Sanctioned BASE jumping at Foresthill Bridge?
By Ed Fletcher, Sacramento Bee
Built to accompany the long-delayed and never-completed Auburn Dam, the unusually long legs of the Foresthill Bridge has teased parachute daredevils for decades.
With its forest-green deck 730 feet above the American River Canyon, the bridge is the fourth highest span in the United States. The bridge’s height, combined with its proximity to a major population center and an interstate highway, make it an extremely desirable site for BASE jumpers worldwide. (BASE is an acronym for the four categories of fixed objects enthusiasts jump from: Building, Antenna, Span, Earth.)
But while the span was immortalized in the action movie “xXx” in 2002 – with an extreme sport athlete played by Vin Diesel driving a stolen Corvette off the bridge and leaping from the car midflight to parachute to safety – there are very few legal opportunities for real life extreme sport athletes to jump from the span.
That may soon be changing.