"The Rock is Now Legal"

[howardwhite 5]

That was the subhead on an August, 1980, Parachutist story announcing that USPA and the National Park Service had agreed on a program for legal El Cap jumps following "almost two years of illegal skydives off the cliff."
The article, by Bill Ottley, noted that as of that month, USPA would issue official El Cap numbers and certificates to those who made jumps following the guidelines it had agreed to.
The "test jumpers" who had made the first NPS-approved jumps July 1, 1980, included Joe Svec, B.J. Worth, Larry Bagley, J. Scott Hamilton, Nick Kingery, John Noak, Rolayne Mattson, and, of course, Carl Boenish, whose pictures accompanied the story.
Not surprisingly, the USPA/NPS love-in did not last, but that's another story. Although the headline was "El Capitan Opens For Skydiving," USPA subsequently decided that base jumping is not skydiving, and therefore not to be dealt with or written about in its publications.

HW

[vpozzoli 0]

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Not surprisingly, the USPA/NPS love-in did not last, but that's another story.

Please do tell? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Ciao.

Vale

[fastphil 0]

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Not surprisingly, the USPA/NPS love-in did not last, but that's another story.

Please do tell? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Ciao.

Vale

Mostly it came down to selfish motives and lack of respect for the natural beauty our national parks are about. It was a short relationship...

[NickDG 23]

>>Mostly it came down to selfish motives and lack of respect for the natural beauty our national parks are about. It was a short relationship...
That is correct, but now (27 years later) we can see a bit clearer . . .

Fixed object jumping, as a "thing" was barely two years old when the USPA first became involved. Nobody even knew what to call this type of parachuting as Carl Boenish wouldn't invent the acronym "BASE" for another two years. However, Carl's El Cap movie had been circulating around the world's DZs for two years and it had a "wow" factor that was undeniable. (I saw it the night it premiered at Lake Elsinore in 1978.)

And there was no ambivalence about it either. There were only two kinds of jumpers who saw that film. A minority who thought it beyond the pale and a majority, the ones who couldn't be held back from making the jump themselves. It also goes to show how important timing is when it comes to new things. In 1968 (five years before Carl's El Cap film) Brian Shubert and Mike Pelkey made the same jump from El Cap but it didn’t ignite the firestorm of interest that would come later.

The reasons for that are varied and certainly had something to do with the gear available in those intervening ten years, but the key difference was the film Carl produced. It was something people could see with their own eyes. It made the jumps look "easy" and more importantly it made them look "repeatable" and that was the very moment fixed object jumping morphed from onetime stunt to fulltime sport. Only thing was none of us realized that yet.

In skydiving the year 1980 was such a long time ago. Paralerts (dirt-alert) are the hot toy, we are still jumping with plastic ripcords (they broke in cold temps) and piggybacks are just becoming acceptable for students. It's the year Para-Flite first began using F-111 fabric in their canopies. I bought a round reserve made of F-111 from Dean Westguard that year and I remember commenting, "Hey Dean, you're kidding right? I can see right through this stuff!" It's too easy to say skydiving was immature at the time, but it wasn't, or at least it didn’t seem so at the time. But skydiving always has a bit of a hiccup when it comes to new stuff.

At the time I thought fixed object jumping would go the same route. A few years of upheaval before it settled into being an acceptable thing like water, night, or demo jumps. Just another extraordinary jump. Boy was I wrong.

We didn't have the whole picture in those days. Mainly it was because the only object being regularly jumped were cliffs (and by now in Europe too.) By early 1980 individual jumpers were writing to USPA seeking help with legal jumping in Yosemite. This is a time when the aerial delivery law is being used on busted jumpers. However, the USPA needed little urging as everyone at Headquarters wanted to make the jump too. So began a series of roving meetings one of which was held in March of 1980 at Perris. I was there and it was very bizarre considering what we know now, but USPA figured they'd approach the NPS with a plan and these meetings are meant to come up with some rules for that plan. I'm not sure anyone in the room had even made a fixed object jump before.

It took us an hour to get through the first item and that was footwear. Boots were suggested for all jumps from El Cap, but, on the DZ, boots were something your Mother wore. The preferred footwear at the time is sandals, flip flops or bare feet. Conservative skydivers donned sneakers. Helmets are also hotly debated. Most of us, if we had any head covering at all, it was just a Frapp Hat. I didn't realize it at the time but I was witnessing the first of million BASE arguments that were to come.

Then came the meat of it. Gear configuration. Square main of course, but the sticky part came with the reserve. Square reserves were available at the time, but you could safely say more than half of the DZ still carried a round for a last canopy. The consensus was El Cap was high enough to permit a cutaway, but you'd be low, and if you didn't make the meadow you'd be better off in the talus with a round. We only knew what we knew and we didn’t know much.

At about the same time the NPS knew what was coming. They also knew the aerial delivery law was originally written to keep back country hunters from re-supplying themselves with ammo and grub. At any federal court level, outside the park itself, it probably wouldn't hold up. And so, with everybody smiling, there came together two organizations and each had a plan. Except the NPS plan consisted of just giving us enough rope to hang ourselves.

The rest, of course, is history. We broke every rule there was and three weeks into the legal program the NPS put a stop to it. The bigger deal was now they (the NPS) could say fixed object jumping wasn't an appropriate use in the Park, in essence, because we were a bunch of yahoos who couldn't follow simple rules. This is the undeserved reputation all modern day BASE jumpers are burdened with. I say underserved because we weren't BASE jumpers at the time. We were just skydivers out for a good time.

So now I thought okay USPA would really go to work. File some law suits, bury the NPS in paperwork, you know, demand our right to fly. But a funny thing happened. They folded up like a demo jumper caught in a rotor on a windy day. Not only wouldn't USPA help us in Yosemite, they also choose to ignore the fixed object jumping that was breaking out all over the world.

I didn’t understand why until some years later. I was sitting in the USPA Executive Director's office in Alexandria in the late 1980s. Bill Ottley invited me to come interview for the job of editor of PARACHUTIST magazine and while I was sitting there I noticed the largest photo on the wall was Bill jumping El Cap. I mean it was poster sized. Bill liked a BASE magazine I was doing called The Fixed Object Journal and he wanted me to move PARACHUTIST over to computers as they were still pasting it up like in the old days. He offered me 35K a year and I turned him down. I was in the prime of my skydiving career, a professional skydiver and life was just too good in California to do anything else. But I did mention El Cap. "What the hell happened?" I asked him, "You just left us twisting in the fucking breeze."

Before we get to what happened. Again, let's look at the times. When Bill Ottley picked me up at the airport in his big finned Cadillac convertible I wondered at the folly of my sitting up on the trunk lid with a beer and seeing the sights of Washington. But Bill couldn’t get arrested in that town no matter what. The first President Bush was in office and Bill was his Harvard classmate. He actually told me they could do anything they wanted. So now all these years later I see we missed our best chance. If Bill would have pressed it, a wave of the pen could have changed history in Yosemite.

But here’s what eventually happened. And again timing played a big part. Once devotees of cliff jumping were denied access to Yosemite they started looking around for other things to jump from. So bridges, buildings and towers were being attacked. And with great success. And because of the trespassing it was easy for the USPA to back off. However, what also played a part is that everyone at USPA Headquarters who wanted to had already jumped El Cap and that's all they wanted. Just an entry in their logbook, another notch in the belt . . . No one, including me, had yet realized fixed object jumping was a sport unto itself.

That same year my best friend Ralph Mittman jumped into his truck and drove the eight hours from San Diego and jumped El Cap with his five cell Strato Star. After a good landing he was hitching back to Tamarac where he left his truck and a Ranger picked him up. He had his gear in a trash bag and he's pushing down on the top to keep the three rings from chinking every time they hit a bump. He said later the worst part is he wanted to grab the friendly Ranger by the shoulders and exclaim, "Fuck, do you know what I just did? It was totally amazing!"

When Ralph retuned to San Diego I asked him what his best advice would be for jumping El Cap?

"Just go frigging do it," was all he said . . .

NickD BASE 194

[itllclear 1]

Great Article Nick-

Thanks.

Glad I got there before the "Flatbed 10."

BSBD

Harry Leicher
El Cap 157

"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."

[Zing 2]

" ... everyone at USPA Headquarters who wanted to had already jumped El Cap and that's all they wanted. Just an entry in their logbook, another notch in the belt ..."

And there's the truth of the matter in a nutshell. Though the spray painted graffitti on the rocks and the trash jumpers left along the trail and on top of the cliff contributed to the end coming so soon too.

On the night of June 28, 1980, at midnight, I made my third leap off El Cap along with 4 other jumpers from Ghoulidge ... and we jumped right into the waiting arms of NPS Chief Officer Bill Wendt and his minions who were forwarned of our prescence by a jumper who, along with her friend, had jumped off at sunset. The friend had problems and ended up landing in the talus with some injuries. When the friend couldn't locate her, she went to the rangers for help.
Me and Charlie Hancock came strolling up to the rock cairn expecting to be the only ones up there, but, lo and behold, we found Mad Mark Tharp, Dead Fred and Timothy Bleary sitting there.
They too were planning a night jump, as it was a full moon that night and Tim's birthday was June 29, so we sat down with them and waited for the midnight hour.
There didn't seem to be any real activity visible in the meadow below after the sun went down, though the other guys told us about the two women who had jumped at sunset, but only one parachute was seen. At this time, a few people had been busted for jumping, but it didn't seem like a big deal.
We all had a pull off the bottle of whiskey stashed in the rock cairn near the exit point, smoked a bit of attitude adjustment and I dug into a stash of shrooms I'd brought along for the occasion.
The appointed hour came and off went Fred, then Mark, then Charlie and then me. Tim wanted to go last because it was his birthday and I didn't care, so off I went, but just before i jumped, I saw Charlie land and then two people with flashlights appeared to chase him as he headed for the getaway van, but I still hadn't figured out what the commotion in the meadow was about. I jumped, took about ten seconds to track and saddled out, low but high enough to cross the road and land in the meadow ... under a full moon wearing a white jumpsuit with a blaze orange rig and white canopy.
I'm standing there in the middle of the meadow like a Japanese lantern in the moonlight when a car drives by on the road, and it occurs to me that maybe I should get my ass over to the van and stash my gear.
I ran for the van, and there stands Mad Mark's wife watching me approach, not saying a word.
I think I started to say something about what a great jump that was when this guy steps out from behind the van, levels a huge nickle-plated revolver at me head and says, "I'm Chief Officer Bill Wendt of the National Park Service, and you are under arrest!"
So I drop my canopy, the other three arrestees are lead over next to the van and the interrogation begins, actually, more like a lecture about the error of our evil criminal activities etc. etc., but Wendt wants to know if there is anyone else up on the top ... "Uh, I don't think so," says us, but just as the rangers are getting ready to load us in the squad cars we hear a clear "Blue Sky ... Black Death," and here comes Tim off the ledge.
The rangers scatter and run for cover like its an incoming artillery attack or something, leaving us standing there next to the van. I took that opportunity to get rid of the pouch holding the remainder of my safety meeting materials, thinking it might not be a good idea to have those found by a ranger when they finally got around to searching us.
Tim lands, gets arrested and we're about to be loaded in the paddy wagon for the trip to the park jail when Ranger Bill finds that damn pouch laying on the ground about 30 feet from where we are standing, "Aha, what's this?" says he, and picks it up, opens it and sees what it is. Uh oh thinks I.
Off to jail we go, and since it was Friday night, we got to be guests at the Natl. Park Service Hotel with bars on the doors and windows until Monday morning when we went to court.
The court thing was all pretty mundane, we pled guilty to unlawful aerial delivery and Judge Pitt fined us $350 apiece, $100 more than previous jumpers got because we were the first bunch busted for jumping at night. Judge Pitt blew off Ranger Bill and the prosecuter's additional charge for interferring with a medical rescue when Ranger Bill admited that the injured woman had already been located and hauled out hours before we jumped and there never had been any intent to call in a Life-Flight helicopter that they initially claimed they planned, but canceled because there were more jumpers up on the ledge.
So, we're about all finished up with the court proceedings, when Ranger Bill pulls out that damn little pouch and says, "We really need to know which one of you this belongs to."
Apparently, nobody at the park service knew what those dried shrooms were and the other baggie held nothing but residue and a pack of rolling papers.
"Hell," says I, "You picked that thing up more than 30 feet away from where any of us were that night. Its just as likely you dropped it as anyone of us judging by the vindictive attitude you've shown trying to add additional charges just because you don't like jumpers."
"He's got a good point there," said Judge Pitt, "I think we're about done with this case."
The good judge then told us that he happened to be there in the meadow that night showing some relatives from back east El Capitan under a full moon and had watched the whole thing go down as we jumped and were arrested.
"I'd just finished telling my relatives about these crazy skydivers who keep sneaking up to the top and jumping off," Pitt said.
"Oh, we'd love to see that," said the relatives, but Pitt explained that it was illegal and didn't happen all that often and probably not at night anyway.
"About ten seconds later, you guys jumped," Pitt said. "My relatives loved the show.
Just about then, a disgruntled Ranger Bill started in to this spiel about the USPA and the legal jumps that were in the works and how we had probably screwed that whole thing up for all the rest of the jumpers who might want to jump.
Timothy Blaery says, "What's a USPA?' and we all giggled over that.
After court was over, we went to collect our gear, as they hadn't yet started permanently confiscating rigs, and Ranger Bill starts in again about what a bunch of dangerous, reckless yahoos we all are, screwing up everything for everybody else etc. etc.
I got my gear back in my hands and told Ranger Bill to go fuck himself and predicted right then and there that IF any legal jumps were actually granted, it would only be for a bunch of USPA high poobahs and that that wouldn't last more than a few weeks before "you assholes shut it down again!" It was no surprise when that proved prophetically true.
A few years later, word spread that Judge Pitt was retiring and I sent him a card congratulating him on his retirement. About a week later I got a handwritten letter from Pitt thanking me and the many other jumpers who had since appeared in his court for "some of the most amusing court cases he'd ever presided over.
Judge Pitt was a class act ... and Ranger Bill, should you happen to read this, you're still an asshole!

Zing Lurks

[jdobleman 0]

Great story, Zing. I was tired of hearing Flatbed 10 repeats.

madjohn

[PROGRESSIVE 0]

What is really a contradiction with the Park Service Regs regarding base jumping off El Cap, is running off Glacier Point with a hang gliding, which is perfectly acceptable.

Why is it ok to run off a slab of granite for one group of people, but not the other?

I really do think that the most damage that is being done to this awesome park is allowing such a high number of vehicles into the valley that is creates L.A. type smog.

The list of arguments to allow base jumping is infinite. Too bad base jumping at this incredible place was short lived, and I don't even base jump!

Pete

[howardwhite 5]

Today (as I write) is the 27th anniversary of the first "legal" El Cap jumps. The accounts by Nick and Zing are entirely consistent with what I remember being told by many others, including a well-known sub-100 D license holder who was among those bagged for an illegal jump.
Perhaps it is instructive to review the conditions USPA agreed to:

•Written permit, signed by Chief Ranger Bill;
•D license;
•Hard helmet and square canopy;
•Jumps only from dawn to 8:30 a.m.;
•No more than 12 permits (i.e. 12 jumps) per day;
•Jumping "season" for 1980 -- Aug. 1 through Oct. 31.

I was on the USPA BOD and in the audience when Carl showed his initial El Cap movie to USPA directors. I don't recall any specific action, perhaps beyond authorizing Ottley and Joe Svec to handle the matter.

No one in a wild fantasy could then have envisioned something like Bridge Day, but perhaps in retrospect, the initial requirements were so impossibly restrictive as to make them impossible to live with.

HW

(PS to Nick; Ottley and Bush (both of them) went to Yale, not Harvard, a distinction of some importance to some people.)

[waltappel 1]

Hey Nick,

The spraypainted EFS or Eat Fuck Skydive (whatever it was) at the exit point and the trash is a story repeated plenty but I've wondered for quite a while whether it was true or a bunch of BS used to make the jumpers look bad.

Not that some jumpers had any problem making themselves and the rest of us look bad, but I still wonder whether anybody was really fucked up enough to do that stuff.

Walt

[cloudseeker2001 0]

Cool story!

"Some call it heavenly in it's brilliance,
others mean and rueful of the western dream"

[bozo 0]

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Hey Nick,

The spraypainted EFS or Eat Fuck Skydive (whatever it was) at the exit point and the trash is a story repeated plenty but I've wondered for quite a while whether it was true or a bunch of BS used to make the jumpers look bad.

Not that some jumpers had any problem making themselves and the rest of us look bad, but I still wonder whether anybody was really fucked up enough to do that stuff.

Walt

I was up there right after it was painted. It said man small. why fall? skies call, thats all.

bozo
Pain is fleeting. Glory lasts forever. Chicks dig scars.

[waltappel 1]

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Hey Nick,

The spraypainted EFS or Eat Fuck Skydive (whatever it was) at the exit point and the trash is a story repeated plenty but I've wondered for quite a while whether it was true or a bunch of BS used to make the jumpers look bad.

Not that some jumpers had any problem making themselves and the rest of us look bad, but I still wonder whether anybody was really fucked up enough to do that stuff.

Walt

I was up there right after it was painted. It said man small. why fall? skies call, thats all.

Oh, from Skies Call. That's a real shame that someone did that.

Walt

[tbrown 26]

I remember the meetings at Perris in the spring of 1980, in the lounge/classroom (now the location of the Square1 store). The excitement about legalizing El Capitan and organizing expeditions for the summer was at a fever pitch.

It also began a deluge of expedited requests for D licenses to USPA, as a D was req'd for the permit. I had to beg for a lot of signatures on my incredibly sloppy logbook, as I'd more or less stopped logging at the time. Then I needed a picture, so a Navy Photographer's Mate friend at the old San Diego NTC took me into their studio, where he shot I.D. photos of recruits, and I got a really snazzy set of pics. Got my D license just in time for the permit application too.

Just a week or two later USPA said they would no longer honor expedited requests for D licenses, as their staff was buried alive under the things and we should've all got our D's long ago and could therefore go and fuck ourselves, we'd get our D's when we got them.

The trip itself was great. We arrived in the middle of the night and slept on the side of the road, getting to the meadow on a Saturday morning, just in time to watch the group that morning make their jumps. More than anything, I remember how incredibly huge El Capitan really is. There are NO photos that really convey what a giant it is, its size is completely beyond comprehension, unless you've actually seen the thing.

After hiking all day up the Tamarac Trail we had an unforgettable night on top of the rock, watching the Perseid Meteor Showers, which come the first week of every August. Away from all the city lights and 7 thousand feet above sea level, it looked like the entire Milky Way was collapsing on us - absolutely incredible.

Our jumps in the morning (Sunday, August 10th) were uneventful, but beyond every expectation. After landing in the meadow, a very courteous Ranger rode up on horseback, asked for my name and home address, then checked me off on his list and said he was happy to see I had such a good time. It was a very mellow happy morning.

But even then, there were extra people sneaking into the groups. And people with dirt bikes offering jumpers rides up the trails. I didn't notice much trash, maybe a little, at the top and at least then there was no spray painting on anything. We weren't the only campers either, there were some German tourists up there too.

It's been 27 years now, but sometimes at night I still have vivid dreams of jumping off that cliff again. I've been told by our organizer Dave Schulz, who asked Jeanne Boenish, that my number is 159.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[itllclear 1]

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my number is 159

Get one of the "Yosemite" vanity plates with the number "LCAP159" I doubt anyone else would come up with that.

Then drive into the park with some skydiving bumper stickers.

Don't worry about getting mugged. You'll have 24 hour ranger supervision.

"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."

[Splat63 0]

Hey Harry!! I tried to get one of those vanity plates with my El Cap number; LCAP469, however, the DMV employees have a personality that is very similar to the ranger's (in Yosemite) - they would not permit me to get the plate because of the "69" part of the number.....even though I explained that I was the 469th person to jump off of El Cap. Didn't matter.....

Splat63

[itllclear 1]

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DMV employees have a personality that is very similar to the ranger's (in Yosemite)

Something common in people who get overnment jobs instead of working in private industry. Power Trip.

"Harry, why did you land all the way out there? Nobody else landed out there."

"Your statement answered your question."

[Krip 2]

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Hey Harry!! I tried to get one of those vanity plates with my El Cap number; LCAP469, however, the DMV employees have a personality that is very similar to the ranger's (in Yosemite) - they would not permit me to get the plate because of the "69" part of the number.....even though I explained that I was the 469th person to jump off of El Cap. Didn't matter.....

Splat

There's lots of DMV employee's working there, just because one says no there's always another or the "no" person will eventually "move on"

Don't give up

Trust me I'm here to help you I worked for the Gov't for 21 yr's There really is a "system". Time is on your side

[tbrown 26]

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my number is 159

Get one of the "Yosemite" vanity plates with the number "LCAP159" I doubt anyone else would come up with that.

Then drive into the park with some skydiving bumper stickers.

Don't worry about getting mugged. You'll have 24 hour ranger supervision.

Harry, you're a real peach.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !