From his perch on the 3,000-foot wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, Charles Winstead heard the unexpected whoosh of a BASE jumper’s parachute and looked up.
“I turned on my camera and, sure enough, there was a couple more, and then a couple more, and a couple more,” said Mr. Winstead, 57, a rock climber who has been ascending El Capitan for much of this month.
And that was just on Oct. 1, the first day of the government shutdown. In a cellphone interview on Friday from about 1,000 feet up, he said he had seen roughly 20 jumps so far.
BASE jumping, in which participants parachute off fixed objects such as buildings or cliffs, is illegal in Yosemite and all 62 other national parks because of “the significant safety risks it poses to participants, the public and first responders,” the National Park Service said in a statement.
But as the shutdown heads into its fourth week, the adventure sport has become a symbol of the chaos that park employees and other experts fear might take hold as major parks are left open to the public while much of their staff is furloughed.
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