He was 66 and known as a legend by fans one-third his age. “They treated us like the sky kings,” said Mike Pelkey, 66, of Simi Valley, who made the famous El Capitan jump with him.

He base jumped off of El Capitan, often narrowly and sometimes not so narrowly escaping the rangers upon landing in the meadow below. Once, he got tased by the rangers after jumping the formation.

After 1,500 jumps from airplanes, he turned his attention to jumping from fixed objects, such as the El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park in California. The problem: It was illegal.

BASE jumping owes its contemporary origins largely to Carl Boenish, who in the late 1970s led a group of skydivers off El Capitan, the iconic granite wall in Yosemite National Park.

Together with four friends, he made the first-ever official BASE jump off the 3,000 feet vertical cliff known as El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, California.

No one knows why Schubert didn’t open his parachute until too late in the jump. But in front of some 145,000 spectators, his daughter and El Cap jumping partner Pelkey, the 66-year-old from Alta ...

Four chutists leaped from the top of El Capitan in October 1999 in a protest intended to showcase the safety of BASE jumping. Davis, 60, of Santa Barbara, plunged 3,500 feet to her death when her ...

In 1966, Brian Schubert and a buddy strapped parachutes to their backs and leaped off Yosemite's 3000-foot-high El Capitan cliff - and unwittingly inspired the worldwide extreme sport of base jumping.

Mrs Davis's death was the second related to BASE jumping in Yosemite this year, and the sixth in the park since rangers began counting. Last June, Frank Gambalie successfully jumped from El ...