PD Editorial: A deadly competition in extremism

Maybe it’s time to stop referring to BASE jumping as a sport.

A stunt? A gamble? A temporary act of insanity? We wouldn’t argue with any of those descriptions. But we do argue with the tacit cultural acceptance - to the point of commercial sponsorship - of BASE jumping as a recreational activity, as if all one needs to do is watch a few videos, attach a GoPro and go.

Not so. If the dangers of BASE weren’t evident enough before, they should be now, after two jumpers, dressed in wingsuits, met their demise after leaping from a cliff in Yosemite National Park. Friends say Dean Potter, 43, and Graham Hunt, 29, were both experienced at “flying” in wingsuits. Roughly 15 seconds after jumping from some 3,500 feet above the valley floor Saturday, they were trying to zoom through a notch in a ridgeline when something went horribly wrong, and they both slammed into a rocky outcropping and were killed.

This happened less than two weeks after a 73-year-old BASE jumper from California planned a different kind of a stunt. He was going to leap from the Perrine Bridge spanning the Snake River canyon outside Twin Falls, Idaho and then surprise onlookers by setting his parachute ablaze. His plan apparently called for ditching the burning chute and deploying a second. But it didn’t happen. Instead James E. Hickey of Claremont, plunged to his death.

These are not isolated cases for this sport. They’re not even isolated cases for that bridge. On March 9, a 32-year-old man from Vancouver, B.C. perished while BASE jumping at the site. His parachute didn’t open properly. A week later, a 26-year-old woman from Big Bear had to be rescued when her parachute became tangled in the bridge’s support structure and she was left dangling for 30 minutes.

Likewise the deaths of Potter and Hunt are not the first in national parks, where BASE jumping (which stands for the four types of fixed objects from which one can jump: building, antenna, span and Earth) is illegal, as it is in many areas. In all, five people have now died in BASE jumping accidents in national parks since January 2014.

And yet BASE jumping continues to grow in popularity, sometimes attracting lucrative sponsorships from companies including GoPro.

What of those who have to risk their lives to come to the rescue when something goes wrong or a recovery is required? If anyone deserves sponsors, it’s them.

There is a high cost for such stunts. Perhaps the greatest is the pressure to push the envelope of extremism. Videos of “flying” in a squirrel suit are not enough anymore. Now it’s burning parachutes. What’s next? The quest for the next viral video is likely to have similar deadly consequences. There is no positive outcome in this high-stakes game of risk.

Let’s at least stop calling it a sport - and put an end to making heroes of those who see 15 seconds of YouTube fame something worth dying for.

It’s not.