Base access

Non profit organization dedicated to preserving site access for BASE jumpers on American Public Lands

[Base access @BaseAccess]

@YosemiteNPS @NatlParkService BASE jumping is not illegal. If the NPS would read the same regulation they cite, it’s clearly stated that the activity can be conducted if a permit is issued. Trump EO 14313 further orders the NPS to rescind unnecessary restrictions against recreation.

[New Civil Liberties Alliance @NCLAlegal]

Jumping off a cliff with a parachute?

Perfectly safe, unless it’s now a federal crime.

NPS wrote the rulebook and criminalized BASE jumping without Congress.

NCLA's @CaseyNormando explains why this violates the Constitution:

[Casey Norman @CaseyNormando]

May be about time for @NatlParkService to reevaluate its position that NPS can send BASE jumpers to prison for violating a reg that prohibits cargo deliveries from aircraft--which, I might add, was issued before BASE jumping existed @BaseAccess @elbrendan
https://t.co/YYCW9uxBKS

[New Civil Liberties Alliance @NCLAlegal]

Can Congress give unelected bureaucrats the power to send you to jail?

The National Park Service is criminalizing BASE jumping across 85 million acres of public land—without any real law from Congress. Our 100th case takes this abuse head-on.

🎥 Watch this short clip to see how absurd it gets—and how NCLA is fighting back.

👉 Then check out the full episode of Courtside Commentary for the full story: https://t.co/2PSYLLmll1

[Brendan @elbrendan]

National Park Service bureaucrats are calling current exec leadership fascist, yet they are throwing folks in prison for **checks notes** sports broadly allowed in Europe w/o regs

Yes, the NPS imprisoned a guy for 7 days last April for doing a BASE jump from El Cap, Yosemite

[Casey Norman @CaseyNormando]

Honored to launch @NCLAlegal’s 100th case in a challenge against Congress’s unconstitutional delegation of criminal lawmaking power to NPS, which has seen fit to criminalize BASE jumping in our national parks (among other heinous acts like roller skating)

Video credit:@elbrendan

[Pirate Wires @PirateWires]

On June 8th, 2001, Frank Gambalie III hiked for 20 miles to the summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and set up camp. After waking up the next morning, he put his BASE jumping suit on, jumped off El Capitan's steep face, and flew.

On the ground, park rangers were waiting to arrest him. Instead of surrendering, Gambalie ran to the nearby Merced River, ditched his gear, flipped the rangers off, and dove head first into the water. Nearly a month later, the 28-year-old’s body was recovered by Yosemite divers 300 yards from where he had entered.

While there is no law against recreational wingsuit jumping on the books, criminal charges are based on a National Park Service attorney’s interpretation of a 34-word subsection of a 1966 regulation known as the “aerial delivery rule”, which was written to prevent supply drops by aircraft within the parks. Explanations for the enforcement range from aesthetics – since the 1980s the NPS has maintained that the sport is “too free-spirited and unmanageable” – to public safety, though the fatality rate for BASE jumping in the U.S. in 2023 was zero.

The full story, however, is more complex, and darker.

Today in Pirate Wires, wingsuit adventurer and BASE Access Board President @elbrendan chronicles the ‘Yosemite Mafia’ –a corrupt group of agents within the National Parks Service whose crimes include kidnapping and child molestation– and the ongoing war against the sport he loves.

Read the full story on our site 👇

[Pirate Wires @PirateWires]

"One of the first rangers to weaponize the aerial delivery rule against BASE jumpers was Marshall “Scott” Connelly, a high-ranking member of the Yosemite Mafia, an informal group of park bureaucrats accused of abusing federal power to pursue their own personal goals. Through strategic alliances that reached across multiple federal agencies, this group amassed the power to quash external federal investigations, steal and destroy land from private owners within and adjacent to park land, and grant themselves luxurious perks, such as taxpayer-subsidized housing beside the most scenic meadows below Yosemite Falls.

Connelly himself was investigated (but never charged) for illegally wiretapping a citizen critical of Yosemite leadership. Later, he was implicated in a pattern of kidnapping and molesting teenage boys in and around the park (he was charged on two counts, but only after rumors had swirled within the agency, without response, for a decade). Sufficiently removed from Washington, yet at the head of America’s most consequential park, the Yosemite Mafia had become unassailable."- @elbrendan

Get the full scoop on the Yosemite Mafia on Pirate Wires

[Brendan @elbrendan]

It's 2024 and @YosemiteNPS is still pursuing criminal sentences against wingsuit flyers, including one jumper who served a 7-day prison sentence this year for an El Cap flight

Regulators shouldn't be able to define crimes out of thin air. It's time to strengthen nondelegation!