Yeah, I really doubt those wingsuits are made of biodegradable fabrics.
Yes. Letās make newcomers feel welcome in our clique.
I feel that insisting on base jumping where he did was a selfish, asshole move. Rangers do not want to have to hunt for and deal with human corpses. Look at what happened back in 2011.
Base jumper wonāt stop illegal leaps despite yosemite tasing
The jumpers also say the ban forces them to use dangerous tactics like launching in the dark and pulling their chutes when low to the ground to decrease their chances of being seen. The real animus between the rangers and the BASE jumpers started in 1999, after Frank Gambalie fled from the rangers after a jump. He ran into the Merced River and drowned.
After Gambalieās death, a group set up a protest jump in prisoner costumes to demonstrate the supposed safety of the sport before spectators and the media. Instead, seasoned BASE jumper Jan Davis fell to her death. Her then-husband, Tom Sanders, says Davis had used someone elseās parachute since she knew it was going to be confiscated. McNeely was there. āIt definitely put some concerns into my ā¦ yeah,ā he trails off, before blaming Davisā death on āpilot error.ā
No the ban hasnāt forced you to do anything. Youāre forcing rangers to put themselves at risk and to deal with your dead remains. The deaths are a tragedy and they shouldnāt be happening.
I donāt think that @BASE1127 is one of the people that come here to troll then disappear, as far as I know base jumping isnāt one of the trigger issues for that.
Joined 23 hours Last Post 21 hours Seen 21 hours Trust Level new user
Only posted in this thread.
Whatās your point? Does the fact that heās newly registered invalidate his comment in some way?
Mod note: stay on topic and new commenters are welcome, as long as they donāt make my mouth water.
Yes, I am a new user, but I have been a BoingBoing follower since hearing Cory speak at UNC-CH sometime around 2007. Iāve never felt the need to comment on a story before, but these people were my friends and I feel the need to give an inside perspective to people who criticize their actions without really understanding them.
What about the 17 hikers/visitors who died in 2011 alone? Were they being selfish for hiking where they were? What about the many law abiding climbers who are rescued in Yosemite every year?
The ban hasnāt forced anybody to do anything, but it has incentivized jumpers to trade jumping in the safest conditions for jumping in a manner which is least likely to get them thrown in jail for participating in an adventure sport.
Do you think that if the NPS banned climbing (they tried) that climbers would stay away from El Capitan, the crown jewel of both climbing and BASE? No, they would have to get sneaky. Being arrested and fined is not sufficient incentive to not climb or jump.
Also, to reply to an earlier post, the NPS did permit BASE jumping for a few weeks in 1980. One of the key factors in them pulling the plug was their concern about the number of people gawking or stopping their cars in traffic to try to catch a glimpse. I have spent many years jumping in the Jungfrau region of Switzerland, a very busy tourist destination where many thousands of big-wall BASE jumps occur every year. I can tell you that the tourists are much motor interested in the waterfalls and wildlife than they are in the BASE jumpers. Strangely it is only the American tourists who seem surprised when I tell them that it is perfectly legal.
Fair enough. Iām sorry for your loss.
As I noted previously the 17 people who died in Yosemite in 2011 werenāt all hikers. Some died of natural causes such as heart attacks, others died in the kinds of accidents that would be expected of any location that sees around four million visitors a year (such as car accidents.)
Of the 17 deaths who were hikers, some didnāt follow established safety rules. At least three died after intentionally climbing over a safety rail and getting swept over a waterfall. I donāt know is āselfishā is the right way to describe what they did but Iād certainly call it āirresponsible and dangerous.ā
Iām sorry for the tragic loss of your friends but I donāt think legalizing what they did is a good idea if the goal is to reduce the number of deaths in the park.
You say the ban āhas incentivized jumpers to trade jumping in the safest conditions for jumping in a manner which is least likely to get them thrown in jail for participating in an adventure sport.ā So letās say for sake of argument that BASE jumping could be twice as safe as it is now if the jumpers could do it at any time without fear of arrest. But if legalizing the practice also doubles the number of people who attempt BASE jumping in the park, you end up with just as many dead people.
I got to meet Dean a bunch of years ago when he did a talk in Boston, and even then it was clear (at least to me) that things would end like this.
Playing in the margins- regardless of skill level- leaves precious little room for error. And the errors that happen donāt even have to be errors of yours, mind you. Minor wind changes. Whatever.
The activities he partook in are beyond the high risk- and itās even stranger, in that he chose to not utilize the mechanisms to mitigate any of that risk. High-lining is dangerous tethered, and doing it untethered is unwise.
Whatever- you can say he lived by his own rules or that he pushed boundaries or whatever, but his history of ignoring rules seems to have led to an untimely and preventable death.
A shame.
Iām not sure how I would feel about harm reduction in this kind of thing. Could we set aside a certain number of (expensive) permits each year for this sort of thing? Do thrill seekers have a right to risk their lives in public places? Iām definitely not a fan of the keystone kops spectacle of police trying to punish someone after a successful jump.
Iām pretty sure Iād rather share a national park with base jumpers than with snowmobiles. Much more annoying.
Sorry they died, and sorry for their friends and relations, but these guys did not have to jump in suboptimal conditions. They chose to, knowing the conditions were not the best. The park banned the activity because they felt it was too dangerous, and allowing it would likely encourage more people to do it. Picking up corpses is part of their job, but I see no reason they shouldnāt be allowed to have rules that keep that to a minimum. They have to try and make the parks accessible to as many people as possible and allocate their resources under tight budgets constraints. For them to ban the activities that end up being the most dangerous and expensive seems reasonable. Stilt-walking down a mountain trail might be fun, but allowing it would likely cost more in evacuations than itās worth, so the rangers would probably stop you.
If there is no optimal place to base-jump due to the bans, then perhaps this is not a sport thatās feasible. Neither is rafting in the flood control channels in LA. If someone complained that the ban āforcedā them to go out to a natural arroyo during a flood, thereby putting them at greater risk, I think most reasonable people would laugh.
I wonāt a argue that BASE jumping is a safe way to enjoy Yosemite, but I will argue that there are plenty of other activities that are on the same or higher level on the danger spectrum and that are allowed by the NPS, e.g. Climbing without a rope (free soloing), highlining without a leash (check out the Lost Arrow Spire highline), rope jumping, hang gliding, etc.
As an American BASE jumper, I have to leave the āLand of the Freeā and spend my summers in Switzerland, France, Italy, Norway to enjoy the same freedom that my climbing, and highlining peers get to enjoy without regulation every day here at home.
It all boils down to freedom. I believe that we should all have the right to enjoy the park in our own way and make our own risk assessments and that the NPS should only regulate activities that pose a danger to the public or to the environment. I believe that BASE jumping in Yosemite poses far less danger to non participants or the environment than driving your car through the valley.
That is a slippery slope argument. If the goal of the park service is to reduce deaths in the park then they will have to start banning all sorts of things. If you take the Half Dome cables down, less people will die and be injured. If you donāt allow cars in Yosemite (as in Zion), it would be much safer for all of the park visitorsā¦
The dog, Whisper, has only made a few very conservative jumps with Dean. Deanās last jump was pretty technical proximity flight and he wouldnāt dream of putting the dog in that kind of danger.
To put that into perspective, itās like the difference between putting your dog in the car for a drive to the supermarket and strapping your dog into a race car for a 100 mph run up Pikes Peak.
Or they can address the thrillseekers directly and cut out the obvious danger. Thereās no similar sign from someone who simply drives through.
I am truly sorry for the loss of your friends and colleagues. As a person with mild anxiety about high places I canāt even imagine those who pull off these kinds of things. I wish you the best.
