Sunshine Superman Page #2

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the motive.

I've been skydiving for 18 years now

and I've been filmmaking

for just as long.

Primarily, I consider myself a filmmaker

first and a skydiver second.

So whatever he did, he wanted to capture

on film the best way he could.

I think he wanted to show the humanity,

the freedom, that is felt

when you are pushing the envelope of

what the human spirit can accomplish.

Yosemite is beautiful.

It's breathtaking.

Many people cry when they first see it.

It's beyond their expectation,

beyond their experience.

I was the chief ranger in

Yosemite National Park.

And my job was protection.

So protecting the park from the people

and the people from the park

and the people from the people.

Where did you get the inclination

to jump off a cliff?

Well, this comes from making

1500 parachute jumps over 15 years

and becoming so proficient at it

that you wonder,

well, what else is out there?

El Capitan.

3,600 feet of polished granite

rising from California's

Yosemite Valley.

For climbers, its vertical ascent

is one of the great challenges

of North America.

A group of professional parachuters

traveled to this unique spot

to experience flight.

When I organized the first load

to go to El Capitan,

we spent nearly all summer there,

four or five trips,

scouting of the geography, finding,

hopefully, places suitable to jump.

Then we stumbled upon

this really idyllic place

that's about 3,000 feet tall

with an overhang

of a couple hundred feet.

And as soon as I saw it I yelled,

"Eureka!"

The pioneers of this remarkable

attempt

are skydivers Kent Lane and Tom Stark.

Along with Kenny Gosselin, Mike Sherrin

and helper Sally Wenlzel.

Expedition leader Carl Boenish

with Dave Blattell.

Carl, on his own, was doing

a lot of research on El Cap.

He then asked me

to help him with the filming of it.

I wanted to figure out a way,

if possible,

to film a person running off a cliff.

But from a vantage point

looking back toward the cliff.

The first jumps were going to be made

off El Cap

and Carl wanted to get

motion-picture footage

of the first jumpers running towards him

jumping off the cliff

and then that way he could then follow

them down as they were in free fall.

Actually, I made a homemade ladder

that's about 20 feet long

out of aluminum.

I perched on the end of this ladder

so I could film toward the cliff.

It was a long pole.

And it had some crosspieces on it

to kind of make it like

a little bit of a ladder.

When it was set up

by the rock climbers on El Cap,

it was just this rod sticking out

from the mountain

with a little bicycle seat.

And if you were going to sit on

that bicycle seat,

there's nothing between you

and 3,000 feet below you.

I mean, it was just nothing.

He would go out there...

and then he'd have to get up the nerve

and swing 180

so that he could sit on that seat.

He was nuts.

He was absolutely nuts.

Then you would hear his laugh

and you were guaranteed

that he was nuts.

And he talked us into jumping off

this thing.

So we're all nuts.

We were all young and not knowing

any better. We're ready to go.

Kent Lane,

first jumper off of the first trip.

Two and a half years' jumping,

600 jumps.

My name is Kent Lane.

The first time I heard about it,

it sounded like really a neat thing

to do.

I was scared to death.

When I was out on this ladder,

I'd make sure everyone was ready.

And I would start the countdown.

Five, four, three, two, one, go!

I saw a wall, a huge granite wall,

accelerating right next to me.

When you exit off of a cliff,

there's no wind to work with.

And so how you go off

is how you're going to stay

for the next four or five seconds.

Can't wait to do it again.

And so once we got down

on the ground

we had ground crew

that took our gear

and they placed them under rocks

or under logs. It is all mapped out.

We were all dressed up as hikers.

All we did was we'd land and stood

and ground crew changed us

from skydiver to hiker.

And then we just, you know, dispersed.

We were entirely successful

in all our cliff jumps

because I feel that we were

constantly led by the idea

that we were glorifying mankind's

beautiful spirit of seeking adventure

and that we were within our rights of

freedom and dominium over all the Earth.

There are many man-made laws that aren't

laws at all that need to be broken.

One is a belief that it's impossible

to jump off a cliff.

I felt the activity

I thought was exciting.

And to do it off of El Cap

just trigged my imagination.

I thought that was wonderful.

I didn't feel adversarial,

but it didn't keep me

from doing my job at times.

It didn't seem

like it was going to stop.

How do you herd a bunch of cats?

We had word that there were

going to be cliff jumpers

coming into the top of El Cap.

And it was against the law.

This is a cat-and-mouse part of it.

A couple weeks later

when Carl and I went back

and we jumped off,

I got caught by the ranger.

I was the first person ever caught

for BASE jumping in Yosemite.

Tom Stark, Dave Blattell

and Jill Morgan got citations.

I was an attorney for

the Federal Government.

So I couldn't represent them.

But I did a lot of pro bono work

for them

and we were trying to challenge

their park's regulation.

Speaking of El Capitan, there have been

some controversies around that.

Apparently the park did not want people

jumping off their cliffs.

Yeah. That's true. And we can

certainly see their point of view.

But they just didn't understand.

In fact, they couldn't even believe

that we just jumped off.

Basically, we will just jump off

and fall for ten seconds

and fall over a thousand feet.

I found most of the jumpers

very agreeable.

Carl was special. You kind of have

an instinct about the ringleaders.

He was easy to remember.

He had this aura of life.

You don't have to dislike someone

to take away their freedom.

My name is Carl Boenish.

I'm expedition of this leader.

Cut.

The park ranger at the time

that issued these citations

was aware that Carl was involved in it.

What did you say

with respect to the filming?

OK, they asked me, you know,

whose equipment it was

and first of all they said,

"Where is Carl?"

You know, I mean,

where is Carl Boenish?

- Really?

- Yeah. They're out for blood.

Somehow we got involved with rangers.

The film was confiscated.

Carl was very concerned about his film.

One of those what was there

was the park ranger

that sort of had this vendetta

against Carl

and they continued to press

the litigation aspect.

We don't want to be limited

by anything except nature.

We always have to listen

to nature's laws.

But not necessarily man's laws.

The US Magistrate, Don Pitts,

he was kind of tired of seeing

this parade of cliff jumpers coming in.

So he was throwing the book at him.

I know that the park ranger

was really trying to focus on Carl.

I don't mind being called paranoid,

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