zlacker

There are lots of places to legally BASE jump in Europe. You can even take a gondola to the jump point. But very very few legal options in the USA.

I wish there were more places to legally enjoy BASE jumping on US public lands.

>>schaef+(OP)
They don’t want to deal with the liability lawsuits.

>>mikeli+l
Would there be liability lawsuits for this happening on public land? Might it be more a matter of them not wanting to do body clean up once a week?

>>mikeli+l
then we need tort reform to address the root cause. This is so silly and unfortunate that wild spaces are litigated and made illegal for things that are normal and wonderful elsewhere.

>>mikeli+l
They probably don't want to deal with the bodies either. One man's thrill seeking is another man's lasting psychological trauma.

>>_qua+v1
there aren't that many accidents. It's also more dangerous to jump in ways that attempt to skirt laws (jumping near dark, trying to evade capture, etc)

>>_qua+v1
This seems like something a liability waiver and an escrow account with money for body clean up (if things go bad) would solve. A little red tape, sure, but not illegal.

>>etraut+j3
I’m convinced this is how Dean Potter died. Jumping at dusk to try to evade capture my Yosemite rangers.

If it had been legal, and had he jumped in broad daylight, I think he’d have survived that day.

>>schaef+(OP)
It's legal by default on US federal land, (e.g. BLM or USFS) which covers about a fifth of the country, and is especially concentrated in areas with mountainous and other earthen terrain that is favorable to BASE jumpers. We just take a very small portion of that land, designate it national parks or forests, make everything illegal there, dump all of our tourists there, and charge them to park.

There's far more to see outside of those national parks and forests than there is inside. Look up any paragliders or bush pilots on YouTube that live near federal land, and they pretty much go wherever they want to go.

If you're an avid hiker or camper and are visiting the US, find local documentation on where to visit or befriend someone in the area who can make recommendations, and you'll get to see our natural landscape without all of the tourists or regulations. You can legally BASE jump off a cliff, hike in the nude, mine for gold, set up an impromptu gun range, and camp there for a couple of weeks, or indefinitely if you hike two miles each day.

>>etraut+83
You can pretty much do whatever you want on BLM land but just not in national parks.

>>_qua+v1
It can be both.

But to your point, when some overconfident dudebro splatters himself all over the flats, we the people have to pay for the cops to show up, the medics and the ambulance even if the idiot is obviously dogfood, the body recovery, the coroner and the postmortem, and all the associated bureaucracy.

And someone will still sue because the Park Service didn't prevent the moron from killing himself. You can sue for literally anything in the US.

>>schaef+V5
If it had been legal, and had he jumped in broad daylight, I think he’d have survived that day.

Right. It's the Park Service to blame. Right there with the "it's the cops fault I crashed and burned because if driving 140mph was legal I would be fine".