Basejumper.com - archive

http://news.sky.com/...-oz-a-beautiful-soul

I wonder if I were to die in a car accident would the headline be "BASE Jumper Dies in Utah" to evoke everyone's knee jerk reaction of judgement towards a sport they know nothing about?

Fly free Gareth sorry you had to be part of some sensationalized media campaign.

http://www.news.com.au/...cynjr2-1227148730697

Unfortunately we have lost another close friend. Considering the tragedy we are all feeling, this article does him a lot of justice. Who else does gainers off Via? GJones! Live on forever in our hearts and minds my friend. x

From the link above (no idea if it's accurate reporting):

"Police said he had not been BASE jumping at the time of his death and appears to have slipped and fell after climbing the fence at the cliff’s edge"

I totally agree. All the articles I've read have been relatively positive I thought... Such a legend.

I'll miss that kid. We were suppose to have a vegas style visa wedding... But alas...

That's correct. He was not jumping at the time.

hey bro, that's a huge bummer. big hugs to you guys.

BSBD

Sorry for your loss :-(
But the article is shit, it's just random quotes and info all taken from Facebook. Reporters are to lazy to do research, they just go to Facebook and write a whole article out of it

However sad this is. It is not a base fatality. So another place on the forum?

This is a forum for "incidents". It will not go on the BFL, but it is a base related "incident".

Fly free buddy. Heaps On!!

*************


Never mind....

Maybe it's BASE-related.

Did he fall because he was too casual near the edge even without a rig? That counts as BASE-related in the sense that normal "fall-off-the-edge fear" is muted in people who routinely jump off the edges that scare most people into staying farther back... and the lesson learned is to remember that you're not wearing a rig when you're messing around near an edge -- and remember that barriers and fences at edges are good guides if you are not wearing a rig.

I think it would be useful to hear from his friends about what led up to his fall. If at least one of them saw the whole thing, then we would have a better idea if his daring lifestyle contributed to his fall or if it was just one of those random "edge mistakes" that get made every year all over the world to people who do not BASE jump and whose fear of falling from high places is not muted by BASE experience.

If it's the former, no harm in leaving it here; if it's the latter, then I concur with 570 that it's a better fit for the BSBD forum.

44

Robin. Don't take it personal. But seriously... sometimes you need to drink a cup of STFU. I'm not going to go into the semantics of your ridiculous post. It seems like you only post on fatalities pointing fingers and " i told you so's "

Jesus fucking christ, please go away!

He fell of a cliff. Shit happens...

Rest in peace bro, it was fun jumping with you! See you on the other side some day!

+1
some people just have something to say about everything.

RIP

First off, your information processing principles seem to be a bit... uncertain, shall we say? Whatever semantics or finger pointing you "see" in my post are hallucinations conjured out of the thin air between your ears, not anything I declaratively wrote or in any way implied.

Second, I did drink a cup of STFU:

Speak
Truth
Forthrightly
Unequivocally

But you don't want the truth because you can't handle the truth.

You may now go back to your regularly scheduled nose picking.

44

Old man, you are irrelevant. Keep your briefs, I prefer commando

Give it up mate. You're like that old cunt at the drop zone no one likes with all the 'back in my day' and 'tried to tell him' stories. You are that guy. No one here wants your opinion anymore. Take the hint.

As for the incident, I have the first hand information, but it's not really appropriate to have it in the public domain. All it is is finer details of how he slipped. And with people like Mr Know-it-all asshole lurking around waiting for scraps, there's no need to elaborate really. A tragic accident.

Big dreams brother.

Commando diapers? Like Depends but in camo, yes?

As for relevancy, if I actually was irrelevant, none of you twinkies would respond to my posts, wouldja kid?

Especially a post that spoke not about the incident per se but in administrative terms in answer to comments about whether the non-jumping death of a BASE jumper deserved to be listed in the Incidents forum.

That such a minor admin sidebar to this main thread would incite you kids to such foaming-at-the-mouth fury is a bit amusing but mostly just tedious because it's not only just boilerplate bitch-babbling, it disrespects the memory of the person whose death precipitated this thread.

44

Meth?

Says the man who constantly high jacks incident thread in an effort to seem relevant.

I know you've been told this before, but if you could keep your bullshit concise it would improve the readability of the thread....and maybe people could ACTUALLY identify the point you think you're trying to make....maybe.

That could be why they act like this... don't know any of them personally though so I can't say for sure.

44

says the freckle without the knackers to use his real name.

But I digress. High jacks are male mules under the influence; hijacks are are events where people such as yourself and the other drongos go off-topic when I make a comment relevant to the thread.

44

The circumstances surrounding this incident are not clear to me, so I am going to leave the thread here.

The discussion has lost most of it's value, though, so I'm going to lock the thread.

I've unlocked this because a jumper with more information has offered to share it here. Let's please keep this discussion on track.

From first hand info, Gareth was with another friend who observed him attempting to climb down to a smaller ledge approx 1m below the main cliff edge. This ledge is approx 2x1.5m There was a spot to place your feet half way down and it was here that he has lost footing, fallen on to the smaller, slightly sloping ledge, on his side and failed to halt his fall. He came to a rest on boulders below. He was found deceased minutes later. He would have passed instantly. Gareth was not wearing shoes and he did not have his rig. Can we please keep speculation and should have/have nots to a minimum. We've spoken about this with people who were there and it seems like a simple and tragic accident.

BSBD

I don't think many people fully realize the tenacity and douchbagness of the Australian news media...if they did they probably wouldn't be demanding details in public...

I don't fully understand certain peoples morbid obsession with death in this sport. the original post was more than enough of a description...prying into someones shit for no valid reason is not cool.

Which is why I waited to elaborate further. The above information was for people who knew him who, like me, would like to know what happened to eliminate any rumours which may have been circulating.

Thanks for posting . Sad loss of happy life....
The morbid death thing is about staying alive !
Thankfully we have true long term survivors as contributors to this incident forum. They help keep people alive with their unique outlook.

It was a simple and tragic preventable accident because that normal "fall-off-the-edge fear" was muted in Gareth or he wouldn't have done it without pro... he would have roped up or worn a rig like a normal person.

The lesson? Remember that you're just another whuffo if you're not wearing a rig when you're messing around near an edge. Then either wear your rig, rope up -- or back off and let yourself be guided by barriers and fences at those edges, you know, like the whuffos.

Thanks for the report, BigfcknG. Condolences to all Gareth's friends and family.


44

And yet another useless post by the infamous robinheid. Why dont you just go away, nobody wants to read your shit.

All this hate, i think he makes some good points, he could however express himself in a better way in these cases but not all of us are that good with feelings or words.

Sorry for hi-jack.

It is true that verbosity has a somewhat bad name, and is often abhorred by some of the most notable literary luminaries, however I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you.

I'll concede that Shakespeare had a point when in Hamlet, he eloquently argued that "brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes," and I will also admit that that Mark Twain is likely not entirely out to lunch, so to speak, when he rather satisfactorily demonstrates his well-conceived distaste for unnecessary, superfluous adjectives in the following sentences of writing advice which are so clearly carefully constructed with the utmost concern for his craft:

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice”

However the point your are missing, here, is that BASE Jumping is simply an entirely distinct and different discipline from the sort of literature that concerns Twain and Shakespeare. BASE jumping is a discipline wherein the consequences of irrational and irresponsible behavior are death or severe injury rather than simply the injustice an unpublished tome collecting dust in the deepest crevasses of some aspirant's writing room. Therefore, I posit to you, that we must - in the most dire of senses - utilize every imaginable resource to convey safety information which, I hope I don't have to remind anyone, was acquired through the tears, sweat and often blood of your predecessors (An illustrious grouping of individuals which I humbly consider myself to be a part of).

Therefore since BASE Jumping is essentially nothing more than a constant effort to narrow down every possible avenue of safety procedures and best practices, I propose that we should take a similar approach with our prose as we attempt to disseminate those hard-earned findings throughout the greater BASE jumping community.

The logic, I think, is rather simple: I think we can agree the one of the foremost utilities of words, particularly in this case, is to narrow down and specify ideas in our efforts to distinguish which ideas have intrinsic value to the human endeavor.

I see this self evident fact as analogous to aviation safety. In the same way that we attempt to narrow down and specify best safety practices with larger quantities of discerning testing, larger quantities of carefully considered theory, and larger quantities of high quality experience, we should use the full potential of words to elucidate exactly what those best safety practices and approaches are, and in this case I propose that in a similar vein, the noble venture of increasing safety could be best served by using absolutely massive, astonishing, almost cosmic levels of words, even if it requires that we spend most of our time at work on basejumper.com having these sorts of discussions.

Each word used chips away at the mountain of uncertainty that is an unfortunate presence in any aviation related pursuit, and therefore we must use as many as we possibly can; we don't have time for the overly aesthetic concerns of the likes of Shakespeare and Twain. It is simply too important for that because lives are on the line.

So Shakespeare, Mr. Clemens, despite your formidable literary reputations I respectfully disagree and urge everyone to ignore Kadde's advice and both write the longest posts imaginable and get better with feelings and words in order to more fully glean benefits from their overuse.

I'm sorry to call you out on this, Kadde, but I feel so strongly about this that I simply have to speak up and correct your ghastly errors. Because as the psoriasis lesion often says in such situations: look who's wearing the proverbial pink tutu now.

44 - 2

Yawn , go away you un-sufferable bore.

Can you lock this again?

Why? there is so much more wisdom that you haven't heard yet.