BASE Jumper Found Dead in Zion National Park

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BASE Jumper Found Dead in Zion National Park

SALT LAKE CITY March 24, 2014 (AP)


A BASE jumper has died in Utah's Zion National Park, officials said Monday, marking the third death by adventurers attempting to parachute from state cliffs this year.
Authorities haven't identified the victim, and the body hasn't yet been recovered from the remote location where it was spotted by helicopter Sunday.
BASE jumpers leap with parachutes from great heights, including skyscrapers, bridges and rock formations — BASE being an acronym of the different platforms, "building, antenna, span and earth."
The activity is illegal in national parks across the U.S., spokesman Jeff Olson said.
Zion National Park, in the southwest corner of Utah, is the state's most popular national park. BASE jumping is banned, but park officials weren't immediately available to answer questions about how they attempt to prevent such leaps.
Last month, Amber Bellows was killed there after she jumped from Mount Kinesava and her parachute failed to open. Bellows fell about 2,000 feet.

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ZION NATIONAL PARK, Utah (ABC 4 Utah) – Three deaths in more than six weeks, that's how many BASE jumpers have recently been killed in Utah. Two of them came just this past weekend.
The latest jumper fell to his death in Zion National Park.

Rock climbers and BASE jumpers are mourning the death of Sean Leary, a man considered one of the best at his sport.

"For me the thrill is not so much diving as hard as I can at features, its more finding new things that no ones flown off of before," said Sean Leary in a video on epictv.com.

Epictv.com has posted a tribute video of Leary. It's believed Leary died jumping from West Temple peak in Zion National Park. On Sunday park officials found the body of a base jumper they believe is his, but so far Zion search and rescue crews can't reach the location.

"Often times the helicopter can't hover above where that location may be and sometimes that victim needs to be moved elsewhere where they can safely hover without its rotors being next to the cliff," said Bo Beck, Zion Search & Rescue.

According to climbing.com, Leary was not only a top wingsuit flyer, he was a world record speed climber.

A YouTube video of Leary shows him speed climbing the Nutcracker at Yosemite National Park in record time. Friends and fellow athletes are already sharing their grief on discussion boards like supertopo.com.

One person said - "Wow, so sad to hear. He was an inspiration to me."

Another said – “I am in shock and disbelief. Please keep his spirit crushing by just giving thanks and kind words."

And finally from his friend - "A great BASE flight is one of the greatest feelings in the world. And sadly it has taken way too many of my friends, including one of the Great Ones of all time, Sean Leary."

Search and rescue crews are hoping to retrieve Leary's body sometime on Tuesday.

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Extreme athlete from California dies in Utah base jump
Peter Fimrite
Updated 7:36 am, Thursday, March 27, 2014

1998
World-renown climber Dean Potter and climbing partner Sean Leary seen in 2010 after climbing El Capitan. Potter and Leary set the record for the fastest ascent of El Capitan at 2 hours, 36 minutes, and 45 seconds.
File photo: Sean Leary makes the King's Swing across the face of El Capitan as he climbs with world renown climber Dean Potter on Mon., Nov. 15, 2010.


Sean Leary knew the dangers associated with climbing El Capitan or flying off a cliff in a wing suit, but like many extreme athletes, the excitement and freedom somehow made him feel more alive.

His pursuit of that intense adrenaline rush is what made him one of the country's greatest climbers and base jumpers.

It is also what killed him.

The body of Leary, 38, of El Portal in Mariposa County, was recovered Monday in the mountains of Zion National Park in Utah after he apparently clipped a rock outcropping during a base jump in a wing suit, which allows the jumper to steer through canyons before opening a parachute.

Friends said he had gone to Utah to work as a rigger and guide on a climbing film. On March 13, the day before the shoot, he decided to do a lone wing suit jump off West Temple formation in Zion a few hours after sunset with a bright moon above.

Dean Potter, his friend and climbing partner, said he apparently didn't see a notch in the mountain and clipped it at high speed, plummeting 100 feet down the mountain, where he was killed instantly.

Nobody knew he was missing until his wife, who is seven months pregnant, checked his e-mail and saw a message from the film company wondering why he hadn't shown up. Potter and eight others recovered his body Monday with help from a National Park Service search-and-rescue team.

His death sent shock waves through the Yosemite climbing community, where Leary was a hero not only for his climbing ability but for being humble and friendly.

"I'm just so terribly sad," said Nick Rosen, a friend and the producer at Sender Films, which specializes in documentaries about rock climbing and extreme sports. "It is hitting the community and Sean's friends so hard not only because he was one of the great unsung heroes, but because he was uniquely humble and caring and was just as incredible as a human being as he was as a climber."
A celebrated career

It was a tragic end to a celebrated career climbing some of the most daunting big walls and cliffs in the world.

Leary, who was known as "Stanley," and Potter set the speed record in 2010 climbing up the Nose route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, an athletic feat that climbers characterize as roughly equivalent to sprinting a marathon.

The record was broken two years later by Hans Florine and Alex Honnold, but Leary continued pushing limits on the vertical granite walls of Yosemite. He set a speed record with Honnold on what is known as the Salathé Wall, another route on El Capitan. In 2012, he and Mayan Smith-Gobat set the mixed male-female speed record for the Nose.

Leary climbed on Baffin Island, Patagonia, and, with another climber, established a new never-before-been-climbed route on Ulvetanna in Antarctica.

Ironically, Leary began wing suit and base jumping in 2006 after the woman he loved, a Brazilian climber named Roberta Nunes, died in his arms after a car crash, also in Utah, according to Rosen, who made a film about it called "Patagonia Promise."
'Affirmation of life'

"Right before she died she made him promise her that he would keep pursing adventure," Rosen said. "He was really, really low and base jumping became this affirmation of life for him. He wing suited off of El Mocho, a peak in Patagonia, and scattered her ashes. It's really tragic because, in a very real way, he had since risen from the ashes and had found love again and was looking forward to family life."

After his record-setting climb with Potter, Leary said he understood the risks.

"There are definitely risks we are taking, but we are trying to be safety-conscious," Leary said. "No one wants to die doing it."

In a video by aerial filmmaker and photographer Chad Copeland, Leary described the feeling of the takeoff in a wing suit.

"There's a second of absolute freedom. You're floating in the air," Leary says. "It's just magic when the wing suit pops open and inflates and you start to take off. Then you feel like, this must be what birds see, you know?"

Potter, in a phone call Wednesday as he returned from Zion, said that he will miss his friend, whom he spent many hours with talking about life as they walked their dogs together.
A multifaceted man

"Sean was a combination of things - a professional athlete very much at the top of his game - but also a man who loved the peace he found in the mountains and the focused energy he found while pushing himself," Potter said. "All the friends dropped everything and came here to look for him when we found out he was missing. It's fitting that Sean was found by his friends."

See Sean Leary talking about wing suit jumping:
http://vimeo.com/89884385