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A good friend of mine has recently been tellng me about her going to do base jumps. I am very concerned because she only has 60 jumps, and her canopy flying skills are not the best. I don't think that anyone who has trouble landing in the middle of a huge landing area should try base jumping. Recently a friend of ours with thousands of skydives has seriously hurt himself jumping an antenna, but that doesn't seem to phase her at all. He base jumper boyfriend seems to approve of the whole idea. I am just really really worried because I am pretty sure she'll end up killing herself. I don't want to sound overbearing, but I feel like I should do something.

You can´t stop them, one can only help them get the skills they need to perform the jump with maximum safety.
take care,
space

This sounds a lot like "How do you stop someone from skydiving?" The answer is the same: You can't and you shouldn't try. If you've reminded her of your worries, that's all you can do.

If your friend is an adult, her decision to base jump is the final authority. She might have very good reasons for doing this. And maybe she doesn't, but it's her life to enjoy or risk as she chooses.

You have two choices: continue to be her friend and accept the fear and stress, or walk away. You don't have the option of stopping her.

In some consolation, not all base jumps require great landing accuracy. Perhaps she's got objects with huge fields.

Best you can do is tell them what you think about it. If they respect you enough, they'll listen.

Yo man, the fact is you can't...
She is going to and has made her decisions about her choice of activities. You can as a friend tell her of your concerns and tactfully address the areas of her skills which are lacking in your opinion. Then as her "friend" it your obligation to encourage and help her to seek additional training in those areas of concern, not doing this is leaving the door to disaster open. This is the "something" that you feel you should be doing, if you don't and something happens later you may feel guilt, anger, ect...
you'll probably feel that way anyway but you'll have done your part to make her as safe/skilled as possible.

This is what being a true friend is all about, being able to show your concern and to say I don't agree with you but since your set on it let me help you do the best you can.

take her to the hospital and show her the scars on your freind

Hutch

I am starting by echoing what you have already heard. You can't stop her. Why would you really want to take away some happiness from her.
Like said before, a true friend accepts their friends, and tries to help their decisions to the best outcome possible. I could tell you a story of my first and only student, but would rather not for fear of flammage.
Summary goes like this:
We disagreed what the student should jump first, but I listened to his thoughts and reasoning, and decided the best thing I could do was help him, and not stop him. He was set on starting, and I was set on helping as much as I could. When we disagreed, all I could do was help him with his ideas.
The hospital and scars idea might work. Somewhat a reality check. Has she been in the hospital before? if so, remind her to think of what it was like. If not, I could send you some of my X-rays that are not so pretty to share with her.
A scary truth to the sport of BASE jumping is that every jumper will have an object strike sooner or later. I had mine at jump #61. It was not fun, and it scared me big time. Afterwards, all I could think of was definitely not stopping, but how to prevent it from happening again.
A BASE jumper's mind is kind of single track.
Jump, jump, jump, and jump again. If I get hurt, how long before I can jump again.
It's a viscious circle, but once in it, it is very hard to get out of. I don't want out of this circle of thought, but I might live longer if I did. Not live fuller, or love life more, but live longer. I only ask, what's the point of living if I can't enjoy life?
Your friend has insight into this. She has done well by at least having an instructor. Hopefully, the instructor knows of her landing difficulties, and will factor them into her jumps. I have seen many first timers doing water jumps. Landing problem mostly solved, except a person should have a boat there to help them get out of the water safely.
All one can do in this sport is hope for the best, and plan for the worst. Does she have a living will written? Does she have insurance? How will her friends react if she is injured?
All questions you may wish to discuss with her.
And maybe ask her if her ground crew is ready for a "not so good" outcome. Like, do we strip the rig before we call 911? Or some other options I hope she has considered. Here's the tough question to think about, and much tougher to ask:
What happens if you die?
just my .02
Peace,
Thomas

Emmie,

I just wrote, then removed a rather long rant on this subject. The basic premise was that often, unqualified guys "teach" girls they are interested in to BASE jump, and the result is often (I can think of four cases in the last three years) serious injury or fatality.

PM me if you want the actual text of the original posting. It was politically incorrect enough that I decided to remove it to avoid creating a flame war on this forum.

>"How do you stop someone from basejumping"

You don't. However, you can give them food for thought. There was a brief discussion on Blinc about a "what-to-do-list" in case of a fatality.

If you manage to persuade your friend to write her will and to compile such a list before jumping, she may or may not re-think the possible consequences of her actions.

Quoting Matti Nykanen? Wasn't he a ski jumper for Finland back around the 80's? I thought I recognized the name as an olympic ski jumper. Am I correct about this person, or were you quoting someone else?
Thanks,
Thomas

>Quoting Matti Nykanen? Wasn't he a ski jumper for Finland
>back around the 80's?

Yes he was! I'm surprised someone here knew him...

After his phenomenal career at ski-jumping, he tried his wings as a singer and as a stripper among other things.

He has been and still is a recurring character on the covers of tabloid magazines, mostly because of his numerous marriages and breakups. The poor guy hasn't succeeded in anything after his career in sports, and has a reputation for stating the obvious, as my sigline demonstrates....

1. have an EXPERIENCED BASE jumper have a heart to heart with her so-called boyfriend.
2. show her some of the footage from BASE 'bloopers'
3. name some people at the DZ that she doesn't like, then tell her that they BASE jump too!
4. have her name you as beneficiary
5. have her sign resusitate/do not resusitate instructions.

One thing additionally I would say if you want to show the reality of the sport, is to forward her to go to the World BASE Fatality List:
http://juliabell.home.att.net/

This shows all the people in BASE that have died jumping. Several on this list have died after 500+ BASE jumps under their belt. So the reality is, the risk can be great.

Not only that, but If you want, have her email michelle.knutson@baselogic.com (my wife) who also BASE jumps. She had a nasty cliff strike after 125 BASE jumps. She was in a wheel chair for 4 months, and was not fully recovered for almost 2 years.
This was in part due to her lack of upper body strength to perform rear-riser corrections with a 180'. THis is a problem that almost all women have as they do not have upper body strength like men do.

This, in both our opionions, are the most commonly overlooked detail with women getting into BASE at any time.
Think about a 110Lb woman on an F1-11 240' 7-Cell canopy trying to pull a 180' riser turn. Not as easy as it seems.

I'm sure she's already done this but if not, have her read Tom's article at: http://www.dropzone.com/columns/GettingIntoBASE.shtml Full of very good points and things to consider Tom.

Link to column on Dropzone.com.

I have attached a (slightly) updated copy of the article to this posting.

I'm glad you liked it.

Thanks for everyone's comments. I'm going to make sure that she sees the articles and websites you guys mentioned. I really hope it works. I'm also going to make sure I get some very experienced people to try to persuade her to reconcider her decision. I realize that saying "I want to stop someone from basejumping" may sound like a wuffo not getting our need for jumping out of planes, but from the very little I know about base jumping it is significantly more dangerous than skydiving, and therefore you should probably be a pretty experienced skydiver before you get into it. You also get a lot more chances in skydiving than you do basejumping. I would think that there's a really big difference between your first BASE jump and your AFF level 1. I don't think that my being supportive of this would make me a very good friend. I would rather have someone be pissed off at me than having them do something stupid to themselves. It's just really frustrating trying to talk sence to someone who doesn't want to hear the truth.

With respect for the concern you're showing to your friend, I'm going to rework your posting slightly. I'm not doing this to make you or anyone else mad, but only to illustrate an interesting relationship between your concern and the concern of whuffos.


In the end, I both sympathize with your worries and also feel it's intrusive to claim your judgement about risk is better than your friend's. Many skydivers have had the same experience and felt self-righteous about their side of it. Maybe even you have had this experience. And if the only reason you think it's ok to be on the other side is relative risk levels, then there's really no justification for being self-righteous on either side of this argument.

you cant stop her...But show her the artickels.And pray for that the BASE instructer is mature enuf to see that its a problem.I dont think you can or should talk her away from it but help her to under stand that she need more practice and experiensed before getting started on such a thing..Good luck to you ,and your freind..

Another problem comes from her attitude, not yours. You want the best for her, and you think that preventing her, or stopping her from BASE jumping is the safest thing.
My parents echo this opinion. The problem comes with the BASE jumper's attitude. If you consider it, most jumps are made illegaly. not all, but some are. And, the attitude that I follow with illegal jumps, is this:
"Yes, my parents don't want me doing this. Most of my friends don't want me doing this. heck, even society doesn't want me doing this, therefore they made laws to try to prevent me from doing this. BUT I really really want to experience this, and feel this, and go through with this. So, I guess I have to stop listening to everyone except me."
then comes more problems. When a person stops listening to anyone, because all they have heard is objections and negativity. They become set in their mind, and nothing anyone else says matters.
So, even if you were to give her good advice, she may dismiss it because it is not what she thinks.
The best way to convince a person to believe an idea that is not their own, is to make them think it is their own. This is accomplished by asking questions.
I learned this at a job once, and applies a lot of places in life.
"Never tell anyone anything. Only ask them."
Once you take the telling attitude, you sound more important, more knowledgeable, and it puts the other person on the defensive,
Does this sound reasonable?
Peace,
Thomas

A thought:

My judgment on the risks of BASE jumping may, in fact, be more informed (so, in one way, better) than your judgment about it.

Your point is very valid for skydiving. However, I, as an experienced BASE jumper, feel that BASE is not worth the risk for something like 80% of the people who try it.

The problem is that they either (a) over-estimate the return they will get from it, or (b) under-estimate the risk involved. As a generalization, for the average skydiver, I think the costs of BASE outweigh the benefits.

Usually, this is a combination of (a) and (b). However, there is usually more of (b) (under-estimation of the risks) in their decision.

Unfortunately, because the person in question has not participated in BASE, they cannot accurately assess their personal return from the activity. Further, because they are generally uneducated, they cannot assess their personal risk. While experienced BASE jumpers might not (or might) be able to assess the return, they are certainly better equipped than the newbie to assess the risk.

In my estimation, based on the limited information I have about Emmie's friend, she will fall into the vast majority of BASE newbies who are making a poor decision based on mis-estimation of the risk/reward ratio. This is especially true given her (high) risk at her current level of experience, and her (lowish) reward (which could be as low as pleasing her boyfriend).

I guess what I'm saying is that the Pilot-Skydiver:Skydiver-BASE Jumper analogy is flawed because the average experienced skydiver feels that the benefits of skydiving outweigh the risks. I do not believe this is the case for most BASE jumpers.

My personal belief (in case you are wondering) is that no one, ever, ought to get into BASE. Heroine addiction is probably safer, easier and less disruptive to your life.

My personal belief (in case you are wondering) is that no one, ever, ought to get into BASE. Heroine addiction is probably safer, easier and less disruptive to your life.

I know thats your oppinion Tom(and respect for that),but i dont mean that we can make that kind of parrelle.Heroin kills your body,its poisen.BASE are dangerus.and may kill thouse who jump.But you still can walk away from yor"fix",a junkie woulnt..
just my 0,2

I think it was just a metaphor, i don't think Tom really meant it,....did you Tom ?

I hope so

Good point about under-estimating risks and valuing the reward incorrectly. I also like your "heroine/BASE jumping" parallel. I asked my parents this same question. something like
"Would you rather have me be a heroine junkie than have me sober and BASE jumping?"
They chose BASE. I don't want to get into a discussion about experiences, or evaluation of reward.
All that aside, I think BASE jumping is safer than heroine. Maybe, maybe not.
You can't O.D. on a BASE jump. Sure, you can flat out die, but that's different.
Ever hear about someone watching a friend O.D. on heroine? They don't just miss the p.c. and go SPLAT.
It is a lot messier. And I can tell you that heroine will put a person in jail much longer than BASE.
Also, there are treatment centers for heroine addicts. There is no rehab for BASE jumpers, only death.
Peace,
Thomas

Funny, I happened to end up having drinks with five BASE jumpers Wednesday evening - none of them seemed to have your melodramatic martyred outlook.

Will

Tom,

I was puzzled by your reasoning here. Perhaps you could explain it a little bit further?

You write:

And then:

What about the 20% for whom the benefits outweigh the risks? Should they not be in BASE either? Is there, in your opinion, some other reason, beyond the benefit-risk calculation, that people should not do it? Perhaps the effect on other people, or the "addiction" part?

/ Martin

the best u can do is accept her decision and send her good vibes

Let me clarify:


Is a reference to my feeling on what percentage of people are getting returns worthy of the risks they take.


Is my stock response for someone considering BASE. Whenever someone asks me if I think they should try BASE, this is my response. Well, normally I just say "God, No!", but you get the idea.

Sure, that means that 20% of the people I advise not to start might actually, be better off, in the long run, if they did get into BASE. But perhaps I can convince a few to find a safer way to get what they need. Maybe they can find the same rewards, at lower risk, in rock climbing, surfing, kayaking, or inpatient psychotherapy (that last one is a feeble attempt at humor).

Just to turn the question around a bit. If we could erase history, and you had never BASE jumped before, would you take it up now?


I wonder if there's an actuary somewhere that has fatality/injury statistics per year, per... say... 100 participants.

I mean, how many times does the subject of "How dangerous is skydiving really?" come up?

All of those that you mentioned are actually quite dangerous, especially at the advanced levels. Same goes for skiing (which I'm doing in Feb., BTW ).

But to say one is more dangerous than another without numbers is sort of difficult.

I don't know. I feel that the reward (for me) has been greater than the (rather high) personal cost.

If there were no such thing as BASE, maybe I would have found something else that could have given me the same, or similar, rewards, with a lower cost. That would probably be preferable.


Definitely.

Still, it's my subjective, biased, personal opinion, based on three years of active BASE and seven years of active climbing, that BASE is more dangerous than climbing. I never saw, or knew, anyone who died climbing. The worst injury I saw was a broken ankle, and I probably only saw six injuries. BASE has been a little harsher than that.

There are obviously a lot of people experienced in both skydiving and BASE who feel that BASE is more dangerous than skydivng.

It's all anecdotal, "fuzzy" type evidence. But for all that, I'm willing to accept it.