Basejumper.com - archive

I am looking for any good BASE mags or Books. Are there any current Mags or Books anyone can recommend?

BASE66 = book

There's nothing current (at the moment) but there's still copies of some older stuff out there you may be able to borrow from others. Since I'm a firm believer in the idea "you won't know where you're going if you don’t know where you've been" I recommend new jumpers study these old tomes when possible.

Carl Boenish published the first magazine called BASE Magazine starting in about 1980. I think there were seven or eight issues all told and it passed when he died 1984. These chronicled the early El Cap jumps and the very birth of the sport he named BASE. It might be possible to get copies of these from Jean Boenish (Carl's widow) but others have tried without much success.

In about 1985-86 Phil Smith started BASELine, which to this day was the longest running BASE magazine. This one gives you the sport throughout the late 1980 which were probably the most turbulent and changing for the sport. After it stopped it was resurrected as the BASE Gazette by Andy Calistrate, who was Phil Smith's assistant on BASELine, but it didn't last long only running a few issues.

There is also a British BASE magazine called Jump put out by Nigel Slee in the 80s. He has put most of those issues on line and you can find them here http://magazine.jump.co.uk/

In the late 80s I started a BASE magazine called The Fixed Object Journal and that ran about 9 issues before I went broke. I had the same problem others did in that there just weren't enough BASE jumpers in the whole word to make it so you didn’t lose money. I think at the height of it I had only about 250 subscribers. I've been meaning to put these on line like Nigel did, but it's a big project and I haven't found the time. But there is nothing like holding a thing in your hand, so maybe if you ask around you'll find some issues. I used to give away the back issues to anyone who asked, but I've only a very few left and had to stop doing that.

There have been a few others like The BASE Newsletter and some of the BASE gear manufactures tested the waters with their own publications but these were only one or two issue things.

So definitely get BASE 66, the book mentioned upboard, and Simon Jakeman's book Groundrush and as many of the above magazines I mentioned. For the moment it's the only way to know your roots . . .

NickD
BASE 194

Thanks for all the information. You were very helpful!

Skydiving magazine includes some BASE content.

Agreed! The best current publication with articles and photos depicting BASE in a positive light.