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.