Basejumper.com - archive

As a newbie, trying to rack up the skydives learning as much as I can and trying to get into BASE a.s.a.p, I am wondering...

Skydiving isnt a sport that can easily become to overcrowded. Its like tennis...just build more courts with more facilities.

On the other had we have BASE, which has a limited amount of objects to jump off of. I would think that it would become much more like surfing, a lot of localism and such.

How come that BASE jumpers are still just like skydivers in the aspect of welcoming you to the sport? I have received a ton of info from a lot of friendly BASE folks, helping me out on my way to become another jumper to crowd their limited sites.

What do you experienced BASE folk think?

In my limited experience, its been the opposite. Only the super gung-ho have been accepted and able to find a 'mentor' to show them the ropes. I suppose its a different atmosphere in different parts of the country however. ie: Moab, Twin Falls, etc.

>>I'm not an experienced BASEr, but I you must be having an easier time getting into this than most. I had to troll the DZ for weeks before I found someone who would even talk to me about it. Then I had to pay my dues, working GC for months, shivering in the dark under a tower at 2am with no possiblilty of a jump, running interference etc. Then weeks of tracking dives/canopy drills/accuracy and then finally I found someone willing to give me packing lessons. It's a long road, at least for me perhaps other have had it easier. Good luck to you.

The localism used to be much more prevalent and I don't think it will ever go completely away because of the reasons you mentioned. (Some sites are just too perfect to share with every person that comes through town.) Of course there are quite a few legal sites, even in the US, so the overcrowding isn't quite as significant an issue as it might seem. For example, new exit points are being discovered all the time out in Moab.

The main reason you've noticed the positive welcoming attitudes and all the helpful information is that the BASE community finally realized that its the best way to self-regulate and keep our sport alive and well. If every prospective new jumper got the cold shoulder from experienced BASE Gods two things would happen. Some of those potential jumpers would give up and walk away from BASE. This is great because it lessens the impact on our sites and reduces the overall visibility of our sport to the public. The problem is that some of them would get fed up with all the resistance and get the “If no one is going to help me I’ll just figure it out by myself” attitude. These are the people that often do things like climb 200’ up a local tower and jump slider up… with a skydiving rig… in the day time! This not only results in a messy crater at the bottom of the tower and burns it for any future BASE jumping, but it also raises the public’s awareness of our often otherwise covert activities.

So you see, the main reason most BASE jumpers help other inexperienced newbies is really out of greed. We want to keep jumping no matter what the cost and most of us have figured out that it’s better to help those in need instead of letting them hurt or kill themselves and therefore giving our sport another black eye. Besides, one of the neatest things about BASE is traveling to new places and meeting all kinds of new people.

837

The population of the world is constantly growing, all those people need to live somewhere and a lot will live in newly-built high rise apartment blocks (which require cranes to construct). The more people there are in the world the more water towers, Antennae, hotels etc are needed. The number of fixed objects in the world is not fixed.

There is a lot of sharing involved, if a newer jumper (like myself) finds and opens a new object and shares it with the experienced guys they will probably be willing to share some of their established objects with you. It is a matter of trust and there are no shortcuts to earning it.

At the very least on bad weather weekends go check out potential objects. If possible (and you have one) take video. Show the video to experienced guys. They will appreciate the groundwork and you will learn a lot about site assessment and evaluation.

I think maybe the experienced guys are more concerned with the type of person getting into BASE rather than the number. Firstly they don't want people getting hurt or dying. Secondly they don't want the publicity and possible stricter legislation that people getting hurt and dying brings to the sport.

Will

damn... and here, i was asked if i wanted to jump when i was just going to watch....

>>heh heh. Heard about that...but hey that was a non-black ops mission so it doesn't count! Geez you didn't just borrow a packed rig to get up and get off did you oh and if it's not a 2 hr climb it doesn't count either!