Is this cosmic irony or what? This article brings up two
important points. - Never jump with a borrowed parachute. And
maybe this is the reason why they have rules banning people
jumping of cliffs with parachutes.
Yosemite Nation Park, Calif. (AP) — A 60-year-old veteran
parachutist plunged to her death when her chute failed to open
after she jumped off the top of the 3200-foot-tall El Capitan to protest park rules banning the extreme sport.
The protest was meant to demonstrate that the jumps can be
made safely.
Jan Davis was one of five jumpers who planned to leap off
the sheer granite cliff, a protest organized in response to the
June 9 death of a jumper who successfully parachuted of El
Capitan only to drown in the river below while trying to flee
park rangers.
"She was the fourth jumper. The first three were
beautiful. And then she jumped. Everybody thought it was OK,
and then people said, 'Open up! Open up!' Then ... the whole
place turned quiet," said Paul Sajuma, and Associated Press
photographer.
Rangers quickly cordoned off the area after the 2 p.m.
accident, and the fifth parachutist hiked down, said Scott
Gediman, a spokesman for the park.
Davis, a veteran with more than 70 jumps in the past
16years, was using a borrowed parachute and gear that had a
cord on the leg, unlike her usual gear with the cord on her
back, her husband Tom Sanders, told friends.
She used borrowed gear because she didn't want hers to be
confiscated by rangers waiting to arrest her on the valley
floor, witnesses said.
Sanders, who was among the spectators, slumped onto his
camera after she fell.
The extreme sport of jumping from fixed objects like cliffs
or buildings has been banned on National Park Service land.
Nationwide, an estimated 21 people have died during so-called
BASE jumps — the acronym for buildings, antennae, spans and
earth — in the past 20 years.
