L Roebuck
Technical Support
Caving
^V^ Just a caver
Posts: 2,023
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Post by L Roebuck on Sept 8, 2006 8:43:29 GMT -5
New River Gorge BRIDGE DAY will be held October 21st 2006!Spectators will stand on the New River Gorge Bridge and watch Base Jumping, Rappelling and Highline Activities for over six hours from the single-arch span. Bridge Day RappelThe 2006 Bridge Day Rappel will consist of several teams who will be allowed to ascend and/or descend a fixed rope from the catwalk beneath the New River Gorge Bridge on Bridge Day. Bridge Day Rappel teams are chosen by a lottery drawing in June of each year. The rappel participant must be a seasoned rappeller with proper rack training who has successfully completed at least a 250’ rappel. He/she must be familiar with the skills, equipment, and rescue techniques associated with rappelling. A group of individuals wishing to participate in the Bridge Day Rappel next year must choose a group leader who submits an application for his/her team in the lottery drawing. Each team must have all the necessary rappelling equipment. Individuals must have his/her own rappelling/ascending gear. The rappel information for the upcoming Bridge Day is distributed each year in March. Signing up for Bridge Day Rappel 2006 1. Form a team and choose a group leader 2. Submit application by June 10, 2006 3. Chosen teams drawn in lottery will be contacted. Bridge Day High LineThe high line will return to Bridge Day this year. Retired Army Sergeant Lucian Dean and his rigging team will rig the same high line as last year. The high line rider will slide approximately 700 feet down a rope attached to the bridge’s catwalk to the Fayette Station Road below. The high line is open to the media and the general public. You too can have the ride of a lifetime! The high line rider will receive a high line orientation, safety briefing, and be outfitted with the proper equipment. Please call for info on how to sign up. For more information on Bridge Day Rappel & High Line Contact Passages To Adventure Rt. 19, Maple Lane/POB 71 Fayetteville, WV 25840 www.officialbridgeday.comwww.bridgeday.info
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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Oct 19, 2006 20:30:34 GMT -5
Participants drop in for Bridge DayOne-third to make first BASE jumps Steve Keenan October 18, 2006 FAYETTEVILLE — About 450 BASE jumpers from 10 countries will again serve as a centerpiece of the activities at Bridge Day this Saturday. This year’s jumpers will include five from China, and about one-third will be making their first BASE (Building, Antenna, Span and Earth) jump. Bridge Day, sponsored by WV Dodge Dealers, is the only time of the year legal BASE jumping is allowed on National Park Service property, so the event attracts participants from near and far to step onto the railing of the New River Gorge Bridge and hurl themselves 876 feet to the landing zone below. Some aim for a marked-off spot on the beach for purposes of their standing in an accuracy contest, while others specifically target a splashdown in the softer waters of the New River. “We still want to expand jumping at NRGB by jumping from the catwalk,” says BASE coordinator Jason Bell, echoing an idea previously bandied about. “We estimate that there are approximately 1,000 jumpers and family members in town for the weekend and they'll spend nearly $500,000 alone. “Imagine the economical boom if jumping were legal more than six hours a year. Twin Falls, Idaho, supports us year-round with legal jumping and hundreds of jumpers spend a lot of money each weekend through the summer.” Jump times Saturday are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jumpers will commence their death-defying plunges once two rappellers attach American and state flags to the bridge. A 16-foot aluminum diving board will be in play again this year, according to the Web site of Vertical Visions, the Bridgeport-based company owned by Bell, who has coordinated the BASE jumping events the past few years. This year’s participants will still depart from two stages anchored near the center of the bridge. The accuracy contest will be conducted during the first round of jumps. Prizes will be awarded to the top jumpers. It is a quick eight seconds from the bridge to the water of the New River. Most jumpers will fall from the bridge for 3 to 4 seconds before deploying their parachutes. Then they’ll spend the next 20 to 30 seconds floating down to the designated landing zone located at the water’s edge. In 2005, 384 jumpers showed up out of 450 originally registered for the event. According to www.vertical-visions.com, at least two dozen countries were represented, including India, Peru, Norway, Australia and Belgium. The average jumper had 49 base jumps and 1,226 skydives to his credit before participating. According to Bridge Day rappel coordinator Benjy Simpson, 23 teams will rappel off the bridge’s catwalk at the festival Saturday.
There are three new teams at this year’s event — Monongahela Grotto, Derby City Highlanders and High Riders — and one — Cleveland Grotto — that was not at Bridge Day 2005 but participated previously.
The majority of the rappellers are either cavers, firemen, EMTs, rescue personnel, climbers or rope instructors. This year’s rappellers will hail from Canada, West Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and Florida.The teams will rappel distances between 700 and 850 feet, depending on their respective anchor spot on the catwalk. The team chosen first, Extreme Rappels, is given the anchor spot farthest from the bridge’s south side and, therefore will have the longest rappel. Members of Extreme Rappel will be raising and lowering the American and West Virginia flags. About 9 a.m., the event will begin with Terry Zornes and Dr. Peter Hertl ascending a rope with the flags. At 3 p.m., Michael Phelps and John Cadle will conclude the day’s activities by rappelling with the flags. Simpson and his whitewater rafting company, Passages To Adventure, have been coordinating the Bridge Day rappel since 1992. During that time, there have been 2,615 rappellers doing over 5,000 rappels with only one injury. Bruce Smith will again be the safety officer for the rappel. Smith is the co-author of On Rope, universally recognized as the authoritative book on single rope techniques. He owns and operates On Rope 1, a company that trains, educates, manufactures and markets custom rope climbing equipment. Smith says, “The New River Gorge Bridge is one of the best long rappels in the world.”The high line will also return to Bridge Day this year. This will be the seventh year retired Army Sgt. Lucian Dean and his team of experts have rigged the high line. Last year, 129 brave souls slid 600 feet down a rope from the catwalk to Fayette Station Road. The first Bridge Day high line was in 1994. Visit www.passagestoadventure.com for more information about the Bridge Day rappel. The New River Gorge Bridge is the second-longest single-arch bridge in the world. It is the longest single-arch bridge in the Western Hemisphere. The bridge, 876 feet above the New River, is the second-highest single-arch bridge in the United States. Bridge Day is recognized as the state’s largest one-day festival and also one of the top 100 festivals in North America. It has been estimated that Bridge Day directly contributes $1 million directly to the local economy of southern West Virginia. For more, visit www.officialbridgeday.com, www.876ft.com or www.WVBridgeDay.com. Article
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Post by Sharon Faulkner on Oct 21, 2006 19:53:52 GMT -5
Pioneering Chutist Jumps to His DeathSaturday, October 21, 2006 (10-21) 16:59 PDT Fayetteville, W.Va. (AP) -- Thousands of people watched a pioneering parachutist jump to his death from a bridge during a festival Saturday when his chute opened too late, a sheriff said. Brian Lee Schubert, 66, died of injuries suffered when he hit the water 876 feet below the New River Gorge Bridge during West Virginia's annual Bridge Day festival, said Fayette County Sheriff Bill Laird. Schubert, from Alta Loma, Calif., had been well known in the sport of BASE jumping since 1966, when he and a friend became the first people to jump from El Capitan, a nearly 3,000-foot-tall rock formation, in California's Yosemite National Park. The sport's acronym stands for the places jumpers usually leap from: buildings, antennae, spans and earth. Lew Whitener, a newspaper photographer covering the annual Bridge Day festival for the Register-Herald of Beckley, said it appeared Schubert's chute didn't start to open until he was about 25 feet above the water. The crowd gave a collective gasp, he said. "It was everybody kind of held their breath then an eerie silence afterward. Everybody kind of looked at each other and said 'Wow,'" Whitener said. A large rock obscured the crowd's view of the man's body hitting the water, Whitener said. The fatality is the first since 1987 at Bridge Day, a popular event that typically draws an estimated 100,000 spectators and about 400 parachutists to the southern part of the state. For one day a year, the National Park Service allows people to parachute off the world's second largest single-span bridge to the national river below. The bridge, a well-known icon in West Virginia, is featured on the back of the state's quarter. To qualify to jump off the bridge, applicants must have skydived at least 50 times. Jumping at the festival continued after Schubert's body was recovered and taken to a funeral home. Laird said officials allowed it because weather didn't appear to be a factor in the accident. There were 804 separate jumps Saturday, officials said. "No measurable winds or anything would appear to have contributed to adverse conditions making this any more dangerous than base jumping would ordinarily be," Laird said. Mathis Reimann, who jumped within an hour after the accident, said Schubert's death made him think about safety. "It's a dangerous sport and makes it clear that you really have to be careful," said Reimann, who lives in Michigan. Since 1981, there have been at least 100 BASE jump fatalities around the world, according to the World BASE Fatality List, a Web site maintained by a BASE jumper. www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/10/21/national/a165945D81.DTL
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