A 27-year-old BASE jumper died Sunday when his wingsuit failed during a 700-foot jump in Utah – yet another fatality in the stunning 500-plus jumpers who have died in the extreme sport over the past 50 years.
The man, whose identity was withheld until his family could be notified, fatally plunged from a mountainous region in Utah near the small city of Millville, Cache County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Doyle Peck told news outlets.
Search-and-rescue crews responded to an emergency call from Leetham’s Hollow, an area of canyon walls and cliffs not unlike the Grand Canyon’s, at 9:10 a.m. Sunday.
The jumper was pronounced dead at the scene, Peck said in a statement.
BASE jumping with a wingsuit is not only exhilarating for the jumper, it has produced dozens of breathtaking videos on social media as the flyer glides at a high rate of speed over mountains and past canyon walls, eventually opening his chute before he lands.
Footage is often captured with a drone or another flyer who trails the jumper as well as by action cameras mounted on the jumper’s helmet, as seen in these 2022 videos:
“The only sport that has no injury,” commented one social media user, meaning a jumper either flies or dies.
“On today’s jump, something went wrong and he did not have enough lift with his wingsuit,” Sheriff Peck said. “He impacted the ground at a high rate of speed resulting in his death.”
The man was an “experienced” jumper, the sheriff said in an NBC report, and was part of a group of as many as 10 people also into the sport. BASE jumping is done with either a wingsuit or traditionally with a parachute alone.
The area, about 45 miles north of Ogden, is popular with jumpers.
A website called BASE FL (BASE Fatality List) keeps track of deaths from the sport around the world since 1981. Before Sunday, 541 deaths have been logged, with 15 deaths reported globally in 2026.
In June, two BASE jumpers died in separate accidents in Utah. One of them was Andy Lewis, who had a big social media following and also performed on a slack rope during Madonna’s 2012 Superbowl half time show.
The BASE acronym stands for “buildings, antennas, spans, earth” and was coined in 1978 after a photographer videotaped early jump from the towering El Capitan formation in California’s Yosemite National Park.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.