AP story in Houston Chronicle

[wmw999 2,570]

I'm not a BASE jumper, but saw this yesterday and thought you guys might be interested. Since the site requires signing in after the first day, I just copied and pasted the text. here is the link. The story is credited to John Miller of the AP
Doesn't look bad at all, to me at least.

Quote

TWIN FALLS, IDAHO - The woman ran inside the visitor center at the edge of this southern Idaho town, hollering as if the building were burning.

"He jumped," she shouted, pointing to the Perrine Bridge stretching 1,500 feet across the 486-foot-deep Snake River Gorge. "Someone jumped off."

Perrie Freestone, a gift shop volunteer, told her what he tells everybody: "They do it all the time."

The Perrine Bridge is the only one in the United States where BASE jumpers -- the acronym stands for buildings, antennae, spans and the earth -- can fling themselves legally into the ether 365 days a year without a permit, trusting that their parachutes will open quickly enough to save them.

Twin Falls has embraced the sport, partly because it brings tourist dollars to local hotels and restaurants and partly because it helps the community transcend its image as a sleepy agricultural hub.

And Idaho's western ethos dictates you can pretty much do what you want here -- even though two Perrine Bridge BASE jumpers have been killed since 2002.

There are up to 40,000 BASE jumps annually worldwide, by as few as 1,500 active jumpers, says Martin Tilley, owner of Asylum Designs, a small Auburn, Calif., company that makes equipment for BASE jumping.

BASE JUMPING
Intrigued by the idea of BASE jumping? Consider these resources:

• Introduction and general information: www.blincmagazine.com, www.vertical-visions.com and www.basejumper.org (based in Britain).

• Twin Falls, Idaho: www.tfid.org, www.southernidaho.org/lifestyle and www.visitid.org.

-- CHRONICLE NEWS SERVICES
About 5,000 jumps a year happen at Perrine Bridge, making Twin Falls the most frequently jumped site on the planet.

Elsewhere in the United States, jumpers often face arrest. National Park Service rules forbid BASE jumping, including from the monoliths of Yosemite National Park. An 876-foot bridge over West Virginia's New River Gorge is open just once a year.

On Memorial Day, more than 70 Irish, Italian, Belgian, Canadian, South African, Japanese and American jumpers gathered at the Perrine Bridge. Among them were Ludo Smets and Gino Verschueren from Leuven, Belgium. One reason to jump here, they say, is they don't have to flee authorities once they land.

"When I do an illegal jump, 80 percent of my stress is from the possibility of getting busted by police, and 20 percent is from the jump," said Smets, 54, on his second visit to Twin Falls.

Before jumping, Smets and Verschueren ate bacon and eggs at a Perkins Restaurant, where a photo of a BASE jumper hangs behind the cash register.

"It probably makes up about a third of my business," said Don Mays, who runs tour boats on the river and transports jumpers for about $6 from the landing zone -- a meadow on the Snake River's southern bank -- to a park downstream.

As traffic on U.S. 93 rumbles past, jumpers first must scale a guard rail that designers of the 30-year-old bridge had meant to keep pedestrians from plunging to their deaths.

They step onto an 18-inch-wide plank, then leap off for a 3-second free fall before throwing a small "pilot chute" into the air. That yanks a larger canopy from a sack on the jumper's back. The glide lasts all of 15 seconds.

BASE jumping here began in the 1980s. Two decades later, its growing popularity is drawing a community of jumpers to Twin Falls to live.

Tom Aiello, a 33-year-old with more than 600 jumps, came last year from Birmingham, Ala. "In order to BASE jump, you need to have some kind of canopy experience," said Aiello, who knows the consequences of an unlucky jump: He had 12 surgeries following a September 2000 accident at the Perrine Bridge when his chute opened just before he slammed into the river.

The sport worldwide has claimed at least 88 lives since 1981, according to the World BASE Fatality List Web site (www.basefatalities.info). Two were in Twin Falls. In both cases, the parachute failed.

"We've never had any litigation," says Twin Falls County Sheriff Gary Raney, arguing new laws wouldn't stop BASE jumping; it would merely drive it underground.

On a recent midweek morning, Smets made six jumps before a steady wind began blowing from upriver, forcing him to walk back to the parking lot like a surfer without waves.

"We are not daredevils," Smets said. "You can push the envelope, but you know when to say 'no.' "

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[brits17 0]

Cut it out of the paper on Sunday... very cool article

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