BASE Jumping
BASE jumping involves four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennae, spans (bridges), and earth (cliffs). BASE jumping has been practiced since at least the 1970s, and has continued to gain popularity since then. It is an extreme sport that combines the skills of skydiving and jumping off of very high, but fixed, objects. Jumps can be made as low as 300 feet above ground. BASE jumping is technically not an illegal sport, but the aspect that makes it illegal is that many jumpers will trespass onto private property in order to reach their desired altitude.
Today, BASE jumping is accepted in many countries. As of February 2011, there have been 161 deaths associated with the sport worldwide. Five of them have been in Yosemite National Park in the United States, where BASE jumping is now banned. Similar issues have prompted American authorities to make the activity directly illegal in other parts of the nation, including New York City.
Read more about this topic: Illegal Sports
Famous quotes containing the words base and/or jumping:
“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,
Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff
That beetles o’er his base into the sea,
And there assume some other horrible form
Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,
And draw you into madness?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“O to break loose, like the chinook
salmon jumping and falling back,
nosing up to the impossible
stone and bone-crushing waterfall—”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)