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elcapitan

My name is Tina Schubert Lindebaum

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and I'm looking for "Mikkey" or someone who knew Carl Boenish who can direct his wife and/or family to contact me or my dad. My dad is Brian Schubert, who in 1966 was, what I just learned, the pioneer of BASE jumping when he WAS THE FIRST to jump off of El Capitan (note: this was the only "BASE" jump my father ever did - he was a young, crazy kid, skydiver and former paratrooper who wanted to try something daring and note: this was before BASE diving actually had a name). I just found out how much of an influence my dad was in Carl's life/career and I forwarded the info to my dad (who is internet-challenged!). My dad and I would very much like to contact Carl's family - I'm only saddened and deeply sorry that I didn't find out about Carl and his history while he was alive.

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The best way to find Jean today is probably by contacting the USBA (the organization Carl founded, which awards BASE numbers). Contact info for Rick Harrison, current head of the USBA can be found in this BLiNC thread.

Note to anyone reading this: I've left the site name in for historical interest. To the best of my knowledge no one has jumped there since the NPS banned jumping back in Carl Boenish's day.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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....the best of my knowledge.....



Tom.... a man well known for his knowledge...

:P

dontbanmedontbanmedontbanmedontbanmedontbanmedontbanmedontbanmedontbanme
"If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation."
David Brent

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To the best of my knowledge no one has jumped there since the NPS banned jumping back in Carl Boenish's day.



Said with a straight face too;)

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Note to anyone reading this: I've left the site name in for historical interest. To the best of my knowledge no one has jumped there since the NPS banned jumping back in Carl Boenish's day.



Nope;)

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To the best of my knowledge no one has jumped there since the NPS banned jumping back in Carl Boenish's day.



Said with a straight face too;)



And there was me trying to be subtle about it. Tut tut gentelemen (I include you in that, Dex) :P
"If you can keep your head when all around you have lost theirs, then you probably haven't understood the seriousness of the situation."
David Brent

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If.. Mr. Schubert made a BASE jump in 1966.
Would that be the first BASE jump made off, El Capitan ?
Before NPS Ruled it an illegal Act.

If it was 1966 ? Would he be the first to ever BASE jump El Cap. ?

What are the details ?
Day, Month, kind of Gear/parachute used, free-fall delay, how was the landing ?
.

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Has anybody got any details of this yet ?
I did not think that there were any BASE jumps made between: (these dates)

1603 - Faust Vrancic / building jump
1914 - stephen Banic / bulding jump
?
> 1966 - ? - Schubert / El Capitan... ???
?
1975 - Don Boyles / Royal Gorge Bridge
1976 - Owen Quinn / World Trade center
1980 - Phil Smith, Phil Mayfield, Jean und Carl Boenish. / El Capitan

1966 is, 52 - years after the invention of the, Round Parachute in 1914
61 - years between 1914 and (don boyles) in 1975 (that's a lot of year)

It is quit possible
That there were other BASE jumps made by other " Ballsey Individuals." ;)
.

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1966 off El Cap? Very cool if it's fact. Are you saying Carl knew your dad jumped the big E in 1966?


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Has anybody got any details of this yet ?
I did not think that there were any BASE jumps made between: (these dates)

1603 - Faust Vrancic / building jump
1914 - stephen Banic / bulding jump
?
> 1966 - ? - Schubert / El Capitan... ???
?
1975 - Don Boyles / Royal Gorge Bridge
1976 - Owen Quinn / World Trade center
1980 - Phil Smith, Phil Mayfield, Jean und Carl Boenish. / El Capitan

1966 is, 52 - years after the invention of the, Round Parachute in 1914
61 - years between 1914 and (don boyles) in 1975 (that's a lot of year)

It is quit possible
That there were other BASE jumps made by other " Ballsey Individuals." ;)
.


_________________________________________________
To begin with, the round parachute was invented pretty much around 1780's for sure, in the years after the Civil war it was modified to be non-rigid, foldable, ostensibly by Thomas Baldwin but possibly by several others about the same time....


There were lots of BASE jumps made between the late 1800's and the time when Carl filmed the first El Cap jumps... There was even....

After Thomas Baldwin's parachuting displays in London in the 1880's, there was a monkey who would do parachute descents INSIDE LONDON"S ROYAL AQUARIUM (+/- 100') under the stage name of 'The Baldwin Monkey'....

There are several early BASE jumps in the archives of skydivingmovies.com, dating from the 19-teens and 20's. In 1912 a jump was made from the Statue of Liberty by Frederick Rodman Law, who also jumped a building and a bridge in New York.... Law worked for the Army as a rigger at the same airport where Irvin and the boys experimented on parachutes, before he died of cancer in the early '20's....

There are documented jumps made in (I believe) 1917 by Major Orde-Lees (of Shackleton expedition fame) and a Lt. Bowen from Tower Bridge in London to demonstrate the use of the Guardian Angel parachute and the ability of a downed airman to exit the twist and punch original harness once in the water.

I had an article in May 2002 Skydiving magazine detailing jumps made in 1908 from the Rainbow bridge in Niagara Falls (Bobby Leach), and again in 1927 by Australian Vincent Taylor. (This bridge was since replaced in a new site).

Irvin test jumper John Tranum (early '30's) made a name for himself doing high altitude AND low altitude jumps, the latter off the 154-ft Pasadena bridge. He also describes how Shorty Osbourne rode a Motorbike off the cliffs near Santa Monica and landed in hydro wires after the pilot chute caught on the bike's mudguard.... (This (attempted) jump is also available at skydivingmovies.com). Tranum later made a similar jump off a higher cliff (1000') in Colorado (I believe this may be the one at the beginning of an old Norman Kent film)....

Other then the motorcycle jumps, most of these were static-line jumps.

Then in the 50's a dentist made a well documented jump in the Alps doing several seconds of delay off a cliff. Then the two round jumpers at Yosemite in '66, and later Rick Sylvester jumped el cap on skies (1972). (He later repeated the jump somewhere on Baffin Island for a James Bond movie
(the one where Roger Moore opens up a Union Jack paracommander).

This is by no means comprehensive list, but parachutes were around long before aircraft, and for a reason.... They were originally thought of as a means of exiting burning buildings but...It was the use of balloonists as observers during the civil and crimean wars that got a bunch of people into ballooning as means of making a living, and they went on to develop parachuting to the point where airplanes came along and after that too (the last of the true 'smoke jumpers' performed up until the mid-late 60's).
If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

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1966 off El Cap? Very cool if it's fact. Are you saying Carl knew your dad jumped the big E in 1966?



I have it from very reliable sources that there were three round jumps made off the Big Stone in the 60's. Two ended with major injuries and one was a walk-away.
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Someone had the idea Jean would be upset to hear of this, not to worry . . .

Jean knows, all the old-timers know, Carl Boenish isn't the first person to jump from El Capitan, yet, I suppose it's an easy conclusion to come to. Carl wrote of these 1966 El Cap jumps later in his BASE Magazine. (And as far as I've ever heard these are the very first El Cap jumps.)

SCHOOL . . .

In fact, Carl didn't even jump on the first load he organized there in 1978. He planned and recruited the jumpers, it was his idea and all, but his first priority was to film it. He didn't jump until the second trip some weeks later. We've known about Brian Schubert, and Michael Pelkey and another jumper, for a long time and if you look at the (old) Basic Research website, the story of the 1966 jumps I wrote has been in the history section there for over ten years . . .

In 1966, everyone on the Elsinore DZ (and every other DZ) heard about these jumps when they occurred, including Carl Boenish.

Years later, in 1975, Carl is in Yosemite filming skydiving from hang gliders over the Valley. He sees square parachutes flying around and he remembers again the story from 1966. The jumps he eventually organized occurred three years later in 1978.

I call Carl, "the father of modern BASE jumping," because he brought modern gear and freefall techniques to cliff jumping, and showed through his films that these jumps were repeatable. All the fixed object jumps made throughout the world prior to Carl's jumps in 1978, and there are many, were stunt type jumps, done once and that was it. It was Carl Boenish who turned cliff jumping into something we understood as a sport, and then later, he turned that sport into BASE.

NickD :)BASE 194

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3 jumps in the 60's using rounds.

How long do you think the Delay's were then ?
How good was the Tracking Back then in the 60's ? I have a feeling the
Technique was not that good as BASE and Skydive now .

I'm not sure (what year) when the first baton pass was in skydive using tracking.
I don't think it was in the 60's ? (nick would know)

That would be a scary jump indeed. Scraping down the wall with poor
clearance. Then opening a Round Parachute......Wow:o

Gotta give them a little respect. to step up to the edge and say "I'm Going for it."

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Has anybody got any details of this yet ?
I did not think that there were any BASE jumps made between: (these dates)

1603 - Faust Vrancic / building jump



http://public.srce.hr/zuh/do1874/nv17/nv17_1.htm#17

Rough translation...

"With a four angled sail cloth tensed with a four same wooden sticks and with 4 ropes tied in angles, man can safely drop from a tower or any else high place. Even so if then wolud not be wind, the force of a droping man would create wind that will hold the cloth so man would not hit the ground hard, but softly touch down. However, humans weight must precise determine sise of the cloth..."

Sorry about spelling, I dont have time for that now.

Fun,

I.P.


PS:He (Faust Vrancic) was Croatian scientist, inventor, writer, humanist, physicist etc. and he was one of the greatest Croatian minds ever. He among other science project published first ever printed scheme of parachute in his project Homo volans (Flying man) He tested successfully his parachute from some towers in Venice and from some cliffs in Hungary.

Blue sky
I.P.

-Edited to ad "PS"


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Nick,

This is all great information. I really hope you are putting all of this into your book so that it is in one place, apposed to numerous others.

added: note that I have saved most of this post into various text files for historical value
Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

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Skypuppy :.. I hope this is not to little to late ?

Man in response to your post I did not mean to Dis it,
I never expected to see a Reply so in-depth. It overwhelmed me a little.
As a matter of fact it was so good that I did not have a Response to
throw back at you. You reply pretty much sums up my question and
fills in the gaps in the 60's and more. (you answered my question to good)
It was a History Lesson.

You post kicked ass
Sorry for being an insensitive Dick... (public apology, i'm hanging my head)
.

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>>This is all great information. I really hope you are putting all of this into your book so that it is in one place,<<

It's in there already, I wrote that section when I first started the book years ago. Tina has put me in contact with her Dad, and I'm really looking forward to talking with him. One of the problems with a BASE history book is it takes so long to get the right information.

For instance, if Tina hadn't found us, I don't know how we would have ever found her. And to this day I still hear from people updating details on fatalities (for the List) that occurred 20 years ago.

Tina tells me her Dad, who never made another fixed object jump after El Cap in 1966, had no idea what effect he had in the history of this sport. He stopped skydiving shortly after that as well, so without Tina I'm sure I would have never found him.

My big dilemma is putting the book out now, or waiting until I think I have it all right. I would have died to have gone to press, and a week later, hear from someone like Tina . . .

NickD :)BASE 194

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I wonder if posting or talking to the "old timers" (with all due respect) and getting the best consensus would be acceptable?
Leroy


..I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw my bath toys were a toaster and a radio...

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My big dilemma is putting the book out now, or waiting until I think I have it all right.



Please, please, please do it now.

No history is ever 100% correct. That' why there are later editions.

Plus, if you do it now, I can make it required reading for my course next semester. :)
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

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Hi,

My name is Mike Pelkey. Brian Schubert and I made the first El Capitan jump in recorded history on July 24, 1966. The Park Superintendent confiscated our gear and camera ewuipment and kept us in the park for three days while they checked for any existing rules that they could charge us with. They were not able to find anything prohibiting parachuting from their mountaintops at that time.
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[email]

In theory, there is no difference bretween theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -

"RIP Forever Brian Schubert. Always remembered, Never forgotten" - Leroy DB
http://www.johnny

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Yes Ray.

Brian Schubert and I made the first El Capitan jump on July 24,1966. We were quite accustomed to the round parachutes. Paracommanders were quite new at the time, but neither of us had one. We used modified military chutes. In fact, I made the modifications myself on a standard issue unmodified military chute. They didn't have a lot of drive, but the good part was that we didn't have to worry which way they were facing when they opened. There is always a bright side :)
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[email]

In theory, there is no difference bretween theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -

"RIP Forever Brian Schubert. Always remembered, Never forgotten" - Leroy DB
http://www.johnny

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Hi,

Yes, Carl knew about our El Capitan jump. He even prepared and signed two certificates for us - El Cap 1 and El Cap 2, which were presented to us by wis wife Jean about a month ago. She told me he always wanted to meet us before he died.

Carl was considered the "Father of MODERN base jumping". He differentiated himself by the use of square parachutes and the art of "tracking". I wish I had met him to let him know that Brian and I were both skilled in the art of freefall, and probably couldn't have been able to pull off the Cap jump if we hadn't known how to track. The El Capitan jump was my 184th l[email]
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ogged jump. My personal opinion is that the only real difference between our jump in 1966 and his jumps would be the parachute technology.

I wouldn't want to take anything away from him however. He's the guy who made a sport out of it. We just did it because it hadn't ever been done before.

Regards,
Mike Pelkey

In theory, there is no difference bretween theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -

"RIP Forever Brian Schubert. Always remembered, Never forgotten" - Leroy DB
http://www.johnny

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Hi Mike,

I left you a note over on the BASEboard. It's great to see you here.

How about setting the record straight and giving us the whole story?

All I know is what Carl Boenish said and info from the newspaper clippings a BASE-friendly Park Ranger sent me many years ago.

We'd love to hear how you came up with the idea, I mean we want details . . .

NickD :)BASE 194

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Hi Base587,

Yes Brian Schubert and I made the very first El Capitan jump on July 24, 1966. There are numerous sites referencing the jump. Just key in: "Base Jumping History" on any search engine. Most of the information about it is inaccurate, such as: the spelling of my last name, the exact date, the extent of our "injuries", etc.

We did not do it with the intention of starting a new sport. It was just something that had never been done before.

Regards,
Mike Pelkey, El Cap 2[email]
In theory, there is no difference bretween theory and practice. In practice, however, there is. -

"RIP Forever Brian Schubert. Always remembered, Never forgotten" - Leroy DB
http://www.johnny

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