National Recreation Areas are playgrounds. National Forests are mildly limited playgrounds. National Wildlife Refuges are strongly regulated playgrounds. Using a National Park as a playground is immature self-entitlement.
I think the jumpers are not impairing them for future generations, but some others are.
More than 60 people have died on Half Dome and very few of them are BASE jumpers. The cable path up there doesn't seem to "maximise preservation".
http://www.yosemitehikes.com/yosemite-valley/half-dome/half-...
Choosing to allow some things while disallowing others is not hypocrisy. It's thoughtful decision-making.
How is this particular to BASE as opposed to any of the myriad of other things that people are allowed to do in national parks? It seems to me that a horse blocking my view would interfere with scenery, or seeing a line of people walking up the cables, or climbers dotting the peak, or any number of other things would interfere just as much, if not more. A BASE jump is over in minutes. It can take days to climb some of the bigger faces.
The cables today were put up in 1919, but follow closely both the style and path of the first ascent of Half Dome, which took place in 1875, 15 years _before_ Yosemite became a National Park. The first ascentionist basically drilled a bunch of holes up the side of the dome and used sticks or poles or something stuck in them to pull his way up like a ladder. In a sense the Cable Route thus really does "provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner" as Yosemite was before it was a park :)
In any case, and I say this as someone who spends a lot of time in Yosemite, it's best to think of the ditch as a big piece of land that we are sacrificing so that people can have some appreciation of what real wilderness is like and (hopefully) want to protect it. Most certainly nothing going on there is about keeping it preserved in it's original state.
Part of the reason it's so dangerous is because it's illegal. I used to assume people flew at night because it was a beautiful time to fly; I had no idea the legal status had such an influence on when they chose to jump.
One of the inconsistencies that's not mentioned in the article is the way the park service harasses these climbers/ jumpers, but then calls on those same elite climbers to rescue ordinary citizens who get in trouble in the park.
Part of the reason it's illegal is because it's so dangerous. The argument goes that park services have limited resources for search and rescue. Engaging in such an inherently dangerous activity inevitably causes a lot of incidents draining those resources.
I like BASE and fully support those who choose to participate. But maybe banning BASE in the parks isn't the worse idea. Some famous BASE spots in Europe have outlawed jumping after numerous deaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_Wall#BASE_Jumping
It's not like this is a sport that thrives on legality anyway.
From the Wikipedia article. It's not like BASE is illegal overall here in the US either, we still have Bridge Day and such.
You hit the crux of the argument though, some parks don't want jumpers because they represent an inordinate drain on their resources and risk to their personnel.
What I was trying to say was: In Norway they say, don't jump here please, jump over there.
The reasons in the wikipedia article are no longer valid apart from the instability of the wall and talus.
It's a lot like illegal drugs. It's a fun activity that's bad for the participants and exposes external costs on society. Seems like the standard solution of "legalize, tax, and regulate" would also apply here. Rather than simply ban these activities, maybe they should be made to bear the costs of rescue, either by putting liability on to them after the fact, or charging a fee up front.
I've done rescue work in Alaska for most of the last ten years, and I've followed rescue-related issues fairly well for a long time. Elite athletes like Dean and Graham do not drain rescue resources. The bulk of rescue work centers around ordinary people who get into situations where they find themselves over their heads.
By the time people like Dean and Graham need help, they've typically already helped a good number of people because they have the skills to do so. Their contribution to the pool of rescue resources is a net positive.
Edit for substance: I like it because it portrays them as constructive members of a resilient community instead of as drains on a public fund. People are more important than numbers and it wasn't my intention to argue otherwise.
While a National Park is owned by the government, in limiting allowed activities in the park, the Park Service is actually exercising the same rights that a private property owner has - you are the Park Services guests, the Park Service can request that you reframe from engaging in a variety of activities and naturally has a variety of reasons.
That's the way, uh, capitalism worked the last time I checked. In "the World", I would suppose that private property owners who like BASE jumping would be able to sponsor it on their land. Then if the state steps in with restrictions, we can complain about nanny states and such.