Basejumper.com - archive

This was an article from a paragliding magazine I get. Apparently six paraglider pilots were practicing their kiting skills in the Valley and were cited. The story says they were asked several times if they were BASE jumpers. Here's a quote from the article.

"Then the ranger wanted to know if we were parachutists or BASE jumpers. His demeanor quickly became threatening..."

Sorry for 3 pages. One file was too big to upload.

I also know of a paraglider getting arrested there (for aerial delivery), and a climber getting the same citation after tossing his haul bags (with a tarp attached to slow them).

Can you believe the ignorance of the rangers? I just started writing a letter to my Congressman about legal BASE sites when I read this article. Events like this further my cause even more!!

Was he actually flying or just kiting like these guys? If he was flying then I guess I could see that.

These guys were kiting on flat ground. There's no way they could have launched.

He was flying. He was up for several hours, apparently. As I recall, he was German, and claimed not to know that paragliding wasn't allowed in the Valley.

I'm not getting the article. The .pdf's just come up as blank pages. Anyone else having this problem, or is it just me?

No problem here.

Try HERE and see if it helps. I used Acrobat 5.0 to combine all three pages, but I'm still getting a strange error message that does not affect me viewing it. Perhaps the PDF's were made with something other than Acrobat?

Thanks for the temp location and trimming it all. I'm at work right now and that's all I could do. I made them using Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Standard maybe that's why you're getting an error. I think I saved it as 5.0 though.

Hmmm. That's weird. When I use Preview (Apple's built-in .pdf reader), they come up blank. But when I use Acrobat, I can read them.

Education in The Netherlands must be lacking....

They never told me the USA contained a separate country (or is it a separate state?) commonly known as NPS, which is more like a police state, with its own laws and policies.

(Bad) jokes aside, I am really amazed by the stuff I read about the NPS and how they choose to maintain law & order in the National Parks....it gives me an unpleasant feeling not unlike entering Malaysia on a direct flight from Amsterdam and being subtly reminded that the penalty for drug trafficking is death.

Disclaimer: I'm not a BASE jumper, have never visited the USA and never used nor trafficked drugs. My opinion is offered for free, and is worth every cent you paid for it.

Is there any other way to get this file? I can't get it to work on my POS computer...arrrgh!

jon

Unlike local law enforcement in the US, Federal agencies have very minimal accountability to the people they "police." Thus, they have no incentive to be co-operative if they don't want to be. Good luck dealing with a Federal bureaucrat with a chip on his/her shoulder.

The best bet for jumping National Parks is making a concerted effort to establish personal relationships with the appropriate decision makers. There's obviously a lot of bad blood (historically) between the BASE community and the NPS which makes establishing such personal relationships difficult. This fact alone just demonstrates what a tremendous accomplishment Bridge Day is.

Jon, what kind of machine are you using? I found that it wasn't the machine, but the .pdf viewer that gave me trouble. I had to use the Adobe Acrobat reader to view the file on either a PC or a Mac. Other brands of .pdf readers didn't work.