Not humor, but painful and sad irony:
dailynews.yahoo.com
Parachutist Dies in Protest Jump
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) - A 60-year-old parachutist plunged to her death when her chute failed to open while
jumping off El Capitan Friday during a protest of park rules banning such jumps.
Jan Davis was the fourth of five jumpers off Yosemite's most forbidding peak, a protest organized in response to the June 9
death of a jumper who successfully parachuted off El Capitan, only to drown in the river below while trying to flee rangers.
``The first three were beautiful. And then she jumped. Everybody thought it was OK, and then people said 'Open up! Open
up!' Then we heard a splat and the whole place turned quiet,' said Paul Sakuma, an Associated Press photographer.
The protest was meant to demonstrate that such jumps can be made safely.
Davis, of Santa Barbara, Calif., fell to the base of the 3,200-foot El Capitan and park rangers quickly cordoned off the area.
Davis' husband, photographer Tom Sanders, who was among the spectators, slumped onto his camera after she fell.
The danger of the extreme sport of jumping off cliffs, buildings and other stationary objects led the National Park Service to
ban such jumps. Nationwide, an estimated 21 people have died jumping this way in the last 20 years.
Called BASE jumping, the acronym comes from ``Building, Antenna, Span, Earth.'
BASE jumping was legal in the park for a trial period in 1980, but restrictions on when people could jump and the number of
jumps per day were routinely violated, so the activity was banned.
In the past, rangers have arrested anyone they catch jumping off El Capitan and other cliffs in the park, seized their equipment
and put them in the local jail.
Both sides have tried to reach an accommodation after rangers who staked out a landing area on an informant's tip tried to
capture Frank Gambalie III on June 9. Gambalie, 28, tried to flee, and drowned in the runoff-swollen Merced River.
Friday, Gambalie's mother joined about 150 people, including the five jumpers' families and friends, in what was supposed to
be a carefully staged demonstration.
Park officials had allowed the protest to go forward.
``They agreed ahead of time to land in a designated area, allow themselves to be arrested, forfeit their equipment. We give
them a citation for illegal air delivery and the U.S. magistrate sets the fine, traditionally about $2,000, said Scott Gediman, a
spokesman for the park. |
