base428

Listen to the Yosemite NPS on my answering machine WAV file....priceless. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Good story. There is no other reason for Christmas than Christ's birth. Forget "Happy Holidays", "Holiday Trees", "End of the Year Parties".......it's CHRISTMAS! PS. Since the majority of skydivers are apparently atheists, I expect you all to be at work on Dec. 24/25 (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

I'm working on expanding our jumping window at Bridge Day from 6 hrs to 3 full days. I'm writing a proposal for the WV Department of Highways and I need the following: 1) List of legal bridges throughout the USA (I know some, but not all). Any bridges that need to remain confidential, just give me the general location - to be used for statistical purposes only). 2) List of legal bridges outside the USA (if you don't want to divulge this, at least provide the country and/or area so I can get a count). 3) Any guess on the number of jumps made at some of the more well known bridges? 4) Do any of them provide legal access via the catwalk? 5) Any special rules, concerns, weight limits, etc? My plan to expand Bridge Day made the newspapers a few months ago, and I plan to talk to many local TV stations about it soon. I've also done two live radio talk shows about it, and another jumper has discussed it with our new governor. Things are looking pretty good so far, but all it takes is one guy to stop progress. Please send emails to jbell@vertical-visions.com rather than through dz.com. Many thanks for your help. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

There IS a lot happening behind the scenes from the ABP (Alliance of Backcountry Parachutists) in regards to legal jumping in National Parks. The ABP has just been somewhat silent on this forum over the last 3-4 months. I'm sure we'll divulge more soon enough. Maybe Gardner wants to give everyone an overview? As for the "rope jumps" performed in Yosemite, I read that the NPS was not happy with them and they were looking for a way to shut them down as well. Typical. Cya. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

I'm talking to the Dept. of Highways right now and am nearly finished with a proposal. More info will be divulged soon enough. PS. Bridge Day will be on live local TV again next year - and perhaps on National TV again as well! (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Here are the articles.....although this probably won't be a surprise to BASE jumpers (PDF's are attached for your archives) Breaking Law Is No Walk in Park Some Yosemite visitors and workers say rangers can be overzealous in enforcing rules. Officials say their good deeds far exceed any lapses. By Julie Cart Times Staff Writer December 13, 2004 ---------------------- YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK — The evening had begun so well. After wine and dinner at the elegant Ahwahnee Hotel last year, Australian tourists Margaret and Andre Vischer stepped into the frigid High Sierra night and into their rental car. As they drove through the first dark intersection, neither of them noticed the park ranger's vehicle. Andre, 58, recalled seeing a stop sign and lightly touching the brakes but not coming to a full stop. After they were pulled over by the rangers, Vischer said he told them about the bottle of wine he and his wife had shared during their four-hour dinner. Both Vischers were given Breathalyzer tests. Andre's blood alcohol registered .08, the minimum at which a person is considered legally drunk. Margaret tested at .06. Andre was frisked, handcuffed, read his rights and taken away by two rangers. Another ranger drove the couple's rental car while Margaret remained at the side of the road where a male ranger frisked her, handcuffed her and took her to Yosemite's small jail to spend the night. There, she was fingerprinted, photographed, questioned and told to strip, shower and put on an orange jumpsuit. When Margaret asked why she was being jailed even though her blood-alcohol level was under the legal limit and she was not driving, she said rangers told her they considered her a danger to herself and others. The next day she was released without being charged. The couple spent Margaret's 60th birthday a few days later at the park's federal courthouse, where Andre pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and paid a $2,500 fine. "The whole thing was totally intimidating and humiliating and totally unnecessary," Margaret Vischer said in a recent telephone interview from the couple's home in Sydney. Cam Sholly, Yosemite's deputy chief ranger, said the decision to arrest Margaret Vischer was discretionary. "This was a fine line between taking someone into custody for their own safety and releasing someone whose judgment is impaired to a degree that they could be a danger to themselves," he said. But Margaret Vischer's story has a familiar ring to other visitors, employees and defense attorneys with similar accounts of alleged overzealous policing in a place where people come to relax and expect to be treated like guests. Most of the people who have questioned the conduct of park rangers acknowledged doing something out of line. Nonetheless, they contend that the treatment by park rangers was out of proportion to the minor infractions they committed and out of place in a national park. Beth Shilliday, a 35-year-old assignment editor for KTLA-TV Channel 5 in Los Angeles, said she was treated for a concussion and bruises after rangers threw her to the ground while arresting her on suspicion of drunk driving and possession of a small amount of marijuana. Her car and others were stopped during a search for a missing child in August. Park officials told The Times, which like KTLA-TV is owned by the Tribune Co., that Shilliday was intoxicated and uncooperative, and whatever injuries she suffered she caused herself. Shilliday has pleaded not guilty and her case is pending in Yosemite's federal court. Meanwhile, the park has launched an internal investigation into the rangers' behavior. Leah Sesto, an 18-year-old clerk in the park in 2000, said she was dragged out of bed by rangers and arrested on suspicion of being drunk a few hours after friends had escorted her to her room. "It was the first time I'd ever had anything to drink," said Sesto, who described herself as "a goody-goody church kid." She pleaded guilty to being under the influence of alcohol. Interviewed at the park, Yosemite Supt. Mike Tollefson vigorously defended his rangers, saying their daily unheralded efforts to save lives and keep the park and visitors safe far outstrip occasional judgment errors. "I would adamantly disagree that there is a zero tolerance policy in this park," Tollefson said. "We certainly have problems periodically. Of the complaints we get, law enforcement is the minority, but we take those the most seriously." Despite its bucolic setting amid towering granite walls and waterfalls, Yosemite National Park is subject to the same social ills that police contend with elsewhere. In the mid-1980s, a report from the Interior Department's inspector general found a prostitution ring operating at the Ahwahnee Hotel and estimated that 85% of the park's commercial workforce used illegal drugs. Five years ago, three tourists and a nature guide were slain just outside the park. In October, a manhunt for another multiple killer led to a remote section of the park where the suspect started a 2,000-acre fire before fatally shooting himself. "If you let your guard down, we might lose a ranger here in Yosemite. I don't want that to happen," Sholly said. Today, 50 full-time rangers are responsible for enforcing the law in the 1,200-square-mile park. They deal with assaults, thefts, arson, illegal hunting and vandalism. Park officials said there have been more than 4,600 citations this year and 306 arrests, higher than last year's tally but well below the record high of 846 arrests in 1992. Tollefson said he stresses the importance of getting out of patrol cars and interacting more with visitors. "Our job here is to educate and to articulate why the park is important," he said. Yet much of the criticism of law enforcement practices in the park centers on the way rangers respond to people who question why they're being stopped. "One of the things I see as a pattern is people being arrested for mouthing off to rangers," said Carrie Leonetti, an assistant federal public defender who represents people arrested in the park. "Time and time again I have clients tell me that they are arrested for asking questions such as, 'Am I being detained?' " John Reynolds, former director of the Park Service's Western region, which includes Yosemite, said in a recent interview that the park has long had a reputation for no-nonsense policing. "Yosemite was upsetting from a number of points of view," said Reynolds, who resigned in 2000. "There was a fair amount of concern — unsubstantiated concern — at the regional office level." Employees of the park's concessionaire say rangers shadow them waiting for the slightest infraction and talk about "sleeping with one eye open." Climbers who gather here to scale the park's famous granite walls joke about "getting tooled in the Valley." Tollefson acknowledged there have been conflicts with climbers, whom he said "are at the edge in a variety of ways." A chat room on a website for park rangers offers a different take on those relations. "Search the pack and get the drugs," reads one anonymous entry. "Who cares if you have consent. No one is going to believe a Deadhead over a Ranger. Worthless scumbag deserves what he gets." Drugs and alcohol figure into many arrests in the park, said Sholly, pointing out that there are as many as 20 establishments in Yosemite where alcohol is served or sold at various times of year. He said rangers would be derelict if they were not on the lookout for drunk drivers, given the park's winding roads, distracting scenery and wandering wildlife. Yet critics contend that rangers, at times, can pose the greatest threat. Don Squires, an Alameda County Superior Court judge, said he witnessed such an incident in the summer of 2000. According to Squires and official reports, a group of British soldiers was drinking beer at a crowded outdoor cafe in Yosemite Valley. The young men were singing raucously, Squires said, but he and his wife, who were chaperoning several young children, saw nothing but bonhomie on a "lovely afternoon." However, after a patron complained that one of the soldiers "mooned" someone in the crowd, Squires said rangers quickly intervened, hogtying and striking one of the soldiers as they dragged him off the deck. "It was an excessive use of force and an outrageous abuse of authority," Squires said. "I was stone-cold sober just a few feet away with an uninterrupted view, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was a terrible thing for kids to see." The soldier pleaded guilty to being under the influence of alcohol, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. It's not always visitors who run afoul of Yosemite rangers. Park workers complain they have been charged with public drunkenness simply for drinking a beer on the front steps of employee dormitories or as they walked from their rooms to nearby bathrooms. One young woman was stopped after leaving a party in July and charged with "internal possession' of alcohol," a reference to the contents of her stomach. The charge was dismissed. Stories like that abound in the valley, said Greg Johnson, vice president of the local Service Employees International Union, which represents concessions employees in the park. Tollefson disagreed. "I don't think we have rangers hiding in the bushes waiting for concessions employees to do something wrong," the park superintendent said. Yet some employees say fear of harassment causes them to live outside the park, entailing longer commutes and higher rents. "I moved away from my home of eight years because of it," said Bryan Kay, 33, who lived and worked in the valley and volunteered on the park's search and rescue team. "I packed my bags. I said, 'I'm moving to America.' Now I commute an hour and a half to my job." #################################### #################################### The Role of Rangers in Yosemite Park December 18, 2004 I was taken aback by the Dec. 13 article, "Breaking Law Is No Walk in Park," which suggested that Yosemite National Park rangers were overzealous in enforcing rules. I am sorry that some visitors to Yosemite have had negative experiences with park rangers and glad that the instances are being investigated. However, I feel strongly that the article misrepresents the behavior of Yosemite's rangers as a whole. For more than three years I worked in Yosemite National Park as an interpretive ranger. Although my main job was to teach about the park, I often worked with or around law enforcement officers. Continually, I was struck by how much law enforcement they did through education. I saw them in the backcountry, explaining how to camp with the least impact to the resource, and in the "frontcountry," explaining how to keep black bears wild. I even saw them on the road, explaining how a speed limit is there for both public safety and for wildlife. The law enforcement rangers did this constantly despite having to deal with the full spectrum of urban crime, despite being overworked and understaffed, and even though it was supposed to be their weekend. In short, they were dedicated to educating the public. Caroline Deppe Los Angeles * As an former park employee, I applaud this article on the "overzealous policing" by the National Park Service law enforcement. I lived in the park for four years, maintaining an excellent work status with not a spot on my criminal record. That was until I was arrested for walking home under the influence of alcohol. My frustration isn't only centered on the rangers, but also on the federal prosecutors who vehemently push decent people into criminal status. Given a zero tolerance probation, I found myself being harassed at work and in my residence. Rangers would even patrol outside my window. Are these "their daily unheralded efforts to save lives and keep the park and visitors safe" that Yosemite Supt. Mike Tollefson speaks of? The collusion between rangers and prosecutors turn any minute infraction into a criminal situation, which the average employee can't fight in court. I encourage everyone who has been railroaded by rangers and prosecutors to write to Tollefson and help him see what's really going on. Joel Bisson Mammoth Lakes (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

This guy should be teaching PLF classes......the video loads automatically, so be patient. Backflip Off 25 ft. Building (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Ahh.....the secret of Mr. Eric Ryde. What an interesting story. "Eric" was the mystery jumper that the NPS has photos of (but never caught) when they busted/rescued the Half Dome jumper. They developed his film and found the infamous Eric Ryde on some of the photos. I made many jumps with "Eric" in the mid-90's, but have no clue to where he is today. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Snag factor (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

I think we all go through phases in our jumping careers. When I first started jumping, I thought I was invincible. I had a good head on my shoulders, and I was convinced I would never get injured. BASE jump #193 proved me wrong with a broken ankle at Bridge Day 1997. After that, I guess I respected the sport more, and realized that it's not if, but when you get hurt. Even the best get all busted up. If you haven't gotten hurt yet, you're just plain lucky. Over the years, you try aerials or shoot a ton of video. After you've gotten pretty good at those skills, you go back to flat and stable (sans camera) and enjoy the groundrush. Geez, nobody goes flat and stable anymore! Then, a bunch of your good friends die and you ask yourself if it's really worth it. Add a wife or child into the equation and it gets even tougher to figure out. But in the long run, it is always worth it. I still get scared on each jump - probably more than ever now that I know all the crazy things that have happened to other jumpers and the different ways I can die. I'll always be a BASE jumper - and I'll always be BASE jumping.....even when they have to roll my wheelchair off the exit ramp at Bridge Day 40 years from now. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

It would be nice to be able to download it, without having to login. Especially since my old username and password don't work anymore. Maybe that's why I don't go to blinc anymore? Can someone post it here? (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Yo Pope....too much late night video editing? Read my last post - Donk won 2nd place in 2003, Jay Epstein in 2004. CYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Let's not get confused. In his original post, Skylark listed the 2003 BASE Videofest winners. Triax won the 2004 BASE Videofest with their Continuum 2 entry. Cya. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

As far as I know, 2nd and 3rd place tapes are not sold to the public. Do a search for screennames "Donk" and "JohnnyUtah" if you want to contact them. I'm not sure about Bertrand's tape. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Stay tuned. I can't divulge what's going on, but you'll know exactly what the outcome is by the end of the year. Currently, I'm submitting a proposal to the Dept. of Highways for extending BD. The DOH has been pretty cool with the idea so far. The Bridge Day Commission, for some reason, claims that jumping outside of the normal 6 hour Bridge Day window is not something they can control or govern. So they've sent us to the appropriate agencies to submit proposals and such. So far, so good. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

While I can appreciate the idea that Skydiving Magazine should filter out the fluff in their magazine, does anyone really believe that they have the time to investigate each and every ad? Probably not gonna happen. What would Skydiving Magazine base their decision on anyway - dropzone.com threads? Maybe if everyone put as much time into gaining legal access to NPS cliffs as they've put into this (and similar) threads, then we'd be making some progress. PS. How ya been, Rhonda? Hope all is well. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

A few years ago, there was a jumper who had to pay for damages he didn't cause to a tower after he got busted. If you get an evil tower owner, they'll pin anything on ya. It's the price we pay, I guess. You can always buy your gear back at the annual Hazard County Police auction! (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Let's analyze this..... 1) Let them keep the gear YOUR LOSS = Approximately $2000 in gear 2) Get your gear back, but with possible tresspassing, destruction of property, and other charges on your record YOUR GAIN = You get your $2000 rig back (maybe) YOUR LOSS = You now have a criminal record, you have to pay court costs and fines, you may get jail time and have to be someone's bitch, you may even have to pay for damages to the tower that the tower owners falsely claim was your fault, you could lose your job, you could not get a new job due to your criminal record, etc. I guess it depends on where you're at in life, but I'd let them keep the rig. Good luck. If they let you make a call from jail, be sure to call me first. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

I vote against the multi itself. I still fail to see the overall advantages of the multi, which appears to be partly to blame here. Too many looped catch points, extra rubber bands and packing procedures, etc. Old Multi Post (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Too bad Mr. BASE Ethics has to hide behind an anonymous email. I tell it like it is, with no hiding behind false screen names or email addresses. PS. John Vincent day blazed a building in Atlanta, I believe, and was later tarred and feathered because of it. The locals had the building dialed in for nighttime jumps, and John's daytime jump burned the building, and got somebody fired over it. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Does anyone know the MAIN reason for not jumping off the rail? MOTORISTS DRIVING BY CAN EASILY SEE YOU ON THE RAIL - RESULTING IN MORE TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS FOR THE RUBBERNECKERS, OR MORE 911 SUICIDE CALLS. PS. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone. Cya. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Certain people involved in the ground launched parachute world are currently talking to the NPS about flying in specific NP's. We're doing the same thing with BASE - sending letters, talking to superintendents with jumpable NP's. As for deploying your round ballistic parachute from a hang glider, that would be considered an "emergency", which is an exception to the aerial delivery rule. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Ground Launching (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.

Hey Canuck, What I'm referring to is a GOOD thing. I heard Jim is talking to some NP's about flying there. Ground launching is complimentary to BASE, and vice versa. Sooner or later, we'll be flying or jumping in NP's. Lot's of stuff is going on in our fight to parachute in NP's. (c)2010 Vertical Visions. No unauthorized duplication permitted.