Basejumper.com - archive

Hey People.
I thought about making this post for a while.
What can we do about changes in the sport with the people getting into the sport, ethics, respect for locals, buying gear and the future??
It seems just a money earner with some courses..no pre checks.just take the cash.
On a few trips this year you just see more and more things, Trash at exits. I seen some visiting jumpers had skipped the bill in a well known Italian restaurant. Just stuff you would never see before.
I feel many Jump site closures are soon to come..
Do the Jumpers still hold the key or is it too late??

One of the problems with any action sport and even more so with BASE is that it requires a great deal of confidence in one's self to make sound decisions and reactions under extraordinary pressure. While some people can take this confidence and humbly go about life, others can't quite match the integrity some have. Posting blatant illegal videos (yes antennas are still illegal even if desolate), preaching a sense of entitlement, trying to out do others in the name of being revered as the greatest BASE jumper of all time! While the vast majority of jumpers I have met have been extremely down to earth and humbled in their own being, it only takes a few bad apples. With the astonishing rate of increasing jumpers, more bad apples come.

Another major problem is BASE is easy. You learn how to pack a little bit (some people don't even learn that properly) and you huck yourself off a fixed object. That's it. It's too easy. Sometimes you can drive a car to the top so no technical climbing skills even needed. Sports like climbing, skiing, mountaineering, etc take skill, perseverance and lessons learned before reaching goals over a long period of time. BASE never even has to give you the chance to learn even the basics before it kills you. It's when something goes wrong that you need some damn good reaction time and to stay calm under pressure. This is a sport where if you do get the slight amount of time to fix what's wrong you need to jump on it, hesitating leads to bad, bad things.

The more people that join the sport, the more attention it will get. This can be for better or worse. We can start choosing how we portray things to the media. Ie not talking death statistics during an entire interview on National radio and letting people constantly refer to us as "daredevils". We can stop leaving trash and PBR cans at Moab exits. We can start treating the communities we legally jump in nicely and as equals. We are not special because of our perceived elite BASE jumper status. In fact, we owe those communities for reaching out to grant us a privilege that fewer and fewer places want to host.

Or we can keep thinking that because we are BASE jumpers we should be sponsored and be in the top echelon of the world's citizens. Constantly disrespecting the locals of areas (take a good look at where that got us in Yosemite).

It takes a lot more time and resources to put out a forest fire than it does to not drop the match in the first place.

Didn't it only take like, thirty seconds, for jumping in yosemite to go from banned to unbanned to banned again in like, 1800 because of stuff like that?

Hopefully these "growing pains" will slowly lead to more responsible self regulation. This has been coming at Perrine for awhile just like it has been coming to Luterbrunen, and other places. Two catagories of problems. The You Tubers who see BASE and winguits and think it's like a carnival ride they can learn with a few lessons. Of course they bounce on the more difficult jumps. The shame of it is that we're having a lot of experience going in on wing suits, and even at Perrine by experienced folks looking for a little more rush. That last gainer, or that low or close wingsuit line is killing experienced jumpers. It's the nature of who we are. Complacency of doing the same thing over and over for true thrill seekers, gets boring. We tend to want a little more rush. Pretty soon, we do it and we make a small miscalculation but already below pull altitude or just too damn close and hit rock. Guys and girls, I've seen every phase of this sport produce death, but it's time we learn to respect a few legal places and be more careful than usual. It's also time for the hottest wingsuiters to set a few minimum clearances so it's not seen as cool to rake your toes on a tree etc. We all owe it to the future of this sport to act responsible most of the time. We all need that special rush, or we never would have gotten into skydiving let alone BASE or wingsuit BASE. Do it once and awhile when you really need the extra rush, but don't do it all the time. The odds are never in your favor if you rely on reading the line perfectly or are so arrogant you think you can always adjust. If we keep killing people in high visibility areas, it will only hurt our future.
Rick H
38

+1

As as been mentioned before, with other high risk sports, a certain level of skill Is required before the high risk stuff is even possible.
It would simply not be possible for someone to watch a you tube video of someone free soloing a French 7a ad then to go out and copy it. Without some years of training it would simply not be possible to make even the first moves in order to get high enought that a fall would be dangerous.
Base has no such barriers to entry, the freedom to make your own choices is there from the beginning and to savour or suffer the consequences, it's something I like about base, I think most people do too.
I have seen some pretty terrible decision making from new jumpers. Guys with only 6 unstable tracking suit jumps putting on their apache wing suits because they only have 2 days of their trip left, doing ariels and attempting free fly base with less that 30 jumps.
What is surprising however, it's that very few if any of these jumpers end up on the list.
It seems that even though the jumps they do are very high risk, they have only to survive 10 or so jumps on their 2 week base holiday.
An experience jumper will perhaps be making 150+ jumps per season.
You would think being experienced would equate to being safer on the whole, and probably would if terrain flying was not part of the mix. Terrain flying could be defined as the systematic reduction of, and in some cases, complete removal of the necessary margins for error during a BASE jump.
Add to this a much greater frequency of jumping ie exposure to the risk and you will see that the experienced jumpers are the highest risk category and this is shown in the statistics.
What can be done about that? Well I think not much.

Another major factor in the recent changes to the sport is the commercialisation.

A few years ago there were very few (if any) people that could make a full time living from base jumping (not including people making gear). Now there are people that depend on it, and apparently some doing quite well.

To keep the sponsors interested the ante needs to be constantly upped - so the margins are trimmed. Some of the jumpers have the skill and experience to work with small margins and some do not.

Others try to emulate what they see the "Athletes" doing on Youtube and either don't realize the skill and preparation required or greatly over estimate their own ability. Look what happened at Brevent within a few weeks of the first video going viral.

The problem is snowballing and as the sport (WS Base in particular) gets more publicity and the barrier to entry gets ever lower it obvious how this will go. :-(

In WS Base people are driven to buy ever bigger suits to try and fly as far as others, even when they don't have the skills and experience to fly the smaller suits, sacrificing control, stability and ease of deployment for what?

If anything the increasing death toll will attract more of the wrong type of people, the people that are "So Fuckin' Extreme" that they want to show the world by BASE jumping. The people with little skill that jump High Ultimate and post it all over Facebook to show how bad ass they are. Some constantly push the dark/death defying/insane image of BASE to the media as a way to attract more interest.

Even at some of the least risky places like TwinFalls people are inventing ways to reduce the margins, it seems the safer people feel the more risk they are willing to take. It's human nature and isn't going to change.

The incidents at Le Brevent have all been experienced or very experienced jumpers.
The blame is often put with new or unprepared jumpers but perhaps the real issue is the inherent risk of the particular activity.

I'm aware of that, I was getting at the fact that having seen the video there was a rush of people there to re-create it. There is a difference between being experienced and being appropriately experienced / pushing too far.

There were a few points in my post so perhaps it wasn't clear but I'm not trying to say the problem is only or mainly new jumpers.

I didn't mean to take just one point you made out if context.
Each year as the incidents toll increase, there is always the same calls for these new, inexperienced you tube wannabes to stop ruining the sport for everyone, and I have no doubt such jumpers exist, I have met my share.
The point is that the facts are not backing that statement up, it's the experienced that need to take a look at themselves and the type of risk they taking in an honest way, It can be reassuring to think that it's the inexperienced that are most at risk but the facts don't support that.

Little is known about incidents that occur after the jumper has left the exit point successfully, the high glide but ultimately low airspeed flight characteristic of modern suits I think may be creating issues that's did not exist when the suits all had to be flown over steep terrain with lots of airspeed.

I like how you guys are picking it apart

But I am going to throw something out there


Yes experienced Wingsuit pilots (meaning 200-400 Wingsuit base ) are dying.

But these guys just because there experienced Wingsuit pilots

THey are not Experienced Wingsuit proxy flying
This takes more then there previous experience to get up to speed

Remember that my friends

There is a different between experienced Wingsuit base

And experienced Wingsuit proxy base

And also between experienced BASE.

I think a lot of us are tempted to try to start at the top of a new field, simply because we are near the top of our old one.

BASE to Wingsuit BASE to Proximity Flight should be treated as a transition from one field to another.

When making such a transition, we must remember that we are now beginners again.

Lots of good points here, I guess i'll throw my two cents in.

I don't think it's the experienced or inexperienced dying that are going to have the greatest impact on the future of legal sites. It's all the other shit, like littering, being unprepared, dayblazing, jumping in less then ideal conditions, illegal sites on youtube and other things that go on on a daily basis. Even many of the experienced jumpers have forgotten the basic ethics of jumping non legal sites. How can we expect the newbies, many of which lack a mentor at all and PAID for an FJC (another major problem in my opinion) to follow the ethics that many of the most visible jumpers in the sport can't even follow.

And back to the paid First jump course. I don't know for sure but I would guess that most of the people attending first jump courses do so because they lack a mentor or experienced jumper to jump with, or those jumpers that they do know are off on some adventure. So they turn to paid courses, many of which I am sure are very good courses, taught by good instructors. But then they are set loose on the world and back to the original problem. NO guidance except for what they see on YOUTUBE from the experienced role models of the community.

I'm guilty of it too, I have posted video against the ethics, why should I miss out on the chance to blow my own horn and show off to the world when everyone around me has already posted it? We are all rockstars and should be sponsored right? And so the snow balls...

A big +1!

I thought about bringing up this topic a few weeks ago when the toll was adding up quick. I didn't because I am not a BASE jumper, and didn't want to come off as preachy.

Basically all valid points made by all parties on two main issues:
1) Ethics- As someone who got involved with skydiving with a long term goal of wingsuit BASE, I was inspired by a popular YouTube vid. I can see how so many others would want to take part for a host of reasons.... only a few being what I consider "right". Now with the popularity exploding, you have a bunch of wannabes messing things up for the sake of being cool, until the next hot trend comes around. With that kind of attention span, you can't expect these people to spend the time to read and research stuff like proper ethics, simple basics, or at the very least the amazing history behind what they're doing.

2) Limits- On the flip side, you have experienced jumpers looking for the next rush. Not a bad thing at all when the setting matches the experience level. As mentioned before, we are who we are, and not much is likely to change when it comes to taking a risk.

Both of these issues have the potential to make the future of BASE sketchy. IMHO the top name guys could do a lot by shedding some light on things like respect, ethics, and the necessary experience in some of the amazing vids that are being made. Also, there is nowhere else to go with getting insanely close to mountains.... It's like a low pull contest.... the best you can do is tie. I now find myself more impressed with the quality of the lines being flown, then how close people are getting.

I can only hope that everyone will take at least a few extra seconds to think about what they are about to engage in and think of all the various outcomes and their consequences. Stay safe and have a blast... I hope to jump with some of you one day!

Just after reading this thread I then saw this advertisement on base jumper. Seems to me there are a few things being discussed here which look familiar in this add.

Add :
"Red and black - built for 189cm and 90kg - Doesn't suit my flying style, going back to Phoenix Fly Suits. Perfect condition, done less than 20 base jumps, no skydives. Please just email me"

No skydives on the new suit, it doesn't suit his flying style but yet the picture on the add was a wingsuit proxy flight?