| Idlewild – El Capitan Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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i have goosebumps when i hear this song. between 1998-2000 I was climbing and bouldering in Yosemite. El Capitan is the biggest monolith in continental US and quite popular with big wall climbers and base jumpers. I was there 1 late summer with some friends from Italy to boulder/climb rocks. While we were staying at camp4, that friday night had rumors flying around about an illegal base jump homage to some anniversary of someone's demise. Later that friday night, I read flyers from the ranger's station about their own warning about the organized anniversary base jump and that people caught will be receive full extent of the law (since it is illegal to base jump in yosemite natl park). The next day (saturday) my friends and I spent the morning bouldering camp4 area and ate pizza for lunch at curry village. we decided to head to the meadow facing "el cap" (as we climbers call it) and just laze around looking for big wall climbers. When we arrived at the parking area, there was quite a crowd and many cars parked including park ranger vehicles. We finally settled at the meadow area with a crowds of people scattered around. It seems pretty rare even during the summer months that this area would have quite a crowd. it didnt took us a long time to realize that there were people jumping off the face of el cap and that some people were cheering and clapping as they look up to this monstruos rock. The park rangers were already ready to wait for them to land and arrest them as we have seen them on the chase. The most unthinkable happened when after the 3rd person jumped off, the next person (which just looks like a dot when looking up) seemed like it just fell from the sky. Everyone on the area where we were were so shocked and didnt realized immediately that the shute didnt open! My friends and i didnt spoke for atleast 10mins because we didnt understood what just happened. Within 10minutes we were cleared on that grassy meadow while the SAR helicopter landed. When we went back to our camp at camp4 that evening, we've heard that it was a woman who borrowed her shute from someone because she didnt her shute to be confiscated the park rangers. Dan Osman, famous climber and base jumper at the yosemite valley also fell to his death. he was using his cell phone talking to a buddy while base jumping and an eerie silence just follwed. |
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