V Buck Prib, D-35300, hasn’t let living deep into the Cascade Range, four hours from any airport, stop him from steadily rising to prominence in the discipline of canopy piloting. Before the pandemic mostly shut down skydiving in 2020, Prib set the goal of traveling the country competing in the intermediate class of the Florida Canopy Piloting Association’s series. Though the season was suspended after Prib’s first meet (in which he earned a silver medal) he didn’t blink, and when the meets resumed, he returned as strong as ever. He won the final meet, the season series and most importantly earned his FLCPA Pro Card right in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Prib most recently competed in the open class of Canopy Piloting at the 2021 USPA National Parachuting Championships.
Age: 28
Height: 6’0”
Birthplace: A cabin up McFarland Creek in Washington
Nationality: American
Marital Status: In a relationship
Pets: Technically none, but my girlfriend does have a dog that likes to lie on the couch with me a lot.
Occupation: Climber and owner of Hungry Mountain Tree Service
Transportation: A few Toyota pickups, and a Ford F-450 for work
Pet Peeves: People or things not being on time
Pre-Jump Superstitions: I’m not really superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
Hobbies: Mainly swooping and BASE at this point, but I’ve been known to do a wide range of other things, mainly involving motors.
Life Philosophy: Efficiency (Never wear clothes you can’t change a tire in, etc.)
Hard opening or line twists? Hard opening for sure; line twists suck!
Neat packer or a trash packer? Neat at the parts that matter
AFF, static-line or tandem student? I did one tandem and then my static-line course that same afternoon.
Jump Philosophy: Do every jump as best as I can.
Team Name: Team TBI
Sponsors: Performance Designs
Container: United Parachute Technologies V316 and VSE I-12
Main Canopy: Performance Designs Valkyrie 75 and some assorted Peregrines
Reserve Canopy: Performance Designs Optimum 126
AAD: MarS m2
Disciplines: Canopy piloting and outside video
Home Drop Zone: Skydive Chelan in Washington
Year of First Jump: 2014
Licenses/Ratings: A-70716, B-40293, C-42915, D-35300, Static-line Instructor, Coach, FAA Senior Rigger
Total Number of Jumps: 2,300-plus
Camera: 800ish
Freefly: 150
RW: 50
Wingsuit: 10-plus
Demos: 5
Balloon: 5
BASE: 250-plus
Other: The rest are all instructor jumps and hop-n-pops.
Total Number of Cutaways: 3 real, 6 intentional
Most people don’t know this about me:
I had a pretty glorious mullet in high school.
What do you like least about the sport?
Attitudes and ego can make or break any situation.
Who has been your skydiving mentor?
Todd Higley at Skydive Chelan helped me a lot in the beginning. He allowed me to progress as quickly as was safe without any ego involved.
What are your future skydiving goals?
I would like to win some more events and bring some CP events back to the West Coast.
What safety item is most often neglected?
Your mind— you can have the best gear but if you don’t know how or why to properly use it, it doesn’t matter.
How did you become interested in skydiving?
I had a dream one night about being in the sport and found out about Skydive Chelan shortly after.
Any suggestions for students?
Set goals and enjoy pursuing them. Meeting goals takes a lot of time and dedication. Progression can take doing it again and again and again.
What’s the most bad-ass thing you can do in the air?
I’m pretty good at pulling stable while doing a hop-n-pop.
What is your favorite jump plane and why?
Anything thats gets me up there.
If you could do a “fantasy 2-way” with anybody, whom would it be with?
I still have yet to do a BASE jump with Todd Higley. So, Todd, if you’re reading this … ?
Were you a hard child to raise?
It probably depends on who you ask. I was the quiet one.
Most embarrassing moment while in freefall or at a drop zone:
Man, I’ve done a lot of s****y skydives—do I have to only pick one? There was the time I was training for my first FLCPA swoop competition, hoping to impress, and ended up in the pond right in front of the entire PD team … very nice.
The toughest thing to do in the sport of skydiving is:
Apart from things that actually take lots of skill, dealing with a poor performance is very challenging.
Is there one jump you would like to do over?
Has been and always will be the last jump that didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. I will always want to do that one over.
What do you consider your most significant life achievement?
Starting Hungry Mountain Tree Service at 26.
Suggestions for USPA:
Don’t forget where the sport came from. It started with small Cessna 182 drop zones at small airports, so don’t forget about the small DZs’ struggles, too.
What is your perfect day?
Probably a quick tree-removal climb in the morning, followed by hop-n-pops in challenging but fun conditions the rest of the day.
What drives your competitive spirit?
Winning is pretty fun.
Can you explain your thought process of not delaying your goal and pushing through a pandemic?
Why not? Plus, airfare was pretty cheap in 2020. There will always be struggles for everyone—they are all different and ever-changing—but you have to work through them or you will never accomplish anything. It just comes down to how worth it that “something special” is to you.
What is your secret sauce for flying your canopies the way you do?
That’s a tough one since I have so much more progression left to do. But devote everything you can to it and don’t let frustration get the better of you.
How did you become interested in high-performance canopy flying?
The first time I saw it, I thought it was the coolest thing I’d seen so far in skydiving.
Are you willing to disclose the meaning behind your name, V Buck Prib?
They are my real names. My mom always called me by my middle name (Buck) growing up. I wish there was a more interesting story but that’s kind of all there is.
Explain V Buck Prib in five words or fewer:
Out-of-the-box hillbilly.