In federal shutdown, illegal BASE jumping booms at Yosemite

Zabrok, a 66-year-old Canadian, had just completed his 924th career evening bivouacked on El Capitan. And yet this was new to him. Day after day during the government shutdown, Zabrok has watched parachutists in Yosemite National Park hurl themselves off the world’s most famous climbing wall, risking a $5,000 fine and up to six months in jail, at a time when half the staff is furloughed and the park gates are wide open.

These are not furtive leaps. The two parachutes — one black, one white — drifted down on a sunny Friday morning, floating over the heads of tourists and climbers already lined up in the valley, before alighting gently in the meadow. In the past, Yosemite veterans say, illicit BASE jumping, a sport in which people parachute from fixed objects — the acronym refers to bridges, antennas, spans and earth — was typically done by one or two daredevils under the cover of dusk or dawn. These days, teams of jumpers are throwing themselves off the summit in broad daylight.

The rash of illegal BASE jumping — greeted by cheers and whoops from the climbers suspended at various stages of the 3,000-foot monolith — has become a symbol of the overstretched defenses of the Park Service during the first month of the Trump administration’s shutdown.

“The most BASE jumpers I have ever seen in 30 years and 60 seasons on El Cap jumped off on a single morning and it was eight guys,” Zabrok said. “Never seen anything like it.”

Most national parks have remained open, with limited staffing, since the shutdown began Oct. 1. And much of what visitors encounter in Yosemite, one of park system’s crown jewels, feels relatively normal, despite an absence of National Park Service rangers. Bathrooms are still getting cleaned. Cafeterias and shops remain open. Law enforcement rangers and search-and-rescue crews are on-site and getting paid, according to park staff. Most tourists tread lightly.

“I think this place lends itself to a feeling of awe and respect,” Perry Norris, a retired conservationist and veteran climber, said from the meadow below El Capitan.

And yet a bend-the-rules undercurrent seems to be coursing through the large fall crowds who can now visit Yosemite free, cruising through unstaffed ranger booths that used to collect $35 for entry.

“When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” said Dustin Weatherford, a climber and former member of Yosemite Search and Rescue.

Around the time the parachutes were drifting down on Friday, Jerry Miller, an 80-year-old photographer who documents climbers, watched as a man lie on his back in the middle of Northside Drive, a main drag through Yosemite Valley, trying to frame a photo of his girlfriend with El Capitan in the background, while a large group of friends mingled in the road.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on X last week that Yosemite was “fully staffed” and that “unauthorized camping, squatting, and illegal activities like BASE jumping are being addressed with firm, appropriate law enforcement action.”

But the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit advocate for the country’s parks, said that about 200 employees are furloughed at Yosemite, about 50 percent of the staff. That’s on top of the cuts that happened earlier in the Trump administration, slicing away roughly a quarter of the Park Service workforce across the country.

More than 450 former Park Service employees sent a letter to Burgum on Thursday calling on him to close national parks during the shutdown, citing the Yosemite BASE jumping and a wildfire near an unstaffed campground in Joshua Tree National Park, among other incidents.

In a statement to The Washington Post, the National Park Service noted a “significant surge in visitation” at Yosemite in October due to free entry and good weather but said visitors have shared “glowing feedback about their experiences” at the park, with no issues of trash buildup or unsanitary conditions. The agency said it had three reports of BASE jumping that it is investigating.

Over two days last week, a Post reporter witnessed five BASE jumpers and was told of a sixth person in a wingsuit.

The NPCA has been monitoring parks across the country for signs of damage or disturbance as the shutdown drags on. So far, there have been reports of trash, illegal parking and unruly traffic, said Kati Schmidt, a spokesperson for the organization.

Earlier this month, a stone wall was toppled inside Gettysburg National Military Park. The Gettysburg Foundation, the park’s nonprofit partner, asked visitors to be vigilant against vandalism: “Think like the cavalry,” it suggested.

The shutdown has had financial consequences as well, costing national parks millions in lost revenue, experts say. A recent survey of national parks’ nonprofit partners showed those groups have lost some $4 million in revenue and laid off 250 employees due to disruptions caused by the shutdown, according to the Public Lands Alliance.

The Park Service said keeping national parks open sustains local communities and that visitor spending last year contributed $56 billion to the U.S. economy.

At Yosemite, ranger stations at park entrances stand empty. Nobody’s behind the counter at the Welcome Center — although volunteers from the Yosemite Conservancy, the park’s nonprofit partner, are inside disbursing tips to tourists. Many Park Service-led tours, nature walks and discussions are on hiatus, including the popular ask-a-climber service.

“It’s not a normal time in the park,” said Cory Goehring, outdoor programs manager and senior naturalist at the Yosemite Conservancy.

He encouraged visitors to bring an extra trash bag with them. Or clean a dirty bathroom if they see one. “Yosemite is open,” he said, “but it really depends on all of us to keep it that way.”

Last week, Candace and Brian Stegner, a married couple from San Francisco wearing matching fuzzy bear costumes, went for a walk to get away from someone playing music in the park’s Curry Village area.

“What’s sad is there are some people who are not, like, nature people, who are super loud,” Candace Stegner said. “Usually, there’s rangers everywhere.”

Zabrok and his climbing partner, Charles Winstead, hoisted themselves onto El Capitan in the days before the government shutdown began.

In 2013, during a prior shutdown, Zabrok had been on the wall, and he recalled hearing law enforcement rangers, known as “tools” in climber parlance, shooing away tourists with megaphones. As the park emptied out, he wondered who might respond if he tumbled off the rock. After the climb, he sneaked out.

“I was literally hiding behind a bear box, where we store the food, for fear that a tool would drive by and see me and say, ‘What are you doing here?’” he recalled.

This time, he made sure to be out of reach of the authorities in the event the park closed again, as he sought to add to his record-breaking total of 67 separate routes completed on El Capitan. Over the next three weeks, as they drank beer from their portaledge and inched up a route known as Space, the climbers had a bird’s-eye view as the shutdown unfolded.

“I think for the most part, people are respectful,” Winstead said. “We all love our parks and want to see them, you know, stay open and not get sold or leased out to oil and gas.”

On Oct. 1, they watched as Yosemite Search and Rescue recovered a 23-year-old climber, Balin Miller, who died after rappelling off the end of his rope. They also saw the rescue of a woman who got injured on what’s known as the Alcove rope swing, when she crashed back into the granite.

Yosemite Search and Rescue emergency services program manager, Jesse McGahey, wrote in an email that “we continue to respond to emergencies at the elite level that our Emergency Services Program is known for.” He said law enforcement, fire, EMS and search-and-rescue crews were fully staffed and paid during the shutdown.

October is a popular climbing month in Yosemite — with cool nights and warm days — and recent weather has been ideal. Tom Evans, 81, who appears in the meadow nearly every day to photograph and chronicle events on El Capitan, said that the roughly 30 climbers on the wall was low, given the conditions, particularly among foreign climbers.

“We’ve had some of the guys who went through a couple hours of interrogation just to get here,” Evans said. “With the whole ICE thing, the people who normally come from South America and Central America are very hesitant to come.”

When the BASE jumping began, Winstead’s Instagram posts of the parachutists soon attracted national attention. By the time they wrapped up their climb on Oct. 18, without reaching the summit, Zabrok estimated the pair had witnessed 15 to 20 people float past them.

Over the years, the cat-and-mouse game between BASE jumpers and rangers has taken tragic turns. In 1999, Frank Gambalie III ran away from park rangers after parachuting off El Capitan, but drowned in the Merced River trying to escape. A few months later, Jan Davis, who jumped in protest over Gambalie’s death, died when her parachute failed to open.

At night, the headlamps of the climbers on El Capitan glow like a string of patio lights draped over the great rock.

On Saturday evening, Rob Wasilauski, a Los Angeles film trailer producer and regular Yosemite tourist, watched the scene from a log in the meadow. All of a sudden a cheer erupted from climbers on the wall.

“Look at that,” Wasilauski said. “Oh my God.”

Out of the twilight three parachutes came into view, drifting one after another into the meadow. The three young men gathered up their chutes and retreated to the tree line to pack their gear.

The jumpers declined to give their names but said they were all professional skydivers, with hundreds of jumps from airplanes and cliffs. BASE jumping El Capitan was both career achievement to them and, at the moment, a political statement.

“This is peaceful protest, man,” one of them said. “We’re exercising our free will and our right to jump off a cliff that our taxpayer dollars go to.”

The three had hiked to the top of El Capitan earlier that day. When they launched off the summit, the free fall lasted some 15 seconds before they deployed the chute.

“I know there’s other jumpers in the park,” he added. “I mean, we’re all taking advantage of it.”

There were no rangers around. The young jumpers took their time packing up, then walked calmly through the meadow, before blending in with the other tourists enjoying a night at Yosemite.