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So, Just How Dangerous is BASE Jumping

By Rocky Thompson on February 15th, 2012

Outside Magazine takes a look at BASE jumping fatalities and just how deadly the sport really is. Since 1981 there have been 180 deaths, and they breakdown how those have happened. The surprising leader is no-pulls, coming in at 38%. Another 30% hit something on the way down, and the remainder get tangled up or deploy their chute while falling sideways or backwards. It works out to add up to just 6 deaths per year, which doesn’t sound like too many until you consider that most people BASE jumping are seasoned skydiving pros with loads of experience. Outside also breaks down the most deadly BASE jumping sites, and notable mishaps that include an Eifel Tower jump and a couple El Cap stories.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 15th, 2012 at 10:00 am and is filed under Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “So, Just How Dangerous is BASE Jumping”

  1. PilotError February 15th, 2012 at 9:26 pm

    I thought this line was interesting, “Off-heading openings represent the most dangerous scenario in BASE jumping, because they’re completely random. ” This implies that the NoPull and Body/canopy strikes which combine to be 10x more likely to be cause of death, are really just pilot error and hence not as dangerous because they are not random. The “it won’t happen to me” complex is what causes that 80% cause of death from pilot error in the first place. It is base jumping, all of it is the most dangerous scenario.