Basejumper.com - archive

 Thinking I may need to protest.

http://www.wyff4.com/r/30445069/detail.html

Can we buy this stack and make it more green friendly !!!

I know that Greenpeace once had someone (I think it was BASE 44?) jump from a smokestack as a protest. If you google around you can probably find some photos. If my (usually faulty) memory is correct, it was in the 80's.

I found a paragraph about it here in the August 1985 "Jump" (a UK BASE newsletter put together by Nigel Slee).

Tom,
do you have more of these newsletters?
It is awesome to read

2OCT84 to be precise. Pix and info here, here and here.

Unfortunately, the 1,100-footer from which I jumped was demolished and replaced by two 700-footers with sulphur scrubbers, thus accomplishing the mission behind the jump.

Interesting historical side-note: The plant is named after General James M. "Jumping Jim" Gavin, who was the principal architect of US airborne forces.

Interesting tactical side-note: The head of security at Gavin was an ex-jarhead lieutenant colonel. He was running away from the plant on his daily 0400 hrs jog in his bright red USMC sweat suit when we caught him in our headlights as we approached the plant. So he was out on the road showing off what a hard-core jarhead he was instead of taking care of business when we sneaked inside his perimeter.

Interesting political side-note: After I was arrested and spirited away from assembled media by the sheriff, I was greeted at my booking by a line of deputies wanting to shake my hand and tell me their personal jump stories. Even had the chief of detectives come by my cell later to "shake the hand of a brave man."

After Greenpeace sprung me a few hours later, the sheriff said "no hard feelings" and that he was sorry he had to arrest me in the first place because he appreciated our efforts: "If if wasn't for folks like y'all, these boys would get too far out of line."

44

Dude, check out this link,
http://madbaseassociation.weebly.com/base-documents.html
This should be a sticky in the History/Trivia forum...

And Robin, kick ass story and post!

thanks!

Thanks for the kind words... and thanks for the link!

The same rig I jumped from Gavin appeared in the Sports Illustrated article on the site (see attachment). This jump was in 1981, during the first jumps made into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

Phil Smith (BASE #1) took the photo, and the whole expedition ended up being quite an epic.

We all landed on the south side of the river except for Larry Jackson, who slipped on exit, turning him 90 degrees left, then never tracked or even corrected his heading, pulled at 6 seconds and then turned 180 degrees, giving him line twists and a 180. He flew along the wall, then hit an outcropping which collapsed his canopy. (You can see the outcropping in the photo, a white triangle just slightly below being in a straight line from my right arm.)

He dropped, surged and slammed into the rock, suffering fatal injuries on impact (as we learned later), then his canopy snagged on the only protrusion for hundreds of feet in any direction, leaving him in a completely unaccessible position. (It took 20 people and an engine-powered steel cable winch the entire next day to recover him.)

Meanwhile, we were on the wrong side of the river because the only way out without climbing gear and at least 5.7 climbing skills was on the north side (our team leader, who scouted the site, didn't tell us until we were there that he didn't actually go to the bottom).

So we had to wade across a hip-deep, fast-moving, icy cold mountain river, and then spend hours in the dark clambering up a poision ivy-choked SOB Gully (aptly named, that) before topping out.

The adventure created quite a media kerfuffle and we took a lot of heat in the parachuting community (including a hit piece on me in Parachutist Magazine orchestrated by the late Bill Ottley in order to pander to the NPS). The main problem was that BASE was in its infancy and of course most skydivers are city geeks who never get out of sight of pavement, so it was incomprehensible to them that we couldn't just bring Larry's body out with us or have an ambulance just drive up to the crash site and load him in.

We also got crap because the media reported that we had a "death pact" to keep jumping in case someone got killed (true) and that we just left Larry dead on the wall without telling anyone in order to make good our escape (false).

As usual, the media was wrong (funny how jumpers trusted what they wrote on this one). What happened was that my mom Joan (see Incidents for a thread on her that includes some other BASE stories) had been onsite on the south rim. She had known we were going to jump, and the night before, she was lying in bed and had a "bad feeling" that something was going to happen, so she got up in the middle of the night and drove for six hours from Denver to get there.

She arrived just in time to see Larry go off and she got an incredible photo of him the instant his canopy touched the wall but before it collapsed. Then she didn't know who it was for a while because he and I both had white canopies (pre-stealth gear era).

Anyway, there was another photographer up there too, and they decided afterward that she would go to the park HQ and inform them that someone was hanging on the wall.

So NPS was informed within a couple of hours of what had happened and in fact they brought in a helicopter to assess the situation, and confirm that he was dead. Then the park superintendant, who was in the helicopter, helped ferry a couple of our stash bags over the river for us.

I've been back a few times since then to camp and hike and enjoy the view, as my parents now live five miles from the north rim.

So thanks again for the link. Brought back some memories.

44

Wow, good stuff Robin!
BTW, I just reposted a link dan inagap or patto posted in another thread. I still think the link should be a sticky...