experience. Hayden moved to Moshi in September 2007 and became a permanent employee of Skydive Mount Kilimanjaro as their camera man. Hayden's skydiving dream became his passion (he had found and was living his dream) Nothing would stop him from Skydiving as the following email he sent out to his family and friends shows.

" Had my first reserve ride today, on what I thought was a sweet pack job. All went sweet up till opening when I had a brake release and through me into line twists and a downward spiral. Anyway it was obvious pretty quickly that the twists weren't coming out so I cut away the main and flew around on my back for a bit and almost got stable when I pulled my reserve handle.

Anyhow the reserve opened between my legs which gave me some pretty mean burns on my leg. To say the opening was violent would be an understatement. I got whiplash in my back and I literallyy couldn't see for a few seconds. The reserve ride was agony but I managed a nice soft landing, and I laid there for a while until I realised that I needed to see where my main canopy was going to land. It gave the African Guys who work for us a bit of a scare, I don't think they had seen a cut away before. One of them ran off to get my canopy and ended up having to bribe a Masai 5000 shillings ($5 US) to get it back.

Anyway I went to the doctor, and I have just got some muscle damage to my back, so he said not to do anything for a few days....yeah right, unless I can't walk when I wake up, tomorrow I'll be jumping.


This letter was kindly written by Hayden's mum, Kathy, who in a display of the utmost courage and respect for the wishes of her two boys is supporting her other son Michael through the same diploma and into the sport that took away her son.