Re: [460] The Master BASE Number List - Revealed . . .
>>Andy Calistrat of Houston started the World BASE Association essentially to compete with the USBA. He had no intention of representing anyone other than his local friends. Nick DG, you around to provide more info.<<
I almost don't even want to write about this anymore as some people accuse me and other U.S.A. types of being jingoistic and they get militant about it. But while it's certainly true there were plenty of singular fixed object jumps (both here and abroad) made prior to when anyone actually called it a sport, I can only relate what I learned at the time the following events actually occurred.
>>From what I understand, BASE cropped up simultaneously in Scandanavia and the U.S.<<
Not really . . .
If by Scandinavia you mean, in general, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Demark, and so on, the first "modern" type jumps there, and in Europe in general, I ever heard of was from Norway's Trollveggen in July of 1980. These were done by Jorma Oster and three fellow Finnish buddies. Jorma had made one previous cliff jump from Yosemite's El Capitan when he visited the States about a year earlier. Carl Boenish, along with his wife Jean, are also on the expedition almost by accident as they just happened to be in Stockholm visiting with an exchange student Carl had met back in the 1950s. And this was not the trip to Norway that he died on as that occurred in 1984.
Carl wrote of these first Troll Wall jumps in the very first issue of his BASE magazine that was published in January of 1981. Although I sat and listened to him speak of these jumps at the Lake Elsinore DZ some months earlier. Jorma also wrote of the jumps in the September, 1981 issue SKYDIVING.
The point is the El Cap loads at Yosemite, which are the ones that really got the ball rolling for fixed object jumping, took place almost two years earlier, in August of 1978. We can even say it went further back as Carl actually started planning those El Cap jumps in the summer of 1975. So even if someone pops up now and claims they know of someone else regularly cliff jumping in Scandinavia earlier than that, as does happen from time to time, it didn't produce the birth of the sport of BASE jumping and that's what we are taking about.
Even the official Trollveggen website at
http://www.trollveggen.net/index2.php cites Jorma's jumps in 1980 as the first ones made there. In fact when jumping at the Troll Wall was first banned in 1986, due to a rash of mishaps and accidents and the rescues they caused, we all thought damn, the Troll Wall is going down the same road as El Cap.
Interestingly, Arne Randers Heen, the famous mountain climber, guide, and WWII hero, was on Jorma's expedition and also there when Carl was killed fours years later. He must have been close to 80 years old at the time but he was the only witness to Carl's fatality.
On the USBA vs WBA thing, the United States BASE Association was started by Carl and Jean in about 1981 around the same time Carl first announced the BASE number award. It may have been unfortunate he followed the only model he knew of and that was of the United States Parachute Association. But even though Carl had already had troubles with the Park Rangers in Yosemite he was very optimistic that once the world became aware of BASE jumping it would trump the concerns of any bureaucrats. But he was being wonderfully naïve about the matter.
In 1984, after Carl died in Norway, his widow Jean stepped up and took control of the USBA but her leadership style rubbed too many jumpers the wrong way. It was the first real contention in the BASE community and a harbinger of things to come. In her defense it must be said as a single entity she did a lot for the cause in Yosemite and on a few occasions came very close to backing the NPS into a legal corner that had them scrambling for reasons to prevent jumping. But what really killed BASE jumping in Yosemite was the United States Parachute Association getting involved in the first, and so far only, legal season of El Cap jumping. It lasted just a short three weeks before being shut down by the NPS.
Nowadays in BASE the changes in attitudes and practice come rather slowly. But in the early 80s BASE is so new that changes came very rapidly. In some cases what was accepted one week was proven wrong the next. It was a head spinning time as BASE struggled out of the womb and plenty of mistakes were made. But we can only call them mistakes in hindsight. The biggest one was we didn’t see that BASE and skydiving were really two different things. Prior to USPA's public announcement of the deal for a legal El Cap season they quietly put out the word for input and several meeting were held around the country. And I was there for the one held at the Perris Valley DZ. Let me digress a bit. The reason USPA got involved in the first place is that between the first jumps in 1978 to now in 1982 El Cap was being jumped a lot. But it was being done illegally and lots of jumpers were being imprisoned, charged, and fined. But USPA was publicizing these jumps in its magazine and Carl's films were making the rounds of DZ all over. So lots of jumpers wanted to also make the leap, but they didn't want to break the law to do it. So the membership started to pressure the USPA to step in on their behalf.
At that meeting at Perris, I already sensed trouble ahead, I had my first El Cap jump planned for that summer, but I put the plan on hold, when we got wind of the USPA program. But as I looked around the room I realized no one there had ever made a fixed object jump before. But nonetheless rules about helmets, boots, and no square reserves allowed, no night jumps, no RW, and holding a D license were agreed upon. I believe the USPA never experienced such a mass of D licenses requests after that 'till just a few years ago when the raised the jump number requirements.
At the same time the original guys like, Carl, Phil Smith, Phil Mayfield, etc. had already began to expand fixed object jumping further than cliff jumping. When they started doing towers, buildings, and bridges, it wasn't hard for an even optimistic Carl to see either they kept it quiet or they weren't going to be able to do it at all.
So in 1982 the skydivers, permits in hand, descended on Yosemite valley, and while there was a few minor injuries, no one died, and it proved this jump was doable by the average experienced skydiver. But where the wheels came off was in following the rules laid down by USPA and the NPS. People jumped without permits, at night, did RW, drove up closed trials in big flat bed trucks and generally just acted like you'd expect skydivers would act. They just moved the party from the DZ to Yosemite valley. So the NPS shut down the program early citing numerous violations of the rules. One problem that contributed to this was the majority of jumpers involved didn't see cliff jumping as something they would do over and over. It was a lark, like an occasional water jump, or something to be done once and gotten down in a logbook.
We came to realize later the NPS had a grand plan. They didn't fight the efforts of the UPSA all that much because they knew we'd break the rules and they could then gather the information and facts they needed to shut down BASE jumping forever in Yosemite Valley. And in hindsight you've got to give them credit as to this day their plan worked like a charm. USPA quickly washed their hands of the whole matter, decided to never allow BASE to be mentioned in the magazine again, and just walked away from the whole mess.
So as all that was going on a true BASE underground community was taking shape and those of us still interested in BASE jumping gravitated that way. And all was well until 1984 when Carl died. By now various BASE Magazines began circulating inside the community and BASEline's Phil Smith hired a young assistant named Andy Calistrate. I was and still consider myself a friend of his, but every time I mention Andy in any kind of less than stellar light I hear from him so I know he's still out there. But Andy was the 1986 version of Maggot, or maybe more so NickNitro. Where Carl, and later even Phil presented BASE in their magazines as something grand, something to be respected, something to be nurtured Andy was pure sex, drugs, and rock and roll and the more outrageous he could be the better he liked it. And of course he found a following in other young jumpers who were looking to break out of rigidity of skydiving. And it was then that Andy formed the breakaway organization called the World BASE Association. And the only bylaw seemed to be you had to be anti-Jean Boenish.
Slowly the magazine's letter section became filled with barbs against Jean Boenish. Jean was telling us to go slow, to be careful and be fully prepared, to leave only footprints and respect the environment, but that was lost on a lot of jumpers as past events seemed to indicate no one was ever going to just let us BASE jump, so if you wanted it you just went out and took it. And that's when we became the air pirates. And the infighting began in earnest. But over the course of that time we did observe two simple rules. We didn’t burn sites and we didn’t publicize what we were doing. It was an honor among thieves thing. So most of the heartburn in the sport revolved around those who broke those rules.
As I read in BASEline, and saw in the field with my own eyes, in the late 1980s things started to get violent. Actual fisticuffs were breaking out all over the BASE community and I knew we were better than that so I started my own BASE magazine in 1989 called the Fixed Object Journal hoping to raise the bar at least a little bit. At the same time Andy broke away from BASEline as Phil started to lose interest and he also started a magazine of his own called the BASE Gazette. One reader wrote in to say I was doing the National Geographic of BASE and Andy was doing the Mad Magazine of BASE. And that was an apt description I suppose.
Then the 1990s began, but that's a whole other story . . .
NickD
BASE 194
And while it may not interest you now, maybe it will twenty years from now. So in that case it's better to have a BASE number list and not care about it, than to suddenly care about and not have it at all. 
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