Basejumper.com - archive

The safety police have been busy lately:

http://www.wvgazette.com/...News/2007052525?pt=0

...The National Park Service this year banned cliff diving and rope swings in Missouri’s Ozark National Scenic Riverways in an effort to cut down on rowdy behavior....

Rowdy behavior?

-Quoted from the article. I don't see how that's related at all to BASE jumping. What I can tell you from many years of experience as it relates to this article is that the great majority of people I have run into at Lake Martin in Alabama (the fifth largest man made lake in the USA) at Chimney Rock are generally drunk out of their minds. Chimney Rock is a 65 foot vertical drop from up top and I have seen countless people pound into the water belly or back first after botched leaps. It's a rite of passage there and I first took the tall leap at age 12 (sober). I have watched two people die first-hand doing it, both plowed out of their minds, being prodded on by their likewise-drunk buddies on the pontoon boats tied together at the base of the cliff. It's simply bad form and bad luck all rolled together. The epitome of the phrase "hold my beer and watch this." This seems to be more of a drinking/smoking/partying issue than anything else.

I have seen a few people mess up 80' drops and hit, no fatalities luckaly, but retarded people and tall shit does not mix. and yes, all drunk people are retards.


the fun police are just that, they stop fun and they enjoy stopping fun. they love it when they can justify their fun-stopping with fatalities.

if it was up to me, there would be 200' A's with a pool below outside of every bar in the US. the ladder sign to the top would read 'I dare you'.

The gene pool needs some chlorine if you ask me.
but fun police dont like chlorine.

What does it take for someone to die after a 65 foot drop into water? Is belly/back flopping gonna get you killed?

YES. if you hit just right.

I have botched exits (gainers and front glips) from about 50. no higher. if you know your screwed in the air, i tuck up. but that makes it more dangerous from higher, as you could even break your back and neck very easily. imnot good enough to time and change rotation speed to enter feet/head first if i have to on a bad botch.

keep in mind, as we BASE hoppers know, 50' is not very different from 80' but 10' is MASSIVELY different from 40'

from rope jumping, the greatest thing i have learned is that impact force(water hit speed/force[as well as deployment speed]) is NOT a function of distance fallen, but a function of TIME fallen, excluding things more that about 5 seconds. and if you have a 5 second fall into water, well, then you have other problems.

I can't believe kite tubing was banned before I ever heard of it. I just ran a search and found this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H0k9Uvt2os

Here is a video clip from a friend of mine from one of the Jet Ski forums I frequent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc9ZkoFqgiA

Pete is a bad ass on his X2 Jet Ski and apparently on the kite tube as well. I know I want to try one, who else does? lol

I guess the fun police are out in full force. Pretty soon you won't be able to blow bubbles while chewing gum.

crap. throw away your direct bags boys. no more 40 footers.

What it means is somewhere in the US there is a child being abused or starving but we have NPS Rangers enforcing illegal aerial delivery laws and reigning in on "rowdy" rope jumping activites.

Nothing like creating criminals out of those perpetrating victimless acts...

Does anyone know the mechanism of this law's creation?

The spokesman quoted in the article calls it "a much needed law" but I had always thought laws required an act of the legislature. Perhaps I'm unclear on the way that laws are created, but I seem to recall something about them being "just a bill, sitting here on capitol hill" first, and then being passed by Congress or something like that, followed by a signature from the president.

I don't seem to recall that little bill from schoolhouse rock every bypassing the that process because the Army Corps of Engineers, or the National Park Service decided he didn't need to go through all that troublesome legislative process. Maybe schoolhouse rock just missed that part.

That's not accurate at all. There are no NPS "BASE nazis" involved in this at all as far as I could tell by reading that. These are state marine patrol officers and other "water cops" trying to keep drunken idiots from dieing as they attempt to prove their manliness by attempting their first-ever layout off the top of such things as our Chimney Rock in Alabama. That and other drunken idiots hooking up ill-conceived rope swings like people they did at Chewacla State Park in Alabama when I was a kid. I really do think this is simply a drunken redneck issue. I am sure that's what they hope to curtail anyway.

If you live in the USA, that's simply the way it is always going to be. No amount of protesting on anyone's part is going to change that. FWIW, I have never seen anyone given anything but a citation for any marine-based offense. I have never seen anyone taken to jail for illegally jumping/diving off of a bridge, but I have seen plenty of people cited for being drunk and rowdy at such locations. By the way, my family had a cabin on one of these tremendously-large lakes when I was growing up.

First off, Apparently you missed this quote both by the original poster as well as the paragraph in the article. There was a direct reference to the NPS.

Secondly, laws like the NPS Illegal Aerial Delivery were never conceived to stifle BASE...but they have been successfully applied by the NPS with validation from the courts. So it is not a far stretch of the imigination that these "no cliff jumping" laws could be successfully implemented in the prosecution of BASE jumpers in regard to other E's in these areas.

.

Awesome, additional patrols in areas just to catch cliff jumpers. Like I said, if there is one uninvestigated claim of child abuse or child neglect within 1000 miles of those additional patrols than someones priorities are wacked.

Sweet...court, fines, somewhere else in the article it says "unspecified prison time" So if you don't take their deal they can hang fed. pen time over your head. And hefty fines...LE agencies generally get a percentage of fines...so it will actually be beneficial for them to enforce this law...then again, no one makes any money going after child abusers...

not that anyone should gaf but fwiw I personally have been to jail for a "marine-based offence"
and here in fl belive it or not it happens all the time.

i had a real close call in tx once too. for jumping off a bridge of all things. and damned if he wasnt taking me to jail as well. pigs and jarheads. can kiss my ass.

You should be the keeper of the Prison BASE numbers.

What about prison sex BASE?... maybe that's going to far?

huh?
do you really wish to keep track of "dropping the soap?"
who were you planning on having sex with in a men's detention facility?

yep, I'd say that might be going too far...
I'm not sure I want to know any more...

Not sure about other countired military services, but some people are known to say, "what goes on a deployment, stays on a deployment"

yeah, how the hell do you get a DUI for kayaking while intoxicated in some remote location?

just like the policy we have at my work campus. if you get too many jay walking offenses through a point system, you get your driving priveleges taken away!

Imagine if these kids discover BASE gear...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPCpMigRpyQ

The authorities would love these kids to become BASE jumpers.

* They post themselves on YouTube
* They name the site right in their videos
* They even name the city and state

Talk about making their jobs easy.

that was some sick jumping.

does that qualify as 'intense gymnastic training?'

You expect them to have BASE ethics even before they become BASE jumpers? Oh man...
Those are just kids. Talented kids, to be precise.

I would bet it is. They have balls, skills, and equipment.
Those gainers and fronts from 85ft are just impressive. What is great to me, is that they don't care for performance, they are enjoyng jumps, and they look so free.