5 Most Popular Spots for BASE Jumping

Adored by hikers, rock climbers and campers, Yosemite National Park in California is a BASE jumper's dream. In fact, that's where the sport got its start. In 1966, Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert made the first free fall from El Capitan's 3,000-foot (914.40-meter) vertical face [source: Iqbal]. In the beginning, park rangers didn't mind the BASE jumpers. Now the sport is expressly verboten from Yosemite's cliffs. In the summer of 2010, Ammon McNeely, the so-called "El Cap Pirate," was Tased by a park ranger. That December, he pleaded guilty in federal court to "air delivery of a person by parachute" [source: Smiley].

While some countries welcome BASE jumpers, in the United States these free-falling devil-may-care athletes guard their favorite haunts. Officials in New York City banned BASE jumping in 2006 after Jeb Corliss attempted to jump off the Empire State Building. However, there are some places, such as the Perrine Bridge in Idaho, where jumpers can legally take the plunge. Nevertheless, El Capitan is still a favorite location, even with the rangers on the prowl. Its smooth granite face is perfect -- no outcroppings on which to hit. Those that do make it to Yosemite do so stealthily. To avoid being seen, BASE jumpers say they have to fall farther than they should before pulling their chutes [source: Smiley].

Norway is the land of testosterone. Leif Ericsson, the famous Norse sailor, discovered North America long before Christopher Columbus. The feats of polar explorer Roald Amundsen are legendary. He was the first to travel the Northwest Passage, and after learning that someone else had become the first to make it to the North Pole, he turned south for Antarctica [source: PBS]. So it's no wonder that Norway embraces BASE jumping. One of the top places to jump is the Troll Wall, which is part of the Troll Peaks. It supposedly has the greatest vertical drop in Europe, at 3,600 feet (1,097.28 meters) [source: Iqbal].

Although BASE jumping is legal in Norway, it is illegal from the Troll Wall because rescuers have a hard and dangerous time getting to jumpers if something goes wrong. That's why experts say only experienced BASE jumpers should attempt a jump from The Troll. The rock face is loose and craggy, but the views are spectacular [source: BASE Romsdalen].

Built for the World's Fair in 1889, the Eiffel Tower is one of this planet's most iconic landmarks. BASE jumpers have launched themselves from the spiky edifice for years. Built by Gustave Eiffel, the tower rises 1,063 feet (324 meters) above Paris. It's almost twice as high as the Washington Monument. Supposedly, in 1912, a French inventor named Franz Reichelt made the first jump from the tower to test his new parachute invention. It didn't work [source: Wilson]. Since then, many people have jumped from the observation deck and landed safely -- or not. In 2005, a Norwegian man died while BASE jumping off the tower [source: Park].

Jeb Corliss is nuts, crazy, a couple burgers short of a Happy Meal. There's no other way to describe it. Corliss, the BASE jumping guru, has plied his extreme sport on nearly every continent. He's jumped from the Eiffel Tower, tried his best to soar from the Empire State Building and even flown through a Swiss waterfall [source: Finighan].

Yet, I think, one of his craziest stunts was flying through a tiny crack in Tianmen Mountain in Hunan, China. Jumping from a helicopter swirling 6,000 feet [1,828.80 meters] overhead, the winged Corliss bailed out and flew like a Marvel Comic hero roughly 75 miles (120.7 kilometers) an hour through the mountain's 4,265-foot (1,299.9 meter) hole. No biggie, right? Um, the hole was just 100 feet [30.48 meters] wide. One wrong shrug of the shoulder, one errant breeze, would have pushed Corliss into the mountain's side. You have to see this to believe it.

If you can't BASE jump off the tallest structure in the world, what's the point? In 2010, Nasr Al Nivadi and Omar Al Hegelan, asked for, and were given permission to jump off the Burj Khalifa Tower, in Dubai. Standing at 2,716 feet (828 meters), the tower is the tallest structure in the world. Al Nivadi and Al Hegelan jumped from the Burj Khalifa Tower a day after it officially opened, and set a new world record for the highest base jump. It was over pretty fast, though. Falling at 136 miles (218.87 kilometers) per hour, it took the two men just one minute and 30 seconds to reach the ground. [source: BBC].