guest
December 13th, 2000, 03:53 PM
This past weekend the big bridge was flicked. This may not come as a surprise to most. For a while now this site has been taken for granted. In this particular case, as with many, the jumpers stayed at the Holiday inn and packed semi-openly on the first floor. Jumps were made at dawn and at dusk. More than one was 'load' made on each occasion. Half the time the approach to the cat-walk was made in a stealthy manner where as the other half were less stealthy. You could say that the jumpers were a little complacent. This complacency came with a price...several hundered or more dollars and a few unhappy BASE jumpers.....
Saturday night, two NPS vehicles and six or so police cars stopped some jumpers after 'two' people were seen by a civilian jumping from the bridge (so the police say). Without going into great detail, the collective believes that this may have been a 'sting' operation or at least chiefly headed up by the local police. Of note, the NPS officer that handled the "violation" was VERY cool. A deal was worked out with him, excluding any police involvement. He could have waited until a search warrant was issued and collected all of the jumpers precious belongings. Things could have been worse.
The Point
All of our BASE brotheren should consider this site a "normal" BASE jump. Great care should be taken to keep all activities out of sight of the public eye. You know what I mean. Don't get complacent and think that all's good just because your buddies never got nabbed. It can happen, and does. All involved in this weekends activities accept responsibility. A great time was had with no worries....or so they thought. They got caught up, don't let it happen to you.
Rumor has it that soo many police responded because of a parade in town and they all wanted a piece of the action. The scenario has been run through many times with no definitive answer as to how or if there was even any sting operation planned. This could have just been a simple case of being seen or a much more juicy and devious plan to capture the evil and sometimes elusive BASE jumper.
Methods must be modified. Yes, people know this site is being jumped.
Be safe, have fun.
Saturday night, two NPS vehicles and six or so police cars stopped some jumpers after 'two' people were seen by a civilian jumping from the bridge (so the police say). Without going into great detail, the collective believes that this may have been a 'sting' operation or at least chiefly headed up by the local police. Of note, the NPS officer that handled the "violation" was VERY cool. A deal was worked out with him, excluding any police involvement. He could have waited until a search warrant was issued and collected all of the jumpers precious belongings. Things could have been worse.
The Point
All of our BASE brotheren should consider this site a "normal" BASE jump. Great care should be taken to keep all activities out of sight of the public eye. You know what I mean. Don't get complacent and think that all's good just because your buddies never got nabbed. It can happen, and does. All involved in this weekends activities accept responsibility. A great time was had with no worries....or so they thought. They got caught up, don't let it happen to you.
Rumor has it that soo many police responded because of a parade in town and they all wanted a piece of the action. The scenario has been run through many times with no definitive answer as to how or if there was even any sting operation planned. This could have just been a simple case of being seen or a much more juicy and devious plan to capture the evil and sometimes elusive BASE jumper.
Methods must be modified. Yes, people know this site is being jumped.
Be safe, have fun.