Episode #48 - Avery Badenhop

Avery Badenhop and Team Ill Vision

Matt Blank: [00:00:00] Welcome to Exit Point, a podcast about the advancement of BASE jumping and the exploration of its culture. I'm Matt Blank, producer and cohost. If you'd like to support this independent production, please visit our buy me a coffee link in the description and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Matt Blank: In this episode, we're talking to Avery Badenhop, Dennis McGlynn, and Harry Parker, known during the 90s as the three headed dragon of BASE. And founders of the infamous Team Ill Vision, which has been a timeless model for outlaw extreme sports gangs living an endless summer lifestyle. The leader of Team Ill Vision, Avery, is the quintessential counterculture athlete, creating a unique lifestyle that would inspire generations of jumpers to go all in and totally cut away from the mainstream.

Matt Blank: Dennis McGlynn is one of the first jumpers to perform BASE stunts for film and television. He is also a pioneer of manufacturing BASE specific [00:01:00] gear. Was one of the original FJC instructors and the first to be prosecuted by the federal government for BASE jumping. And the man with the perspective, Harry Parker has been an active jumper and photographer for more than three decades, participating in and capturing some of our community's historic moments.

Matt Blank: Harry helped put the face and voice to the BASE jumping lifestyle. Their team created a culture around the pursuit of BASE jumping. BASE jumping, opening the first public events, competitions, and demonstrations. Their access efforts helped open jumps on BLM land, the Perrine bridge, and recrafted bridge day in West Virginia, as well as forged paths to international BASE events, which have continued to grow over several decades.

Matt Blank: So without further ado. Let's get these original gangsters on the track. Avery Badenhop,

Matt Blank: thank you very much for joining us. 

Avery Badenhop: Good morning, Matt. I'm super happy to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me to be on BadenhopBadenhop this podcast. I came [00:02:00] along with a couple people. I got my buddy Dennis McGlynn here. How you doing? Thanks. And I also got Harry Parker. 

Matt Blank: Great to be here, Matt. So we've got a room full of legends and, what's going on around us right now.

Matt Blank: Where are we and, what's going down? We're 

Avery Badenhop: currently back in Moab for the Turkey Boogie 2023. And, we got groups of people and we got a whole gang here to celebrate Thanksgiving and, jump off rocks. 

Matt Blank: nice. Let's get into some, history. For the moment. There's a lot of people in town is like nearly what 350 400 BASE jumpers here 

Avery Badenhop: easy They're 

Matt Blank: everywhere.

Matt Blank: Okay. Let me ask you this when you started jumping in Moab. How many people 

Avery Badenhop: around? it was mostly just like us three and maybe three other people And what, 

Matt Blank: take us back to what year that was. 

Avery Badenhop: the first time I jumped in Moab was at Tombstone and it was 1995. 

Matt Blank: [00:03:00] 95. So nearly 30 years ago, nearly 30 years ago.

Matt Blank: I'd say that there's a large segment of our, community that. Is younger than that way, 

Avery Badenhop: younger, a lot of them. 

Matt Blank: And I understand that your daughter just started jumping. I saw her packing up a parachute just earlier. Yeah, 

Avery Badenhop: she did. She, the apple didn't fall far from the tree with my child and she's taken up the sport.

Avery Badenhop: It's pretty awesome. 

Matt Blank: let's take it back even further and, back to, Where did you first jump, take us through your progression and what year it 

Avery Badenhop: was? Okay, I started skydiving in 1981, when I was living in Hawaii and then by the Early nineties, I was living in California. I took up skydiving again in California and it was during the early nineties when people started showing up with BASE jumping videos, showing us this new thing that people were doing.

Avery Badenhop: It was like, Oh my goodness, BASE jump. You guys are out of your mind. 

Matt Blank: I'm imagining [00:04:00] BASE jumping videos back then like reel to reel cameras on people's heads. What was the deal there? Oh, that 

Avery Badenhop: was back in the days of the brick. And actually Dennis is the person who took me on my first BASE jump and it's, interesting to see how teaching BASE jumping has come a long way.

Avery Badenhop: 'cause Dennis did a great job, but it was like so rudimentary and basic. Dennis? Okay. Oh yeah. 

Dennis McGlynn: It was a little different than it is today. There was no courses to go sign up for kinda, the mentorship was all about. 

Matt Blank: then, here's what I want to hear. I want to hear that story of your first jump from both of your perspectives, because I got to say it's always different from the person doing it than the person teaching it.

Avery Badenhop: Okay. So I was, I was skydiving in Petaluma in 1993 and the DZO needed some help. And so he called some people from Lodi and, bill sent, Dennis. Steve Jester, Rick Payne, and Frank Everhart over to Petaluma to come out and [00:05:00] be Tandem Masters and video guys. And so when they showed up, not Frank, he was just a skydiver, but Steve, And Dennis and Rick, they were showing me and my buddy Seth, these videos of BASE jumping.

Avery Badenhop: And it was like, it was old school stuff. It was just like, so crazy. And we're just like, no way we're not doing that. Six months later, there I am up at the Auburn bridge with Dennis and Brenda. And it's and back then all it was like, this is how you pack, hold this little pilot shoot in your hand and jump off and count to three and then throw it.

Avery Badenhop: That was like, count to three. That's how you learn to BASE jump. 

Harry Parker: Damn! 

Avery Badenhop: Huh Dennis? 

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah, it was December 12th, I think. It was. Yeah, it was, we took a lot of people out to the Auburn Bridge, we had a nice place to go take people for their first jump. Told them to keep their head high, they'll be fine.

Dennis McGlynn: Count to three, they'd count to one usually, They just had to have a little bit of canopy control. [00:06:00] It was a long landing area. Not as long as it is today, but it's a long landing here. It's like landing on an aircraft carrier. It was a great landing. And you just needed to land on it. Yeah. And he did good with that.

Dennis McGlynn: And he got the bug right away. 

Matt Blank: let me ask you this. is it scary at all watching somebody? Do a delay the first jump, are you nervous at all that they might mess something up or, back in the day, were you pretty confident that Avery was going to nail this? Pretty 

Dennis McGlynn: confident he was going to nail it.

Dennis McGlynn: But yeah, it's always scary watching anybody make their first BASE jump. You just never know what's going to happen, really. Yeah. 

Matt Blank: Avery, was it, scary? Take us through your, experience of this. 

Avery Badenhop: every BASE jump is really scary. But that's what it's all about. That's what we do. And I was so ignorant of really what was going on.

Avery Badenhop: it was just like, it was perfect because I was just having fun. I'm all, Oh, this is obviously going to be fun. I learned how to pack this parachute. This guy told me exactly what to do. We're all [00:07:00] good. Here we are. And then as soon as I landed. as soon as Dennis landed, I told him, Hey, I need to order one of those rigs.

Avery Badenhop: You build. 

Matt Blank: Yeah. What kind of rig were you jumping? What was the canopy? What was the container? What was the rig 

Avery Badenhop: that I was using was a vision built by gravity sports, which is Dennis McGlynn. And back then, one of the hottest canopies of the day was a Raven three. And so I was jumping to 

Matt Blank: Raven three, 

Matt Blank: talk us through that.

Matt Blank: What's, what kind of technology was put into that? 

Avery Badenhop: a Raven at that point was basically a reserve canopy, so it was a more docile seven cell canopy, and so it was like just really desirable in the BASE community because, the first canopies that the, canopies that I had to use until I got my own built canopies, we were jumping Furies and Pegasus and cruise lights, and they were like so called hot canopies at the time.[00:08:00] 

Avery Badenhop: so getting into that and fortunately we, cat canopy development came along, but it was like, yeah, Raven was a hot canopy and I didn't is. Oh yeah, still 

Dennis McGlynn: is. I still jump a raven for. In the BASEball world? Yeah, that's my number one can of beans. ha I'd put 

Harry Parker: it anywhere. We could pick those things up for a hundred and fifty bucks.

Harry Parker: Brand new. And the reason that you could use them is because Raven was built for both main and reserve and it had an attachment point to attach the, bridle to. So it was a 

Matt Blank: chew in. How about the Lion Sets? Like, how did those things hold up? I, I see these videos from bridge day back when and like people blowing out line sets left and right.

Matt Blank: that's how 

Harry Parker: you knew he needed a new 

Dennis McGlynn: one. We figured out where they blew out. We learned, We blew them up. I blew several canopies up. Fix it. Go back. Go back at it. 

Avery Badenhop: one year And I think it was in Five. No, it was in 1994. There was a crew team called the [00:09:00] shooting stars and they were out in Davis.

Avery Badenhop: And I found out from one of the girls on the team that the team was getting a whole new set of canopies and they were going to sell their five old clapped out crew canopies. And they were furious. And I said, I will take all five of them. And we went out to Lake Powell and blew up three of 

Matt Blank: them. Okay.

Matt Blank: I've got. I've got, to get you guys to confirm or deny a rumor that I heard from Martin Tilly. Now he's refused to come on the podcast thus far. I'm trying to convince him, but one of the things that he told me during one of the interviews that I gave him over the phone was that back in the day, if you were going to learn, you had to bring 300 of burial money in case your parachute system failed.

Matt Blank: Your buddies weren't out to cash trying to bury you. Is he fucking with me, or is that something? 

Harry Parker: I'd rather owe it than, be, I'd rather be in debt for it than to actually [00:10:00] show up with the cash. Okay. 

Dennis McGlynn: That was a little more positive thinking, I think, than that. 

Matt Blank: Okay. So it wasn't quite that like these systems could fail at any time.

Matt Blank: You had some solid 

Dennis McGlynn: confidence in them. I had a lot of confidence in them. They were working. They were our skydiving canopies at the time. that's what we jumped as hot skydiving canopy. They were good. They just weren't made for the slider down type opening shocks that we were getting. And we learned, like a lot of the canopies were the B, B, line attachment points.

Dennis McGlynn: That's where they were blowing up. We beefed them up and preserves were already beefed up there. So we learned where they blew up. We fixed it up, we modified them in those places. I still jumped those canopies today. You got 

Harry Parker: to remember too, back in the, back, in the nineties and before it was all skydiving gear.

Harry Parker: I was jumping a warp three with a 26 flat Lopo reserve. what, where you're witnessing is moving and taking the skydiving stuff and [00:11:00] configuring it to make it work for BASE and eventually having BASE specific gear. So it was a transition. 

Matt Blank: I see. Okay. So Avery, take us through your progression.

Matt Blank: Did you jump these canopies in the sky world, or did you show up at the bridge and get handed something that was specifically, it's supposed to be jumped 

Avery Badenhop: there only. Oh, so in the skydiving that I had done leading up to me getting into BASE jumping, it was all on just skydiving gear. And I, I'm in, in 1992, I was jumping a thing called a rascal.

Avery Badenhop: And like the next year I got a saber. So skydiving was one thing. BASE jumping was really like this whole new thing. And so I had to like. Get involved in these different, this whole different canopy set that you use, these guys that started the BASE jumping thing with all the skydiving gear, they were really, renegades.

Avery Badenhop: And it's like really going outside of a box, if you will, with what they were [00:12:00] doing. And so in this interim period, during the eighties, leading up to the early nineties, when I got into it, like Dennis was saying, and Harry was saying. They started to learn about what was not working in skydiving gear for the BASE jumping environment, because BASE jumping really requires its own gear.

Avery Badenhop: I did, right after I made my first BASE jump, I immediately ordered my first. My own BASE rig and I got ahold of, the people that make the Ravens and I ordered a custom colored Raven is like just what I wanted because that's what we were doing. and then we had to start learning this new technology and getting the gear to be specific for what we were doing.

Avery Badenhop: Not any longer modifying somebody else's shit for our shit. 

Matt Blank: Okay. let me ask you this at the time, what was it like to get in, to the sport? Like into the community, what was it like to, try and convince [00:13:00] somebody to take you out on a first jump and then make equipment for you? What was, the reputations of BASE jumpers, at the time, 

Avery Badenhop: it was so much different than it is today.

Avery Badenhop: The commute, the community of BASE jumpers was really small and everybody pretty much. Knew everybody. And I was so fortunate that I just got introduced to Dennis McGlynn because he was one of the guys that was innovating the gear and he was looking people, looking for people who were willing to pay him to make them gear that they were going to jump.

Avery Badenhop: They were going to entrust their life to him. And so you get into these little, you get it. I got into it. I got into a little niche and a little clan because no, not any Tom, Dick and Harry could just get on the internet that we didn't have. And by BASE gear, you had to know somebody, you had to show them that your interest and your dedication to doing it.

Avery Badenhop: And then the mentors, it was, it's, it didn't start off as instruction. [00:14:00] It was just like immediate mentorship. Back 

Harry Parker: to what Marty was talking about. There is a little bit of truth to that. when I first. Came across BASE jumping. It was something, there's no way I don't want to do that.

Harry Parker: That sounds absolutely ridiculous, but that is the seed that gets you like, wow, what is that? and then you do meet somebody back in the day. You couldn't bring a BASE rig or a onto a drop zone. you were shunned and you would get in trouble for. For even showing it. I can remember when I was told, if you get hurt on this BASE trip, you're on your own, we're going to leave you.

Harry Parker: If anybody gets hurt, we're leaving and we're going to drop a, we'll drop a quarter in the pay phone. And that's it. that was the mentality back then it was pretty dark. And I think to Dennis's point, like we were a lot, what he was bringing us forward was a lot more positive because it was innovation.

Harry Parker: And you got to understand you're in a transition from one generation to the next generation [00:15:00] moving from, equipment to be BASE specific, which is, along with that is a lot of change mentality, ethics, the way you view it. And so yeah, it was a transitioning period. So Marty had a point there.

Harry Parker: It was pretty dark for a while. 

Matt Blank: on that note of, the ethics and the mentorship, what was it that Avery did to convince you that he was part of the crew? That he was ready to do this thing? how did somebody get in with you? 

Dennis McGlynn: you just answered the question. he was one of those guys who were ready to get into the thing.

Dennis McGlynn: He wanted it. He could see it in his eye that he wanted to do it. I was pretty open about, sharing the knowledge with people that wanted to do it. I don't know. He had, the enthusiasm. he was there a hundred percent. We went on to do the bridge day stuff and we had a little clan going for a while.

Dennis McGlynn: It was a lot of fun. 

Matt Blank: Was there anyone at that time, that walked up to you and you could tell that they just weren't with it? Or, did mostly people come up [00:16:00] to you that were already dedicated? 

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah. If you've sought me out, you wanted to do it. I could tell they wanted to do it. People didn't just come up and back then it was, either you do want to do it or you don't want to do it.

Dennis McGlynn: The skydivers would say all that energy, time and effort for two seconds. I just don't get it. And you said, that's right. You don't get it. We don't need to deal with it. So you could tell you could just look somebody now and, They wanted to do it. There was no, you either knew or you didn't. And if people came to you, it was because they wanted to do it.

Matt Blank: I've heard back in the day that, the seriousness of the consequences, basically, We're written on the wall. And so if somebody was talking about it on the drop zone, then you already knew that they had, accepted some of this like ridiculously dangerous, stuff versus today, there's a lot of, talk about it being safe, a lot of talk about it being fun, 

Dennis McGlynn: yeah, it was definitely different, but it [00:17:00] had, come to a point to where you didn't have, you didn't have to risk your life in a certain way.

Dennis McGlynn: It wasn't just a roll of the dice. There was some. There was some stuff that gave you good odds, good chances to do it. I was a firm believer in that. But when I first started, my first BASE rig was a vector with a bag on it. It was a heavy parachute, inside of a bag. And luckily I'd bought a big parachute, big pilot chute.

Dennis McGlynn: That's what saved my life. It's what got me through using a skydiving rig. As a BASE, BASE rig, when BASE rigs came along and slider down BASE started happening, it was an absolute. To me, it was a given. The only malfunction you were going to have, besides a catastrophic, riser release or something like that, was a line over.

Dennis McGlynn: Basically all you were going to have, 180s, line twists, and line overs. If you could deal with all them, you had it made. And we felt we could do that. 

Matt Blank: tell me, Avery, What made all this worth it for you? obviously, there was a way to do this, sustainably back in the day, but still a lot of risk involved.

Matt Blank: and [00:18:00] I would argue much more than today. What was that motivation for you? 

Avery Badenhop: It was just because of the initial experience of what it was like to the peacefulness and just the whole, everything that went into my first BASE jump going into it, I wasn't super enthusiastic, but I knew I really wanted to do it and I didn't really know which direction it was go.

Avery Badenhop: But. As any BASE jumper knows, as soon as you have that experience, you understand what that experience is. And it's just ultra low free fall was just something, the visuals, the peacefulness, just being somewhere quiet and starting your BASE jump. And just like everything else disappears. And it was just like, it was a perfect thing for me to go.

Avery Badenhop: I need to do this again. And then once I did it again, it's I need to do this a whole bunch more. And then all of a sudden it's that's what I'm doing. 

Matt Blank: Okay. Yeah. I also, [00:19:00] have trouble sometimes expressing what it's like to BASE jump to people that haven't done it. oftentimes I'm like, to really get the idea, you gotta go do it.

Matt Blank: And I don't recommend that, but I'm going to fail at describing it without you actually 

Avery Badenhop: experiencing it. Absolutely. You, and you understand you can't. Really describe to somebody who hasn't made a BASE jump what it is that makes a BASE jump so Fulfilling and all the people who have made the BASE jump know and then of course some of them Have found out and don't do it anymore and then for the rest of us.

Avery Badenhop: It's no, we're doing it 

Matt Blank: you have any words for people who are BASE curious 

Avery Badenhop: don't do it.

Dennis McGlynn: It can become a therapy, you know It's but if they haven't done it, what's my Advice for them? Man, I don't know. Learn about it. If you really want to do it, I can't say don't do it because it's, I do it. I love it. Still doing it. Been doing it a long time. And it's a therapy. it's a good charge of [00:20:00] positive life when you jump.

Dennis McGlynn: I've taught a lot of people to jump. Taken a lot of people over the years. And, it's rewarding to see them find it and understand it and survive it. look at Avery. He's still going. He's going strong. Yeah. Harry, he's still going strong. 

Matt Blank: we're still hanging in there. And, let me ask you just to get some, background.

Matt Blank: Your first jump was in what year? 

Dennis McGlynn: 1987. 

Matt Blank: And Harry? 

Harry Parker: BASE jumping? Yeah. It was like a 80, 88, 89. 

Matt Blank: Okay, we're going to get to longevity at the end of this, but let's keep going through the history and Avery, fill us in on what happened from your first jump, through the next couple of decades. Give us some plot points of where the sport went, where you went in it.

Avery Badenhop: Okay, so when I first started BASE jumping, really, There was a lot of people who were still reinventing the wheel, so to speak, to [00:21:00] get the gear to be specific for BASE, there was still, there was still the buzz about Mark Hewitt and how he had come up with the line mod. a lot of this stuff was still early, when I think the BASE fatality list was like at number 27 or something.

Avery Badenhop: And it's like, when somebody got killed BASEd on me, it's like it affected the whole community. It still does. But in a different way. I didn't invent BASE jumping, but I jumped with the guys that did. Cause I was running around with Dennis McGlynn and Mo Valetto and Mark Hewitt and all these guys that were just like the innovators.

Avery Badenhop: so once I started BASE jumping and I started BASE jumping with a partner, Seth Blake, cause we had talked earlier about, the sustainability and how it goes through. So what happened, what was going on in those days was. We went out and had somebody take us on our first BASE jump, and then that was it.

Avery Badenhop: Now we had to figure it out for [00:22:00] ourselves. Fortunately, Seth had just done the same thing at the same time as I. Somebody had taken him to the bridge, and he made a BASE jump. So then Seth and I got together and said, We're going to be BASE jumpers. So now we had Two guys who are going to be bros and go BASE jumping together locally and look out for each other.

Avery Badenhop: And that's what kind of started the, just a bit of the camaraderie that I would then, get into my fold in those early days. Then we started, then other skydivers from the drop zone also decided, Hey, we're interested in this BASE jumping thing, Ed Trick. He's all, Hey, I want to get into BASE jumping.

Avery Badenhop: Dave Clehan. Hey, I want to get into BASE jumping. And then we find out our other buddy, Jeff Stout. He's already a BASE jumper, but we didn't even know it. Cause he was so secretive about what he was doing. 

Matt Blank: So I'd like to talk through some of the relationship development. I have a, your jumping partners.

Matt Blank: What was it like to get to know each other and what kind of [00:23:00] conversations did you guys have as you were learning this thing basically on your own? 

Avery Badenhop: fortunately we already knew each other cause we hung out at the drop zone. We were skydivers and we took up the BASE jumping, our lives then began to get more involved by really, meeting these people and we're going to their houses and meeting their families and like that.

Avery Badenhop: It's a brotherhood. If you get into a really tight knit group and we found out cause our little group was in Sonoma County and we found out, Oh, there's other little groups out in Sacramento and there's these other guys that live down in San Jose. And so we started to integrate with all the locals and talk about the local objects and we were, it's funny how, nowadays when you learn to BASE jump, you go to the prime and you make 50 BASE jumps.

Avery Badenhop: My 14th job was my building. And we were just down there in the city teaching ourselves how to do urban BASE jumping. [00:24:00] Let 

Matt Blank: me ask you this, was there anyone at the time that was just like doing this completely outside the community? Or did most people or all people eventually rub shoulders with you guys to get into the 

Avery Badenhop: practice?

Avery Badenhop: No, there's certainly two different kinds of BASE jumpers. Really back then, because like I say, we didn't even know Jeff was a BASE jumper and there were a lot of BASE jumpers who went BASE jumping and they didn't talk about it, you didn't know them. And then there was a whole bunch of the others, that always did get together.

Avery Badenhop: basically, anybody who went to Bridge Day. Back at the time because that was the only thing going on for BASE jumpers was bridge day you know the guys that would show up at bridge day We knew how they all were and everybody knew who they were but there were still other guys like I'm not going to bridge day I don't want anybody to know who I am.

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, 

Matt Blank: so how did the community and the practice transition from almost all underground? to Sponsored events. 

Avery Badenhop: [00:25:00] Okay. So this is what this is really what really happened as far as a timeline when I met Dennis In 1993, he was already going to bridge day and he had already been doing that for several years and just by his nature, he had integrated himself into somewhat of the structure of how things were going to bridge day.

Avery Badenhop: I went to my first bridge day with Dennis in 1993. in 1994. And then that was the first time I had seen an event of BASE jumping. And it just I'm all, Oh my goodness, this is going on. And so I hung out with Dennis and Harry was there with us. And, he, was helping Andy Kallistrat do, a bunch of stuff because Andy Kallistrat was a bit of a douchebag in the, in just the whole thing that he was doing.

Avery Badenhop: Oh my goodness. Andy Kallistrat made BASE jumps. He was not a fucking BASE jumper. He was not. 

Matt Blank: I want to hear about that. What is the [00:26:00] difference between somebody that BASE jumps and a BASE jumper? 

Avery Badenhop: the guys that show up every year at bridge day with their skydiving rig, they make a BASE jump. Then there's guys like me who I need six different rigs.

Avery Badenhop: So I am prepared for whatever comes tomorrow. And I'm BASE jumping all the time. Every 30 years later, I'm still. BASE jumping my ass off. 

Matt Blank: So some people do the thing. Some people live the thing. Exactly. 

Avery Badenhop: I would almost 

Harry Parker: say that it's a balance between Your ego and humility, the ability to be in community, doing something, having enough ego and the drive to do it, to even begin with, but enough humility to be in community, to do it together.

Harry Parker: And, that was our greatest strengths is using the groups of people to, for all the learning and all the advancement and all the innovation. We weren't going to have to do it by ourselves. 

Matt Blank: Can I pick at that for a second? Because that's an interesting concept you bring up. [00:27:00] oftentimes in our culture today, ego is brought up completely in a negative connotation or with a negative connotation.

Matt Blank: but from my perspective, you have to have at least some sense of yourself to understand whether you can or cannot do what you're about to try. And so like a certain amount of ego is necessary. I like, what's your opinion here? Where's the balance? How do you tip from one side to the other? Too little, too much, right enough.

Matt Blank: I 

don't, 

Harry Parker: I think, who would we be as humans without ego? You, we would all be the same. Ego is really what separates us and makes us different. And it's part of the process of your own spiritual evolution on this planet. The ability to cage it, tame it. Or learn to live with it is, your spiritual development.

Harry Parker: And I think in BASE where we face, life and death together in, in this way that is really strange from normal [00:28:00] life, that is the development of it all. and, I witnessed it in the people that you, actually interview. Like they, they're in retrospect over time.

Harry Parker: They're like, they look back. They've, they've softened, they've been able to find a balance. And I think like when you asked before, who gets in a BASE jump and how did you get into the crew? Did you had to be able that you had to have the ego didn't drive to get in there, to separate yourself and make it work, but you also had to have some humility to be with other people.

Harry Parker: If not, like if you couldn't be together and just, you were just an asshole, like who would hang out with you anyway? 

Dennis McGlynn: came down to it. There was no lying at the exit point. Yeah, I like that. I like that. Find out who people are when it's time to jump. You can find out who they are. They can talk at it.

Dennis McGlynn: Talk it up all they want, but when it's time to jump, the truth comes out who they are. Yeah, 

Harry Parker: I like 

Avery Badenhop: that. That works. And on that subject of ego, because I remember in a previous podcast I had heard a little conversation about that. The [00:29:00] thing is that artists have an ego. And that's why artists are the way they are.

Avery Badenhop: And I consider myself an artist. I have a self expression that I want to express myself. And that is through BASE jumping. And it then becomes double fold because it can also be an art that others can enjoy or not. It's up to them. I'm just creating, I'm creating art. Okay. On 

Matt Blank: that note, what pushes the practice into performance art is is it on the whole always performance art or do you need to do something?

Matt Blank: Do you need to do it in a certain way for it to be part of that category? 

Avery Badenhop: it ties into where we were getting into this history thing. So in, in my introduction to bridge day and to Dennis and Harry and to what Dennis is. Dennis was trying to accomplish that bridge day and then the three of us collaborated [00:30:00] in 1985 over that whole year.

Avery Badenhop: We started to talk about how can we get out of the bushes, hiding in the middle of the night, jumping nothing but black. And how can we make this come into the daylight? And so we started thinking of ways to make what, what We had a little competition at bridge day and we started thinking, what if we could do something further with this?

Avery Badenhop: And then, and, so it took us a little while and we did a lot of research and we did a lot of traveling, going around and looking at stuff. in 1986 was the first year that we ran bridge day, because in 1985, It, the conversation came up and Andy Calistrat knew it was coming and he saw what we were trying to do and he knew Dennis was already helping us and he said, I got to get out of town.

Avery Badenhop: Can you guys help me out? And so that's when we transitioned and we took over the organizing of bridge [00:31:00] day and we had a big competition there and we said, look, we can get this into the light if we could just find somewhere else to get all these people to go other than this. And we, We went to places like twin falls, Idaho.

Avery Badenhop: We had come to Moab in 1995 cause we were in the middle of a court case from a little accident we had out at Lake Powell in 94. we should talk about that a little bit to cliff camp. So anyway, like I say, we, ended up going, when we went down to Moab, they didn't really want us to bring a bunch of people.

Avery Badenhop: So we've learned how to get permits to do things. When we first went to the bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, we weren't allowed to jump. And so once again, we figured out a loophole and we got permits to do stuff. So all of a sudden we brought All the BASE jumpers together in these arenas, whereas in the middle of the day, you can do whatever you want.

Avery Badenhop: [00:32:00] It's fully legal. And then that started to change how the BASE jumpers wanted to look, right? Yeah. Then it 

Matt Blank: became more performative, more 

Harry Parker: performant. I'd like to speak to that as well. I think through, the perspective and the lens of just simple evolution. when we were running from the cops and hiding in the bushes, as Avery said, we really started to toy with the idea, what if we could get them to pay us to do this?

Harry Parker: And by, by creating the competitions, by creating group atmospheres, and we were known for having the biggest loads at Auburn from the beginning, like it was a circus from the beginning. And, and I think that when you take the individual, put them in a group, Now you can see what each other's doing.

Harry Parker: You have a reflection of who you are and who you're being, and then that becomes a support structure. And we see it today. I am blown away at what's happening in Moab and in performance art. Like back in the day [00:33:00] when we were creating the, events and really spit balling it. KL to me was always this Las Vegas style event where, you had headliners and you had, The girls doing the silks and you had these things, where it was, I, so that's how I see it.

Harry Parker: I see it as an, evolution of being in community to begin with is a support structure for what you talk about actually being performance 

Matt Blank: art. Dennis, how do you feel about the evolution and tell us a little bit if you can about the formation of bridge day and now that Avery's mentioned it.

Dennis McGlynn: that's a lot of stuff right there. 

Matt Blank: let's, start with, the evolution, right? We started at, teaching Avery and, you getting into the game in the 1980s, which, wow. I, oftentimes I look at myself and I'm like, man, you're old, especially for BASE jumping terms.

Matt Blank: Like I feel ancient, [00:34:00] just, the room shrinks so much. You know, like of the people that have been jumping more than 10 years, it's not many, more than 20 years. And that room gets down to a dinner table more than 30 years. And you're talking about like a car full of people that are still going at it.

Matt Blank: and so what was the evolution like for you? 

Dennis McGlynn: evolution to me, I came along in a way became part of a wave that, adopted and accepted slider down BASEd jumping as the norm, as the safe Avenue. So when I started jumping, it was still. Team Banish was still running bridge day and she suggested and promoted jumping your skydiving rig because there was altitude to cut away.

Dennis McGlynn: So you should be jumping your skydiving rig. we learned about slider down BASE and started understanding the mechanics of it. So we, that's what we did. And it just became a whole different thing, a whole different perspective on how to jump. And, And we started jumping that way and promoting it to other people.

Dennis McGlynn: And I [00:35:00] think I was like second person to make it to a hundred BASE jumps without breaking any bones. So it was, that's the evolution now. And it took off and also we were the first wave to be not totally ostracized at the drop zone for being a BASE jumper, having BASE jumping gear. When I started, you couldn't even be known that you were a BASE jumper because we became AFF instructors and Tandem instructors and we were still, skydiving a lot.

Dennis McGlynn: We were on the drop zone every weekend. I'm still on the drop zone every weekend. So they had to take it in a different way. We weren't just the, the outlaw renegade that was getting the DZO in trouble when something would happen on an antenna tower or something, we were, I had my share of that for a while, but it changed the evolution of, successful BASE jumping.

Dennis McGlynn: when I started jumping also, there was, there had been six fatalities and now there's what 400 and some 

Matt Blank: odd. Yeah. To give you another statistic that I looked up recently, in, the years, 2014, [00:36:00] 15, 16, 18, and 19. All those years. There were more deaths per year than the entire 1980s. 

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah, there's a lot to be said for that.

Dennis McGlynn: There's a lot more people doing it. Definitely. The wingsuiters are definitely the ones that are on the majority of those numbers. Yep. And, there just weren't many BASE jumpers back then. And, for the guys that continued to do it, understood slider down BASE. That's what really opened it up, I believe.

Dennis McGlynn: And then we found some cliffs that were legal. there was, there were no legal BASE jumps. Back then there was, you had bridge day and something else once in a while would come along, but then once we, found a, we found this little canyon and we called it Freedom Canyon that had some low cliffs at 400 feet, but that was slider down stuff.

Dennis McGlynn: And they were legal. I remember being out there. We didn't care. We didn't have cell phones and there was no, rescue. You broke your leg, compound fracture or something. You were just going to die. We knew that. 

Harry Parker: Four hours into the back country and like a three or four hour drive to the, 

Dennis McGlynn: trailhead.

Dennis McGlynn: They were [00:37:00] legal. We could jump them without, we had landowner's permission. 

Matt Blank: now we are getting back into bring, bring 300 worth of burial money with you. 

Dennis McGlynn: We knew and accepted, those risks. Yeah, it was 

Harry Parker: part of it. It was a transition out of that 

Dennis McGlynn: darkness, really. Didn't know cell phones existed because they didn't.

Matt Blank: Was there a certain amount of peace that came with accepting one's demise? 

Dennis McGlynn: I didn't accept my demise. I didn't think I was going to die. I was young and immortal, like a lot of us are when we're young. Just people, thought I was really crazy. I was a lot more crazy than I was. I wasn't crazy.

Dennis McGlynn: I was, I was more methodical about my safety than a lot of people gave me credit for. 

Matt Blank: let's talk about that for a second. How did you make it to a hundred jumps without a broken bone? Where most everybody else failed at that. Did you have secrets to the success? 

Dennis McGlynn: Focus. You asked me about evolution in the sport.

Dennis McGlynn: Evolution. Mark Hewitt had come up with the line mod. that was like Changed everything. Changed everything. That was like putting a reserve on a BASE rig. You could jump one parachute now with the line. My, that was your reserve. [00:38:00] Nothing else was going to happen unless you catastrophically didn't hook your stuff up.

Dennis McGlynn: And you could have step throughs. You could have all kinds of stuff going on. Cause I did it all. You just have a nod at your risers. They are still open. You can still pilot the canopy down and you can blow a canopy up. You can still jump it. He just said, we're going to act right. And you blow it up again, a little bit more.

Dennis McGlynn: And you start realizing that he's got a big hole in it. He said, stop jumping it, which is 

Harry Parker: true. It happened a lot. if it 

Dennis McGlynn: could happen, it pretty much happened to me in a way, but I learned from each one of those and got more perspective on, on how short your steering lines are, where your steering lines, where your brake settings.

Dennis McGlynn: All that has a lot to do with it. So I felt that I had the knowledge, had the ammunition to go out and be safe. Yeah, you need 

Harry Parker: context to like Dennis was incredibly charismatic. He's incredibly generous. It's funny when you know, Avery brings up to, you pay Dennis for a rig and I'm like, when did people pay Dennis for a rig?

Harry Parker: And so he. At the time he was living in Truckee, [00:39:00] in Tahoe, and it was, and he had a shop. So we were constantly, and this is, an interesting concept, like we would go to Auburn and our jobs, we weren't just hooting it up. We're out there. Okay. We're going to test when we got a wing, when you got a, new, The first thing you did is you put it in your Velcro rig, right?

Harry Parker: You took out the lines, you made it a slider down canopy, and then you went to Auburn or no, you put it on a skydive and you took it on a skydive and you would find your break setting point for your weight and use a little marker and market and then put your new break settings in and then you go to Auburn and test it.

Harry Parker: And we would go to Auburn and test all the time, brake settings, does this thing work in, rear risers? Can I back up? Can I do turns? if, we would do floaters off it and try to go, 180 degrees and how far the guy on top would judge. If you were [00:40:00] able to back that thing up before you hit the object, this was the time of really trying to figure out, cause none of us want to die, 

Matt Blank: experiment, 

Harry Parker: science, none of us wanted to die.

Harry Parker: And we really, we, to like Dennis and Avery's point, like it was all about living, in that moment. And I think what I get a lot of people you're interviewing now is that, we, look back and it's not like the jumping is what, It was the cohesiveness of living in such a risky environment, but it's the bonds and the camaraderie that who you're with and doing it together is really the gold and surviving it is the gold of it in the 

Matt Blank: end.

Matt Blank: let's talk about doing it together and maybe Avery can pick up the pieces for us on cliff camp. So we started with the evolution. That's a went through the bridge day bits. tell us about it'll be okay, Dennis. 

Harry Parker: It'll be 

Avery Badenhop: okay. Okay. So [00:41:00] after I had been BASE jumping for, that first nine months, Seth, Ed, and I were all, we were discovering San Francisco and the Bay area.

Avery Badenhop: And then, Dennis said, Oh, I'm organizing this thing out in, Lake Powell. It's called cliff camp and it's we're going to get all our stuff and all our boats and a whole stack of gear. And we're going to go out on Lake Powell and there's all these different cliffs and you guys are new to BASE jump, but you don't have a whole bunch of BASE jump, so it's just an introduction for you to go learn how to jump off cliffs.

Avery Badenhop: And so we were all about it. We went out there and Harry was with us, Dennis, sorry. Harry, Dennis, Jack Reeves, remember Jack Reeves? He was out there with us. There was some other newer BASE jumpers that were just starting to BASE jump. Tim Kronk, just some new students that [00:42:00] Dennis was taken out there to teach them how to jump off cliffs.

Avery Badenhop: And, so that's Gladys's 

Harry Parker: son. 

Avery Badenhop: Yeah. Jeff Gladys was there. Jeff Gladys as a 

Harry Parker: kid. How old was he? 

Avery Badenhop: 15? 16? Yeah, he was young. Just a baby. Super young. remember that guy Hunter was there and he Tim Kronk. Did you say that? And it's interesting cause some of those people like after Cliff Camp, 90, 94, they didn't BASE jump anymore.

Avery Badenhop: That was enough. That was enough. Yeah. 

Harry Parker: it was a baptism. that was, an experiment. 

Matt Blank: tell us about the experiment. What was the deal? 

Avery Badenhop: the eventual deal was that we witnessed, I witnessed my first BASE fatality at cliff camp that year. And it was like, it started a, it actually, it was a traumatic experience for all of us.

Avery Badenhop: It really, scattered us, but also it also made, The, it made the three of us and a couple other guys a little bit more [00:43:00] of a cohesive group. Cause now we were like, we were this gang of busted outlaws and we had to go to court and answer for it. And it's but also it totally motivated us to say, why the fuck aren't we allowed to go out?

Avery Badenhop: To these recreational places where you can do whatever the fuck you want, except for jump off rocks and that's all we were doing so that and actually when we came back down here for our court cases, that's when we first came down here to Moab to look at what? Oh, we've heard about this place.

Avery Badenhop: Moab. Let's go down and look at it. So yeah, Cliff camp was like a fiasco, but it was a learning experience and it turned out we weren't the first group to end up in legal trouble down at Lake Powell. Cause you know, we'll Ox's group, the year before had run into the same thing. They're just down in Lake Powell enjoying their sport and all of a sudden we got law officers telling us, you can't do that here.

Avery Badenhop: Here's your ticket. Yeah. I think 

Harry Parker: he went, he, I think he got broken up [00:44:00] at, Lake Powell on a slider up, jump and broke himself. Isn't that how they got caught? 

Avery Badenhop: Dennis, do 

Harry Parker: you remember that? that was, it was one of the first real big issues BASEd jumping and it was at Lake Powell. 

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah. There were three groups that got busted right around that time.

Dennis McGlynn: And it was, Willox's group and, Kirk's group, I believe from, he was from Chicago, there were three groups, there were 42 people involved altogether, but the three groups, and then we were fighting, we were in three different courts. Two different districts, and, And they had, Joe Sumner, the special criminal investigator who was actually out there spending taxpayers money.

Dennis McGlynn: Who 

Harry Parker: we ended up having to face. 

Matt Blank: What were they trying to get you on? 

Dennis McGlynn: Aerial delivery. Illegal aerial delivery. Aerial delivery without a permit. 

Matt Blank: Was that the first time that law had been tried 

Harry Parker: to, Oh, no, that's what's been keeping you out of Yosemite 

Matt Blank: this whole time. but was that the first, case that Our, 

Harry Parker: our, the case was, I think, When Dennis had to go to court, [00:45:00] we all had to go to court.

Harry Parker: we were taking, we were, putting aerial delivery on 

Dennis McGlynn: trial. Yeah. We wanted to set precedence because it was, while it was, it was, it made sense for Yosemite because the aerial delivery law was for not. Being able to be, resupplied by, as a squatter in the backcountry, not as jumping into a park, but they, could get away with that in Yosemite, but Lake Powell was a designated landing, pursuant to special regulations that stated that the whole entire surface of Lake Powell was a designated landing area.

Dennis McGlynn: You could parachute in there from an airplane, you could do anything you want. So it came down to the act of actually opening a parachute between the time you jumped off a rock and landed in the water. They defined as aerial delivery. And, you could jump hand gliders, you could jump umbrellas, bedsheets, do nothing, do whatever you wanted.

Dennis McGlynn: But if you had a parachute that opened up between the rock and the water, it was aerial delivery. So we had a case. We had a real case. We knew we had a case. We, fought it. We fought it. We fought it. We spent over 50 grand to spread Morelli just [00:46:00] in travel expenses over those years. And he did everything for free as our crusader.

Dennis McGlynn: And we came right down to it. He said, you're not going to beat the federal government. They're not going to let you the most you can hope to do is introduce yourselves. And, and make a mark in history for the next generation, but we were passionate. We were passionate about, we wanted to prove our point and we did.

Dennis McGlynn: We proved our point, but they just said no. And that was it. 

Harry Parker: They just said no. And I'll tell you what, what an experiment and an experience for all three of us to be dragged through the federal court system and risk freedom. For what we believed in was our basic, access, we were like, Dennis always says we're going to take over the world.

Harry Parker: we were, there was a lot of altruistic motivation. Behind a lot of what we did BASEd on real experience, because cliff camp in itself, as young as we were in the sport and where we were to experience together, [00:47:00] looking over the cliff at about 400 feet with a big talus and having one of your own members spiral in and hit the, Tal is so hard, he made a pop, and we're out in the backcountry for six hours, and then had to deal with each other on a whole entire different level.

Harry Parker: It was a 

Matt Blank: baptism. So I gotta ask, what actually happened on that incident, and, if you will, what lessons were learned from it? Oof. 

Dennis McGlynn: our good friend, Paul Thompson, he jumped off, and his rig was, looked over and overseen by somebody else, and basically, his steering lines were too long. So he jumped off, had a perfect on heading opening.

Dennis McGlynn: Reached up, undid his, brakes. His canopy, the tail shot up cause it didn't have, it didn't pressurize properly. It started slowly turning to the left and he was trying to get it pressurized, but it was, it just took a little longer to pressurize the steering lines for too long. You can understand that, right?

Dennis McGlynn: See how that's happening. So by the time he got it pressurized and got some control in his, with his toggles, he [00:48:00] was turning to the left a lot. So he decided to just go with the turn, hooked down and he pulled the left toggle down as hard as he could. And he did, spiral. He couldn't have hit that cliff again in a million years if he tried from what he did.

Dennis McGlynn: He just, everything just lined up for him to hit that cliff the way he did and he hit it as hard as he could have and bounced I think three times before he hit the water. And everybody said, why did he do that? 

Harry Parker: Yeah, we were, everyone was in shock, like. 

Dennis McGlynn: Why did he do that? Oof. So that, that, there was like a nuclear bomb going off.

Dennis McGlynn: We didn't expect that to happen. He had just given his helmet to, Jeff, the kid that was on the load, who was walking towards the cliff. Him and Jeff were jumping a cliff off to the left. We were all on another cliff, because we already jumped that one in the morning. And, Jeff dropped his helmet and kicked it, and it was about to go over the edge, so he ran to get it.

Dennis McGlynn: And, Paul grabbed him and stopped him from going over the edge of the cliff. And, and Paul gave him his helmet. Don't know if that would have made a difference, but he definitely had head injuries, definitely was Part that killed him. So 

Matt Blank: if [00:49:00] I understand correctly, he went with the turn to try and increase air speed to try and get some, pressurization in the canopy, 

Dennis McGlynn: the pressure canopy just started pressurizing, it was, it, the tail was just all wishy washy, and it was trying to pressurize if he'd have just done nothing.

Dennis McGlynn: If he did, if he would not touch anything, he would have flown straight out into the water, but he undid his brakes. Canopy started slowly turning left as it was pressurizing. And by the time it pressure, this all happened in a few seconds, but it pressurized and as it was pressurizing, he went ahead and decided to go.

Dennis McGlynn: He was very experienced pilot canopy pilot and everything. He made a decision, right then and, pull down on his left toggle to go with a turn. Because then it was just pressurizing, so he had some speed. And the way he turned, the way he hit the talus, he couldn't have done it again. it was just so rare that, what had happened the way it did.

Dennis McGlynn: And, like I said, the nuclear bomb went off, and it was, we weren't prepared for that, really. It was, we were forced to deal with some reality. 

Matt Blank: what was that [00:50:00] like? And, also I want to reiterate, the question, what were the lessons 

Dennis McGlynn: learned? what were the lessons learned? gear, we dissected what happened.

Dennis McGlynn: gear awareness, have your gear adjusted for you. everybody's a little different weight and stuff, different size canopies. And back then we were still jumping retired skydiving canopies for the most part. get it, do your tests, jumps on it, get it ready. Get it, don't end up with a canopy that was, that's not, Dialed in for you, but it was, a mistake that anybody could have made given that set of circumstances that he had, he didn't have many BASE jumps, just a very, he had a handful of BASE jumps and he was, He was part of our crew, as far as, working the event.

Dennis McGlynn: So he was, unfortunately, was quick to give advice more than take it. And he was the one guy on the group that, that I hadn't personally, overseen his equipment. Somebody else did. And his steering lines were just too [00:51:00] long. And then, it wasn't dialed in. We were accused for many years after that, until we got our gear back after the court case was settled, that, his toggles had come off.

Dennis McGlynn: That was what everybody thought, that people that wanted to have an answer have excuses. I said, his toggles didn't come off. His steering lines were too long. So we got to prove that after, right after the case was, heard and sentence was passed and all this and that, we got to get the gear back.

Dennis McGlynn: The judge gave us the gear back and we got to inspect it finally then, and then it was an absolute what had happened. Cause video back then ain't the quality it is today. We had, the media sure did want a copy of that, footage too. I'm glad they didn't. 

Harry Parker: No, we knew better. To go back on your point though, what was learned is, one was it really brought in the safety and the gear and everything to not let that happen again.

Harry Parker: But we had never really planned for any of that to happen and now we had to face it. then it was about. Safety, rescue, and all the things that you don't think [00:52:00] about until you have the emergency happen. I know that happens out here, right? Nobody thinks about all of a sudden you're on a seven hour rescue, and So yeah, there was a lot learned and a lot implemented. It led into a lot of 

Matt Blank: different things. Avery, I want to touch back on, what it was like to experience this. a lot of people, don't see somebody go in for years, sometimes never. and you were very early on in your career. not only somebody, but somebody that you knew and knew well.

Matt Blank: what was it like dealing with that? 

Avery Badenhop: when I got into it, we already knew there was a list and we already knew the risk and we didn't expect to see it right there. But for me and my little crew, it's it was definitely an eye opener. Oh, people really do die. And sometimes right in your face.

Avery Badenhop: I had been bitten by the bug, and so it was too late to talk me out of it [00:53:00] BASEd on that, and, as surprising as it was for something like that to come up, it didn't really stop my motivation to continue doing what I was gonna do. 

Matt Blank: More just get 

Avery Badenhop: better at it? like, Dennis has brought up, learn about the mistakes that were made and why did that happen and why is it so important?

Avery Badenhop: And then like it set a new habit for me, like Dennis said, you get a new canopy, test it out, go, put it in a skydive, figure out where your shit belongs. 

Matt Blank: let me ask you this then, what do y'all think of the new standard, which is first BASE jump, never flown the canopy ever? No adjustments made at all.

Matt Blank: and once you come out here, some people only a theoretical understanding of their emergency procedures. Somebody has told them what to do, but they've never tried it. That's pretty incredible 

Harry Parker: is what it is. 

Avery Badenhop: It's super, it's surprising in some ways that, the thing is that the gear [00:54:00] has come a long way.

Avery Badenhop: And so at least the gear is much more reliable. Now, pilot training is something altogether different. and I just not to interrupt, but I just want to say, so Dennis, how much time do you do for that leg pal take 

Dennis McGlynn: three months, 90 days, five years, supervised probation. 

Matt Blank: For, what was the infraction?

Matt Blank: Going for the court case. Yeah. What did 

Avery Badenhop: they enter? Aiding and abetting in an aerial delivery resulting in a death. 

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah. They dropped the resulting in a death part because that was, they were going to try to put me in jail five years and. 

Harry Parker: Yeah. So you need to wrap your head around like we went, he basically went up against the federal government to change the aerial delivery cause so we could get Yosemite legal.

Harry Parker: you got to understand the roots of this. So 

Matt Blank: let me get this right though. Somebody makes a bad decision on a fully open canopy that is 100%, under their control and the government wanted to give you five years for that? Absolutely. 

Dennis McGlynn: just for witnessing it. To a 750, 000 [00:55:00] fine as well because, they called me Aiden in the betting because it wasn't, illegal aerial delivery.

Dennis McGlynn: So if they were going to charge me and fine me for that upper end, Sentence and punishment, I was allowed a jury trial. They had a jury selected and it was, I went to trial. The judge decided, he was going to hear it as a bench trial. So if it was just a bench trial and it wasn't the extenuating circumstances that it resulted in a death, then he could just hear the bench trial.

Dennis McGlynn: So he dropped all that enhancement stuff and then decided to have a bench trial. So when he did that, he excused the jury. And that then the, the upper punishment was only up to six months in jail and up to a thousand dollar fine. So it changed that. So we went, had our bench trial and yeah, they were gonna, they didn't want to let us set precedents.

Dennis McGlynn: The BASE jumpers weren't going to let us set precedent. The government wasn't going to let the BASE jumpers set precedents in that law because we were right. And the only way we were going to get, only chance we had to be heard again was we had to get back to the appellate court because they had already made a ruling.

Dennis McGlynn: So you don't get back to the appellate court with an acquittal. [00:56:00] You don't get back to the appellate court with a plea, agreement. You only get back to the appellate court with a conviction and the conviction. And so I said, yeah, I did it, but what I did is not illegal. That's how I had to lose the case.

Dennis McGlynn: And I was acquitted of the commercial operation without a permit. That was a good one, because they really wanted to hang me on that one. That's good. So we, Aiden in the Benton. Aiden in the Benton. Somebody jumping off a cliff in the desert. They put me in prison 

Matt Blank: for it. Yeah, man, I just can't imagine this.

Matt Blank: the worst. Time in your life, you've just seen a buddy go in you're trying to pick up the pieces emotionally and physically Oh, 

Dennis McGlynn: this was years and years later. this thing went on for that was 94 I didn't go to jail till 99 on it. 

Harry Parker: Oh, yeah and but you know back to what Avery's point and when you asked Avery that cliff camp was a catalyzing moment for all three of us and Avery is one of those guys who's just so strong headed.

Harry Parker: He knows what he wants to do. He's going to go out and do it no matter what. And it [00:57:00] really forged him. And I think all of us at a very young time in our own evolution of the sport to where. We began to each hold each other tighter, right? We began to really form bonds that were deep and long lasting, and it affected how we jumped and what we were going to do with the lives and the passion that we had 

Matt Blank: in those times.

Matt Blank: let's talk about that for a second. How did your small crew become a team? 

Avery Badenhop: That, happened with the evolution of The Dennis and Harry and I forming a management team, if you will, and then we took over bridge day and then we decided, if we're going to do bridge day, we're going to do these other events and we're going to start having a BASE company competition and at competitions.

Avery Badenhop: They have teams and we knew, like we had a little crew in Sonoma County. We knew of little crews down in SoCal. We had just [00:58:00] met some guys from the east coast and they had their little crew. And then all of a sudden, it turns out we met, Lee Worling and Eric Santee, and they got their little crew out in Ohio.

Avery Badenhop: And we basically went out to our community and say, Hey, we're going to go out to Moab next year and we're going to have a competition. And we were going to have a, Can it be competition and a precision landing competition? And we want people to have teams. Are you guys interested? Cause we had already decided in, me and Ed and Seth and big Dave, we always say, we're going to make a team and we're going to go to bridge day next year to the competition.

Avery Badenhop: And we're going to we're going to get in that competition. Cause the competitions I had seen in the years before were all individuals just dressed in. Jeans and t shirts and I said, you know what, we need to make a team and we're going to have uniforms and suits and matching helmets and all this stuff.

Avery Badenhop: We're going to have a fucking team and because I was [00:59:00] just oriented that way and driven and just wanted to do it. This new concept of, Hey, let's get BASEd something out of the bushes and on fucking MTV, Yeah. 

Matt Blank: tell us about the team name and tell us about where the team went once it was formed.

Avery Badenhop: Oh, the team name is a funny little story. because that happened in 1990. Four. No, It happened after bridging in 1994. So early 1995, Seth and Ed and Dave and I had gone into San Francisco and we had snuck up the fire escape of the Hilton and we BASE jumped and we landed in the streets down the thing.

Avery Badenhop: And at the time my family wasn't too thrilled about this new sport I had taken up cause I had a four year old daughter. So anyway, we, We had decided we were going to be a team. We didn't know what we're going to call ourselves. And [01:00:00] the first thing we had was a logo. Seth had showed up with this patch of the skull is all, I don't know where this skull came from, but this is a great logo.

Avery Badenhop: Anyway, back to the, to the thing about the Hilton, I went over to my parents house and I told my parents, Hey man, last night me and my boys, we went and jumped off the of a building in San Francisco. And my mom said, you guys are sick. There is something wrong with you. And I said, yeah, but I got an M video you want to watch.

Avery Badenhop: And of course they said, sure we want to see it. And so that was the birth of ill vision. 

Matt Blank: Okay. Sick. So mom calling you ruffians and, you've got the vision for it. what was the future vision? of the team. Once you formed it, where did you want to go with it? Did you make it to MTV? 

Avery Badenhop: actually, in some of the projects that we worked on, we did get on MTV.

Avery Badenhop: We did get on some of the other programs. What happened was then in 1997 [01:01:00] was the first organized, team oriented, BASE jumping competition. Right here in Moab, we went out to tombstone and did a thing called the tombstone challenge. And we had, we had team ill vision. We had Dennis's team, extreme. We had these guys that came from the east coast team impact.

Avery Badenhop: We had the guys from Ohio tongue and groove. That was Lee Worling and Eric Santee and those guys. Then the guys from the farther east coast, Tim Cronk, Mike Carpenter had the spiders from Mars. All of a sudden we had Several different groups of people that were willing to form a team and come out and do this experimental performance from the tombstone challenge where we're going to have this professional competition.

Matt Blank: let me ask you this, I heard you name a bunch of teams and I gotta be honest with you. I've never heard of a single one of them other than ill vision, which they're all 

Harry Parker: dead. okay. 

Matt Blank: Oh man, [01:02:00] Harry. Are they, is that for real? no, but I, 

Harry Parker: like the picture that you saw that I posted the other night.

Harry Parker: there's a lot of people in there that are gone and we see it all the time, 

Matt Blank: Oh man, okay. but back to the question at hand. I heard about ill vision before I was a BASE jumper when I was still in skydiving hell when I was a rock climber it's in the ether, it's in popular culture So I guess my question is what made that team great.

Matt Blank: How did it survive? 

Harry Parker: Avery you know when we I'd like to take that a step back a little bit, you know a lot of this formulating of the whole team concept was how to, it's all part of the whole competition thing is all about the legitimizing the sport because it was like, how are you going to make it a sport?

Harry Parker: What does sports do? They compete. how are we going to compete? Cause I used to talk about it. People go, why are you going to compete in BASE jumping? That's stupid. And I'm like, yeah, it is like, how are we going to do that? And so The [01:03:00] evolution of bringing into the competition was natural.

Harry Parker: It's when you think about it, wow, if, what if we had teams and the validation was immediate, it swept the entire country. People signed up in droves. A lot of people hated us for a long time because we had to say no. And it's one of the things that brought us together, a day, Dennis was the, visionary and the cares Matt charisma and Avery came on as Mr.

Harry Parker: No, he could say, no, you can't go. And, we needed it because we couldn't. You couldn't like, if you only said 30 people and you had 200 people want to go, it was really difficult back then. But the team environment exploded and Avery in his, Avery ways just led the charge with Timo vision as Dennis and I had our team extreme at the time and he did.

Harry Parker: No, it was not acceptable. He's going to do what he's going to do. And he, was the guy that made the matching, jumpsuits made it. Like he said, a lot of the [01:04:00] standards that other people then were like, Oh my God, we got to have matching jumpsuits. Like it was pretty amazing to watch that wave, but it all was a real evolution that started way back at bridge day and finally made it to where.

Harry Parker: we came to Moab because as our experience happened in cliff camp, our natural Avenue, we started to think of our buildings, it's rocks. We're rock hoppers is really who we are as BASE jumpers. 

Matt Blank: I want to know about, Avery saying yes and saying no. was it, certain qualities that you were looking for?

Matt Blank: And was it as important to say no to people as it was to say yes? That's a good question. 

Avery Badenhop: That is, fortunately in, because the, our local BASE community was so small. at the time there was a time when literally every BASE jumper knew all the BASE jumpers and then as it got more popular, a lot of them, [01:05:00] say there was some guys that you just didn't see around anymore.

Avery Badenhop: They didn't want you to know. But I think people were getting more into the thing of they want to be seen. And so our group, it was easy for us to form a team. And then once we had a team of guys and we always jumped together, we knew who we could count on. And, just like any community, every once in a while, You come across BASE numbers who are just douchebags and you don't want to jump with them and you don't want them around and you just have to be able to say no.

Avery Badenhop: When it came to organizing of events, we wanted to have qualified people to form the team. It's one thing to say we're a team, but if you're a team and knuckleheads, you don't necessarily need to come on our loads. there were some people who would just say yes to anybody. Oh, you want to go?

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, let's go. And so it got to the point where we had to go, you know what, actually we want a higher. Caliber, more experience. Somebody, shows that they have a safety record, shows that they're not going to make an idiot of themselves. And sometimes they do anyway. [01:06:00] Sometimes they don't, but you just have to learn how to, who you want to be with and who you don't want to be around at 

Matt Blank: the height of the team.

Matt Blank: How many people were on it? 

Avery Badenhop: when we were just BASE jumpers in the nineties, it was a four man team. And so often most of the teams would have five people because it's pretty likely between now and the next time we get together, somebody is getting hurt, maybe even dying and it can't go. but, so then the people that were on the team changed over the years, depending upon lack of interest, Jeff Stout, he was an underground jumper.

Avery Badenhop: And after jumping with us for a couple of years, I, you know what, I really don't like the big crowd scene. I'm going to go back underground. Same with a big Dave Clehan. And then, we had people like Johnny Utah on our team. And then, for one reason or another, if, The team said, Oh, we couldn't go.

Avery Badenhop: Then we'd have to find new alternates and find people. Oh, when T male vision gets to this location, will you jump for the team? there were times when the BASE jumping team itself [01:07:00] had maybe eight, nine, 10 people, and then later. When we transitioned to, we took our team back to skydiving once the wingsuits 

Matt Blank: were involved.

Matt Blank: Yeah. Talk to me about that. Because when I got into the game, I was looking at sponsored ill vision wingsuits going like, Whoa, that's 

Harry Parker: Avery, man. He took, let me, I really want to jump in here. I would go ahead and do that. But I think, a takeaway for me is I, got older is that if you know your, why.

Harry Parker: And you have a clear vision that's shareable and someone can align with you have a lot of power and the ability behind our vision of building a team and why we wanted to do it because we wanted to bring BASE into the light was very easy for people. A lot of people to see. But when you say, how do you pick a choose a team member?

Harry Parker: Do you get along with them? Can you count on them? Are they not a knucklehead? Are they actually on board with what you're doing for the long [01:08:00] term and not the short term as we see a lot in BASE jumping of the really narcissistic ego, look at me, I can do it kind of thing. So You know that I think that's how it really played into, longevity and where a team went in a natural course of development.

Harry Parker: But I do, keep going. I'm sorry to 

Matt Blank: interrupt. No, that's great. And let's talk about that. how did that team survive for so many years? 

Avery Badenhop: okay. back in the late nineties, after we had started doing the BASE jumping competitions, like my team, We were the first people to, have the matching jumpsuits.

Avery Badenhop: Then I said, oh, we need matching rigs. So we all had matching rigs. Then we started, getting logoed canopies, putting T Mill Vision sewn on the top of our canopies. They were fucking expensive, but it was just something that had to be done. Then we moved into the skydiving world, into wingsuiting, and I built a whole different kind of a crew of [01:09:00] skydivers at the drop zone, not necessarily the BASE jumping, some of them were BASE numbers and we did actually a lot of BASE jumping eventually, but what we did is we went down to the drop zone and learned how to fly these new wingsuiting things and there was several years when that's all we really focused on was wingsuiting until we were all flying.

Avery Badenhop: really good at it and bad enough to take the wingsuits off of the cliffs in Europe. And once again, being team oriented, I thought the best way that we can look is to look sharp. So we all had to have matching wingsuits. So we got a sponsor and we got matching wingsuits and he set a 

Harry Parker: standard that like no one could do.

Matt Blank: What was the first sponsor? Nobody could do that. Me. 

Avery Badenhop: Yeah. 

Matt Blank: Yeah. Care to tell us about 

Avery Badenhop: how? I actually sponsored a lot of BASE jumping activities for many years because it was really hard to find real sponsors because we were just so sketchy. when [01:10:00] we first started talking about doing BASE events out in the desert, we couldn't, we thought, Oh, for sure.

Avery Badenhop: MTV Fox sports, extreme channel, ESPN, they're all going to want to see this and they all ran the other way. So we couldn't get anybody to really to help us. Fortunately, I had a lucrative business going on and I didn't mind pouring a lot of my assets into my passion. 

Matt Blank: A lucrative business. that sounds a bit cagey.

Matt Blank: a little of this, a little 

Harry Parker: of that. Yeah. Yeah. We 

Dennis McGlynn: talking like 

Harry Parker: consulting, I think consulting work, like consulting 

Matt Blank: banks out of their cash with masks on, or what are we talking about here? much 

Avery Badenhop: more legitimate. Excuse me. It turns out, even though people will tell you it can't happen, money grows on trees and I figured out a way to grow these little trees and turn it into a business, selling little trees.

Avery Badenhop: And I made a lot of money. We all [01:11:00] know how that turned out, for me, what could I do? 

Matt Blank: Okay. selling trees to finance the team. I love it. it's, definitely wild. Let's get a bit about what it was like to live life on the other side of the law. What was the, what was the lifestyle?

Avery Badenhop: I was raised by hippies and, hippies do like pretty much what they want to do. And the pot culture was something that I grew up in. And even though it's always been illegal, just like it's always been, very popular. And I was just one of those people who liked pot. And in, in the later years of my life, I started to just be somebody who grew really good pot.

Avery Badenhop: And so it was a way for me to offset expenses of life without having to dig ditches. And it just, it [01:12:00] snowballed just by my own, just how enthusiastic I am about whatever I do. If I'm doing something, yeah. I'm doing it. And I just ended up doing it really well and doing it really big. And so I made a lot of money selling, bought, and I spent it on my passion.

Avery Badenhop: And there was this new thing, this BASE jumping thing that I was doing that didn't have a lot of money in it. The only way you can make some money in BASE jumping was start with more money. That's was the only way to do it. 

Matt Blank: Was there, any paranoia around, skirting the law as a lifestyle? Did you have to be looking over your shoulder, or were you dialed in enough that, you had relaxed into the, to the scene, 

Avery Badenhop: pre 1997, I was what you would call, you have to a street dealer because that's just what it was in 1997.

Avery Badenhop: I happened to be partner in a truck that I [01:13:00] drove with a guy who helped write proposition two 15 in California. And Fred told me at the time, he's all, you know what? You don't have to do the business the way you're doing anymore. There's legal avenues. And so I immediately got into in 1997 into the medical marijuana, businesses that were going on in the bay area in California.

Matt Blank: And did this money fund not only the team, but also the travel that led to some of these events? Oh, 

Harry Parker: are you kidding me? We would have to split the cash up when we were traveling. So we all had under 10, 000 on it. Oh, there was bizarre. 

Avery Badenhop: There were times. When I'd took a group of people, literally, and it's I had to give each one of them, because I couldn't take 50, 000 to Switzerland with me.

Avery Badenhop: I had to take nine of my friends and give each of them 5, 

Matt Blank: 000. So that you're under the legal limit for a [01:14:00] transportation of talk me through, how that led to some of the international events. 

Avery Badenhop: we were doing, bridge day. we started bridge day organizing in the, in 97, I think was our first actual year that we did it ourselves.

Avery Badenhop: And and that's when also we started our other events around the country. We were doing the tombstone challenge here in Moab. We were doing the snake river BASE games off the twin falls bridge for a couple of years. We, duped the fucking people up in Auburn to let us do two legal events off the Auburn bridge through some filming loopholes.

Avery Badenhop: And then in that period, we also got involved in the late 19. 90s with Robin Hyde, he was a reporter for Skydive magazine and he covered a lot of the shit that we did. He ended up [01:15:00] somehow getting a connection in, Malaysia and we got involved with the first Patronus building jumps. But it was ironic because at the same time, another friend from Malaysia had got ahold of us and said, Hey, we're really interested in bridge day and maybe trying to do something in Malaysia.

Avery Badenhop: And they sent out this lady, Alicia buoy, who represented the KL tower. And she did a bridge day with us one year. And she said, Oh yeah, you guys got to come to Malaysia. we were already there. So it was just like, so happenstance that were like right next door to the Patronus was this KL tower. And they said, Hey, you guys want to do something here?

Avery Badenhop: And we said, absolutely. And so the Malaysians didn't want to pay us anything to do it. So all of a sudden financing was needed for that. I financed initially all the shit we did in Malaysia. We just let's do it. You guys, we ended up doing the KL tower for five years. That was our next series of events.

Avery Badenhop: What [01:16:00] years were those? we did our first event in off the Kle Tower in 2000, and then, 

Harry Parker: Patronus was 2000. KL was 2001. 

Avery Badenhop: Oh, okay. You're right. Yeah. Patronus was 2000. And then it was over the millennium and then Yeah, it was over. 

Harry Parker: Did say that like it was the jump. The jump was at midnight before midnight to 2000.

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, we did, Dennis and I, and well, Dennis was like the real organizer of the thing for Robin. But he, like he, once again, he gathered together his little crew and, on the first Patronus big way, there were three members of team ill vision on the load. We were like, we were. We were on it.

Avery Badenhop: We were in it. then we did the chaos tower 2001 through 2005. we had given up, bridge day got canceled in 2001 after nine 11. And it just it ruined so much for [01:17:00] us to just lose that event that year that we just lost our enthusiasm. And we, at that point handed off bridge day to Troy Woodry.

Avery Badenhop: Of go fast because he had also a lot of money and a lot of funds to be able to make the thing happen. then we did the KL tower for five years and in the end of five years of doing the KL tower, it was the same thing every year and it never produced money coming back to us. It was always us.

Avery Badenhop: It was the clowns paying to have a circus and we just got tired of it. We said, it's time for somebody to pay us to do it. Even though we could afford it, it just didn't make any sense. it wasn't, it was non sustainable. So we handed off the KL tower to Gary Cunningham. but also in those years we picked up things like people in China got interested in us and we did the first event from the Jin Mao tower.

Avery Badenhop: hold 

Harry Parker: on, back up KL tower, started in 2001. Then we picked up the [01:18:00] Alistar, which was what? 300 feet. Yeah. Alistar in Malaysia was part of became because we were trying to build a circuit. Then we got Borneo in 2002, and then Jin Mao. Was 2003 and I just want to have this one thing on Jin Mao.

Harry Parker: That was, one of the gnarliest buildings covered in razor blades we ever jumped. And it was aired live to 2. 5 billion people with a quarter billion estimated viewership with almost a half a million people showing up on site. Then Macau Tower with A. J. Hackett in 2003. 

Avery Badenhop: Yep. We did those in those years.

Avery Badenhop: what else did we do? 

Harry Parker: Little, then came Little Colorado, Arizona in 2008. And then after this whole debacle with the KL Tower and it started to crumble and they couldn't find the people to do it. Then [01:19:00] Avery organized T Mill Vision again and took, organized KL Tower again in Malaysia in 2018. And then came La Palapa in Acapulco.

Harry Parker: So that bagged for a while there. Avery literally had B A S E events, right? So now we have that worldwide. So La Palapa provided a legal building in 2018, which carried on for what, 3 4 years? 

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, we did, it, prior to the plague and then we didn't go to Mexico during the plague years and then we picked it back up and went for a few more years in Acapulco.

Avery Badenhop: I was supposed to be going to Acapulco with the whole gang of monkeys next month, but that place just got A lot of people don't realize 

Harry Parker: Acapulco got hit by a category four, five hurricane and it is 100 percent destroyed. Destroyed. then Melanik, antenna. Yeah. Now he's got 

Avery Badenhop: a legal. Yeah. That's, when I got the, we didn't get the antenna into 2019.

Avery Badenhop: So up [01:20:00] until then, I had events off bridges and earth and we had spans because we had Idaho and West Virginia and in 2019, I finally was able to get an antenna, a legal antenna. So there are a lot of guys organizing BASE jumps out there and usually they have. Object specific, they're doing this and that.

Avery Badenhop: We're the only guys that do it from everything. let 

Matt Blank: me, let me back up a little bit and pick up some of these pieces. Okay. I got to KL in 2015, 14, 15, 16. and this was after you had passed it off to Gary Cunningham. and I want to know what happened. In those interim years. what I'm hearing from y'all is like you were traveling the world, financing, all of these events and your travel, on the other side of the law.

Matt Blank: But then there was a time that the community had to do without your [01:21:00] leadership. And we pulled 

Harry Parker: back. Yeah. and there was some extenuating circumstances. let's talk about these 

Matt Blank: extenuating circumstances and, what I really wanna know, call that next subject, . I, want to know, what happened to these events and what happened to the team during the years where you're not out and about leading it?

Avery Badenhop: in essence, the team got put on hold just like I did. when I, went to federal prison, the, there was no, the keystone had been lost. Unfortunately, the captain of the ship was otherwise occupied, so it dissipated and dismantled and, people didn't do my, Time stood still for me, so I don't know what everybody was doing live.

Avery Badenhop: Their lives went on, I think my catalyst in the involvement of what I do is what makes, things solidify for us and gel. Let me ask 

Matt Blank: you this. [01:22:00] How many years did you do? Only 

Avery Badenhop: five. 

Matt Blank: What was it like coming out to a culture that had legalized the thing that you were in prison for? 

Avery Badenhop: Oh, it was, really ridiculous.

Avery Badenhop: I was literally the last guy to get thrown in jail for selling pot. I was literally like the last one, even when I was incarcerated, like most of the people in law enforcement that I encountered, they're all, you're in for what? Why are you in for that? Isn't that legal? I don't know. 

Harry Parker: Yeah, but it's more like 10 years because you have the, you have three or four years on the front end of, going to court, then you have the five served, and then you have the, the three to four when you come out, what am I going to do now?

Avery Badenhop: Put it this way. From when I picked up my court case until I was all ready to be free again, I didn't get to make a BASE jump for seven years. That's how I [01:23:00] judge it. It's yeah, as soon as When I picked up my legal troubles, I didn't have time to BASE jump. But when I got out of prison, man, the first thing I wanted to do was my probation officer to give me permission to go somewhere and do something.

Avery Badenhop: And I went right back to BASE jumping. It's all I thought about the whole time. I was not BASE jumping was when am I going to get my life back? And for me, that was going BASE jumping. 

Matt Blank: There are a lot of people in our culture and our communities that burn the candle at both ends. And live more life in several years than most people in an entire lifetime.

Matt Blank: Now, looking back on your career, you got to do a lot more, because you were living on the other side of the law than most anyone would. And my question is, was it worth it?

Avery Badenhop: I really lost, I lost a lot by the [01:24:00] experience that I went through, with my relationships with people, when a guy goes to prison, his whole family goes to prison. So it affected my daughter, it affected my wife, in some ways, actually the federal government might've saved my life because, when I was in prison.

Avery Badenhop: A lot of my peers, a lot of my close friends, a lot of the guys that do were doing exactly what I was doing at the time, because in 2008 and 2009, wingsuit, BASE jumping and proximity flying were really just getting going with the older technology gear. And man, people were just dying left and right when I was in prison.

Avery Badenhop: So maybe by being in prison, they saved my life because I would have been flying right. I would have been right on Jonathan Flores's tail. He's like one of my tightest buddies and I would have been doing all that shit and all these other guys that you look at That were doing the most dangerous things.

Avery Badenhop: I would [01:25:00] have been doing it. 

Matt Blank: let's transition then to this You've got right here in this room just on the three of you a collective 100 years plus of BASE jumping experience. Yes, we do. How did you guys survive? What was the secret to the longevity? 

Avery Badenhop: a lot of it, a lot of it is luck and it's not all three of us haven't been busted up BASE jumping.

Avery Badenhop: we've been busted and broken and bruised and pretty near almost got killed several times in our progression of our sport. It takes, a certain knack. I, was very fortunate in all of my stuff to do with parachute skydiving, BASE jumping, just a natural knack for how these things operate and what to do and how to act quickly.

Avery Badenhop: Cause when you're BASE jumping and shit goes down, you don't have a whole lot of time to sit there and start thinking about what would I do? You need to just be doing it. So luck, skill, [01:26:00] determination. I have my own limits that I set and some of them are low on other people's standards, a ring, a rag, some string and some savvy.

Harry Parker: Dennis, you have to say something to this because it's a real question. it's 

Dennis McGlynn: what's the secret to longevity? 

Harry Parker: Yeah, like how, why did we, a lot of people, we've lost a lot of people in the sport and we have survived many years. Why do you think that, how did we survive all the stuff 

Dennis McGlynn: that we did?

Dennis McGlynn: There's a small portion of luck involved for sure. No matter how good you are, how good you pack, how much how good, how much aptitude you have for it, there's still some luck involved. You get dealt a bad hand and you can't deal with it, so every, incident that happened, learn from it.

Dennis McGlynn: I always dissected what happened to somebody here and there the best I could for myself. Excuse me. And glory and demise is but a fraction of an instance. [01:27:00] And it really is. so many close calls you can have and you got to at least know it was a close call. And understand it, the closest I ever came to death, I was telling guys yesterday with a story, I was here at Moab, during our first tombstone challenge, I was, I hadn't jumped in a while, I had a rig that was packed up for a while, and I put it on my back, and we were up top of the tombstone, and I had started running, I was just gonna run off the edge, like I did a lot of times, and I think it was Harry who came walking up over the top, so I stopped, I said, I'll just wait, I'll wait, I'll go hang out, see what's up, we'll do something together.

Dennis McGlynn: Came up, I pulled my pilot chute out and it had a rubber band around it, so That was close to I ever came to death I think and boy did I learn from that because Movaletto taught me that little trick So I said no more ever again I won't do that because if you can forget nobody's immune to making a mistake Nobody's immune to it a glitch Anyhow, so I try to put the [01:28:00] odds in my favor the best I can I always did like I said I wasn't as crazy as people perceive me to be I didn't want to die.

Dennis McGlynn: I didn't want to get hurt. And, I tried to understand everything I was doing. You know how it is when you start BASE jumping from skydiving, you start understanding your gear. Now people really start, oh. 

Harry Parker: I'd like to, I'd like to talk to that 

Matt Blank: point too. Yeah, and what I'm picking up is that the secret to your longevity was not making the same mistake twice.

Dennis McGlynn: Yeah, exactly. That's wonderful. Yeah, 

Harry Parker: again, I think back of how we formed as a group and some of the things that we went through, like Cliff Camp and how we started out as, innovators or people that we studied it. And we did it together. And so we were constantly building skillsets and then taking those skillsets and then doing something else with them.

Harry Parker: So we're constantly building on not just like jump numbers, but what [01:29:00] we're doing with it. like I said before, we get a canopy. We'd go skydive with it, we'd set our brake settings, we'd come back to Auburn, we'd practice, practice, we'd practice our skill sets for emergencies, right? Because we were afraid to be in them, we wanted to know how to work them.

Harry Parker: Also, within the group setting, when you're holding each other accountable, there's a, there's a little bit of humility there to the ability to be free to ask a question. Cause we see a lot of time in a narcissistic space, like nobody wants to look bad. So they're more afraid to ask the question and in our environment, it was all like, Hey man, I forgot how to do this.

Harry Parker: Or what are you doing? How, why are you doing that? Is that new? and developing systems of, the ability to do the same thing over and over again. Good. Get it. Making your changes very small and really paying attention to the patterns and knowing when to walk down that comes in a lot of your podcasts.

Harry Parker: It's like we didn't have a problem walking down. Like we, we, our goals were [01:30:00] bigger than we were and we were doing it together. And I think that was a catalyst that really did affect our longevity period. 

Matt Blank: So a couple of points that I want to pull out of that, the last one, if you want to make a long range career, you got to have long range goals.

Matt Blank: If your only goal is to do that next jump, then there's nothing really motivating you to do that. To jump into sustainable 

Harry Parker: way, dude, having a vision, having a mission that's shareable and alignable others is incredibly powerful. And I think that's what carried us through the good times 

Matt Blank: and the bad times.

Matt Blank: The other thing that I really love about what you just said is creating a space that's nonjudgmental where you can ask your homies something that would be. Possibly embarrassing to not know at the time that you're jumping, and certainly there's a lot of that stuff, for me, I'm seven, eight years off the job in a lot of the disciplines.

Matt Blank: And now I have a reputation of somebody that does know something in the sport. And it's hard to [01:31:00] go back to the beginning and go look, I don't know this anymore. Who's got the expertise in this area. and it takes a very nonjudgmental space, for somebody to come back at it and admit what they don't know in order to, live a sustainable 

Dennis McGlynn: career at the same time.

Dennis McGlynn: It takes people that can accept that from people and not be judgmental. 

Harry Parker: Yeah. And Dennis really set the standard for that. And I think Avery little, picked it up in his team environment. that's how we lived. 

Avery Badenhop: And in that regard, that space has to be there, like Harry said, to be able to ask the questions and also to be able to accept the criticisms, because there are people on the BASE fatality list who maybe were mentioned by somebody, what about this?

Avery Badenhop: And what about that? And their attitude was, fuck you, I know what I'm doing dead point. Dead. And also, you know what? I'm gonna do this. And it's that really doesn't sound like a very good idea. Have you thought that through? Eh, no. Fuck you. I know what I'm doing. Dead. [01:32:00] several, times.

Avery Badenhop: It's it comes up to her, their ego, and it's no, don't touch me. Don't look at me. Don't judge me. Don't help me. Dead. Nobody's 

Dennis McGlynn: immune to a glitch. No matter how good you are, it comes right down to that. 

Matt Blank: Do y'all have any secrets to reaching your own crew when you start to see them making mistakes that they're not, quite aware of or admitting to when they're resistant to somebody's feedback as their strategies for getting them to get back on the right path?

Avery Badenhop: Absolutely. Absolutely. I do. I talked to like sometimes when I see my teammates or even not mostly my team, cause that's the crew that I look out for. But I will, if I see anybody at a BASE jump doing something, I will at least say something, check out their attitude. If they want to hear something about it and they don't, I've done all I can do, but I do have talks with my own people and people have had talks with me.

Avery Badenhop: Just my little cruise. Hey, I noticed this or you're doing that. Or [01:33:00] could you improve this to make it, to make us happier with the way you look during your BASE jump? When you go off looking sloppy or shitty. Or doing this or that, it makes us feel bad in a way it's like, Oh, that guy's going to get hurt if he carries on that habit again and again.

Avery Badenhop: So 

Matt Blank: then you must take on a certain amount of accountability and responsibility for one another. 

Harry Parker: yeah, it's self correcting. You're creating an atmosphere and an environment where it self balances. think about it. We came out here in 97 to do a, An actual competition of a 350 foot cliff.

Harry Parker: We don't want anybody to die. And back then it was rare to have over a hundred BASE jumps. Some of those guys had 20, 30 BASE jumps. We can't have anybody get hurt on our watch. We're trying something new. If somebody dies or gets hurt, we're done. So there was a hyper vigilance around safety, introduction of gear, and really bringing the forth we can die doing this.

Harry Parker: We have to do it [01:34:00] right every 

Matt Blank: time. It sounds like the community and the culture has gone the other direction in recent years where it's hyper independent, and case in point, check this out, look at Point Break 1. That crew is super tight. They're watching each other's backs. Okay. Point break to the movie opens or nearly opens with somebody dying.

Matt Blank: And the crew just being like, that was his line, bro. And not even checking on him. Just like 

Harry Parker: off. Yeah. that's flip that's flipped. I think, that it's easy to judge the new. The new community or the new thing that, and it's, it's all the same and different at the same time, but I, I was telling these guys, I haven't found in my life, another group of guys I can hang out with and actually create together.

Harry Parker: And it's hard, I think, to find. People that want to work in groups because BASE jumping can be very narcissistic and very, independent. And I think there's a, it has its place, [01:35:00] right? to go get world records or to push boundaries. Like sometimes you got to do that on your own, right? But the ability to find people to work together is really hard.

Harry Parker: And I'll bet you like Matt and Taz and Moab BASE association, they're facing all of it right now. when do people, sacrifice, And come together as a group for something bigger than themselves. It's rare, man. It's just rare. 

Matt Blank: Avery. Any, thoughts on, how to stay tight as a crew, how to, maintain your individuality while also, taking responsibility for the group and its direction.

Avery Badenhop: because we have, we have a tight crew, we have a team, we called ourselves a team and we all know that we are on a team. So we all look out for each other. We stay in touch. All the time, all year, no matter for BASE jumping or not, [01:36:00] we try and keep all of our people as up jumpers, current jumping all the time being BASE jumpers so that when we go BASE jumping, they're like ready to go.

Matt Blank: let's move on for a bit and I want to ask you about the time that you spent not jumping. In that time that you had that forced hiatus, did you have any realizations about your jumping or jumping in general that helped you get into it in a different way? Or, was it a continuation of the same trajectory that you had before you took the break?

Matt Blank: Make 

Harry Parker: it up for lost time, man. 

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, it was unfortunate that I didn't get to jump for a few years. but. I kept in touch with a lot of my BASE jumping friends. And so I was able to live vicariously through what they were doing. Harry Parker was in touch with me for my whole time with the emails.

Avery Badenhop: I was in touch [01:37:00] the whole time with Jonathan Flores right up until the, very last weeks before I got out of prison, I got my parachutist magazine, so at least I can look at pretty pictures. There was a drop zone nearby and I had friends like. Go to the drop zone and go make wingsuit jumps over my prison.

Avery Badenhop: So I could go out in the BASEball field and it's okay, you jump at one o'clock. They would come and visit me in the morning and then go to the drop zone. And then I had friends that would go and make skydives for me. So I could see my friends skydiving right above where I was. it was on my mind every day.

Avery Badenhop: amongst other things, my family and other things that were going on in the world. But, it never, I never stopped being a BASE jumper, even when I couldn't. 

Matt Blank: I see. So even though you was a break from the physical activity, it was still a continuation of your own trajectory. you are still in your mind, BASE jumping and skydiving and doing all of these [01:38:00] things.

Matt Blank: Oh, 

Avery Badenhop: absolutely. I didn't spend my time thinking, Oh, I, when I get out, I guess I got to get a job and go be a regular human. And I was on there. I just can't wake. To get back and be myself, 

Matt Blank: speaking of being yourself, I know that there are a couple of things that you've got, that you've heard from a previous podcast that you want to bring up.

Matt Blank: so let's get into some of those personal things. Yeah. 

Avery Badenhop: there was just, some things that I had heard in podcasts about the subject and one of them was about, people's jobs and what they did for a living and how, BASE jumping interfered with their life. And that regard, and it just struck me because, once, once I started BASE jumping, that's really what I was.

Avery Badenhop: And once I really, got into it, that's how I identified myself. So usually when somebody comes up and introduces themselves to you and they say, hi, I'm so and so blah, blah, blah, who are you? [01:39:00] What do you do? And people go, Oh, I'm a plumber or I'm a bus driver. And for years people say, so what do you do?

Avery Badenhop: It was like, I'm a BASE jumper. Yeah, no, but what do you do for a living? I'm a BASE jumper. how do you get money? Whatever. Money, grows on trees. So you know, it's just, but that's how I would describe myself. So it was interesting because, excuse me, for me, it was always when I had to have a job, how did the job interfere with my BASE jumping?

Avery Badenhop: Not the other way around. The BASE jumping took the precedent. So sometimes I just wouldn't do a job cause I'm all, I got something better to do than go work, 

Matt Blank: is that what it is to be a BASE jumper to prioritize it above, the other things that, might define you? 

Avery Badenhop: we, you asked earlier, what is a BASE jumper and a non BASE jumper?

Avery Badenhop: A fucking BASE jumper is somebody who lives BASE. I live BASE. I wake up in the morning and I think about BASE jumping. I'm driving around. I'm never looking at the scenery. I'm [01:40:00] looking up, what's up there to be jumped off. It's it's just a different perspective about what or who you are or what you think defines you.

Matt Blank: Is there something to be said for, that mentality adding to longevity? it's, hard to see somebody being, on point that's not living the lifestyle. If you're only half a gangster, if you've only got one hat, like a foot in the door, 

Harry Parker: it's I don't think I'd be alive. if I wasn't, I hate to say it cause I think currency is a double edged sword, like man, if I was doing it just on the weekends or, seasonally, like it's, really hard to continue BASE drumming in this age when time goes by, it's a whole different ball game without really having your brain in the game.

Harry Parker: A hundred percent. Avery's 

Dennis McGlynn: he's a little more methodical than most. He's a different kind of BASE jumper than most, even the BASE jumpers. He's, he studies. He [01:41:00] wants to know. He's methodical. He's organized. And, he doesn't want to die. For sure. And what he wants, BASE jump. Hardcore still. he's different than most, BASE jumpers.

Matt Blank: Avery. 

Avery Badenhop: I am different than most space jumpers. 

Matt Blank: And, what do you think about, the idea that currency is a double edged sword and that the more you do it, certainly the better you get at it. But the more opportunity you give yourself to get fucked up. 

Avery Badenhop: absolutely. It is. Yeah. To stay current means you need to jump a lot and the more you jump, the more you're exposed.

Avery Badenhop: And it's the eventual exposure to something dangerous. After a long period of time, which your odds are that maybe at some point you're going to have a mishap because of your exposure, but I think currency is the best way for your body to already always remember what it is supposed to be [01:42:00] doing packing all the time.

Avery Badenhop: So you always remember how to pack and so you just keep these things, it's like muscle memory and this is what you're supposed to be doing. And this is how your body works. Yeah. casual BASE jumpers, maybe their, longevity is that they are not exposed to the dangers as often. And also casual BASE jumpers maybe don't go to different extreme types of objects.

Avery Badenhop: Maybe they just stick to something super comfortable, 

Harry Parker: plus the gear. 

Matt Blank: the gear works. Yeah, but this is a hotly debated topic of whether, casual and conservative BASE jumping is more sustainable than full immersion. And I've heard this argument from both sides and certainly the BFL is Littered with people who have proposed to do both.

Matt Blank: there are people that are full immersion jumpers on there. There are a [01:43:00] lot of people also that are casual and conservative that ended up on the list. And if you see the mistakes, it's hard to, choose or to analyze Which one of those has a greater chance of success? It comes down 

Dennis McGlynn: to attitude, I believe.

Dennis McGlynn: The attitude of the jumper that's jumping. I was jumping, I was really current. Back then, what I was doing, I was out on the edge, doing some of the extreme stuff. Now, it's it doesn't even compare to what some of these guys are doing nowadays, but I got to where I was looking off of a 400 foot building and getting bored.

Dennis McGlynn: So I backed off and went and did other things. because I knew that you can't get complacent if you got to keep pushing it and keep pushing it to get more of a buzz. I think it's going to get 

Matt Blank: dangerous. So what is the, the way, what is the Teflon for complacency? Because that's something that plagues the community as well.

Harry Parker: I think Steph Davis, she mentioned margins and that really struck, me. I think that wherever you are in the sport, if you [01:44:00] have the awareness and like Dennis said, the attitude, you're going to, you're going to pick and choose what you jump, with, your longevity in mind, that's an attitude leaving margins of error or margins of safety for an, each individual might be a little bit different.

Harry Parker: So it is a complicated web for sure. I don't know if you'll fully figure it out, but I think if you go with attitude and how the individual looks at it, you can look at it a hundred different ways. there's a lot of 

Dennis McGlynn: influence on limitations and being conservative, knowing what your limits are, what you want to stick within.

Dennis McGlynn: I know what my limits are pretty much for what I'm comfortable doing. And, I'll do certain things. Like sometimes I say, that's what I've done it, but that's not what I do. I have certain types of jumps, do it and close the chapter and go walk away. canopies are a lot different today, right?

Dennis McGlynn: Than they were years ago. So our opening altitudes, our consistency of openings are different. So our altitudes were a little bit different. What was conservative and what was not. [01:45:00] and the guys that are getting into it now, some of them, they just don't know what, what's going on. They don't know how to respect it enough in a way because they haven't been there.

Dennis McGlynn: You can't buy experience, experience comes with, doing it and seeing it and learning it and living it. And that's part of the longevity. The longer you live in it, the longer you realize that nobody's immune to that glitch. It's a little easier to be conservative. Yeah. 

Matt Blank: I think. I guess I'm also curious on, backing off, how that adds to longevity.

Matt Blank: Because as you back off, you also get duller on your skill set. Personally, I was pushing really hard during the 2000 teens and operating at near a hundred percent, but super confident because I was doing it every day and I was fully immersed and now that I've backed off in order to feel the same amount of confidence, I've got to be operating at 25%.

Matt Blank: Of my like proposed capacity, [01:46:00] and so I'm curious, but isn't it great? It is. It's still great. It's 

Dennis McGlynn: still great. But you get, give some of that, fear and respect back into it. 

Matt Blank: Yeah. Yeah. So how much, fear and respect, is necessary for a career that's 30 plus years.

Matt Blank: Obviously, if you don't fear anything at all, man, like you're not going to make it. 

Dennis McGlynn: No fear turns into respect for sure. I think. you got to have some, yesterday was first BASE jump. I think I've made maybe three or four BASE jumps in the last year, because I've been doing my rafting thing. So I'm up there on Tombstone yesterday looking around, seeing all these people that was just, it was mind blowing to me, because I hadn't been here in 25 years.

Dennis McGlynn: To see the, scene yesterday was, the parking lot was full. There's people everywhere at all kind of exit points, everywhere. I just sat up there and grinned and smiled and enjoyed it. And then it was my turn to jump. Everybody else had gone. Cause I waited till everybody was gone. I wanted to watch.

Dennis McGlynn: It was my turn. I'm thinking here I am. I'm on current. I made one bridge jump, [01:47:00] I guess maybe in the last year, maybe two. I haven't been on a cliff in a long time, but it was all mine. I got to jump yesterday. It was great. It was awesome. Cause I wasn't current. Had that good fear. It was fun. I had a lot of fun yesterday making the 

Matt Blank: one jump.

Matt Blank: Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes that fear does turn into excitement. Oh yeah. 

Dennis McGlynn: And there's the commitment. I'm going to go now. I used to trick myself a lot. I'm going to go and I'd go and stop not, just out of random and sometimes he'd get a good little buzz going yesterday. I enjoyed it yesterday.

Dennis McGlynn: It was a lot of fun. 

Matt Blank: Avery. What else is on your list? 

Avery Badenhop: there was a, subject that came up on a recent, podcast about the BASE fatality list and how it has evolved and what it is now and what it means to the BASE community. And then also some of the new modern attitudes about BASE jumping, dying.

Avery Badenhop: And the list, [01:48:00] because when we were kids BASE jumping man, when somebody came up on the list, it was like that crushing. It was, always crushing. And it was never anything that you wanted to, it was like, you didn't even, you didn't even want to know about it, but you had to know about it.

Avery Badenhop: And we always knew about all the different ones. And now that the list is hundreds of people into it and there's all those stories. And there was this attitude about the romanticism for BASE jumpers of the list. And it was right after I had listened to that podcast that, that a guy went in.

Avery Badenhop: In Europe and his attitude before and always had been about how he would get on the list. And it was like a fully romanticized thing. It was almost like heroic status will [01:49:00] now be achieved because I'm going to be one of those guys. And the. The conversation about afterwards on the circumstances of how he went in also fully made him this heroic person for dying and getting on the list exactly the way he said he would and comments like, I want to be like that when I grow up, it was just like, to me, mind blowing.

Avery Badenhop: Cause I don't want to fucking get on the list. 

Matt Blank: So do you think us canonizing our dead leads to more people taking obscene 

Avery Badenhop: risks? no, like I say, but it gives them the opportunity to achieve that status. Yes. 

Matt Blank: we don't have a list of legends. we don't have a list of any other kind that is 

Harry Parker: that's, why I'm so stoked to be here and so stoked to have your work because.

Harry Parker: But again, if you look at life through the lens of evolution [01:50:00] itself, what you're witnessing is just a component of that evolution and will the culture make a correction or not? So I won't make somebody wrong for being on that list, but if you step back and look at it as crazy as it is then what are we not doing or being with or accepting Or being together, how, what do you do differently?

Harry Parker: And I think what you're doing here changes that trajectory because now we can get into memorials. We can get into ministering or dead. We can get into actually processing trauma as a culture. That is different from anything else in the world. And that's an evolutionary component. So yeah, you can take a look at that and go, wow, that's a red flag.

Harry Parker: Okay, if it is, then what should we be doing that's different and how do we get there? And that's a much bigger vision and community and culture and evolution than [01:51:00] looking at one individual example. 

Matt Blank: Totally. I, hope that I'm giving people an opportunity to gain notoriety through, amazing.

Matt Blank: Works in the sport rather than like most of the time you get notoriety either from dying or doing something so sketchy that everybody's talking about it, right? 

Avery Badenhop: and also, as a collective consciousness is our expectation. what the next BASE fatality is going to be, does that somehow grow the list, right?

Avery Badenhop: Because there are people like they wake up in the morning, they check their social media and everything. And it's Oh, I wonder if anybody's on the list again, or, the expectation that something is going to grow, could have something to do actually with it growing now, Nick to Giovanni many years ago.

Avery Badenhop: He just got tired. of doing the [01:52:00] list. And for, and it was one of those reasons that he had said at the time was because he was sitting there expecting it to come, it would come. And so by putting it away, he no longer had to think about what's the next thing to come. And I don't know if it has anything to do with it, but there's a lot of times when a lot of people Dying BASE jumping, and then everybody's all, and then the BBFL becomes the new hype, and then everybody's checking it to see what's next.

Avery Badenhop: And maybe if we all just think about something else, next is gonna show up, but maybe not so often. So what 

Matt Blank: do you guys think about, sensationalizing the morbid nature of the 

Harry Parker: practice? then don't do it. what you're doing here is, documenting people while they're still alive.

Harry Parker: If you give people a goal, they'll go for it. So if when you look at ethics and you look at people that you admire, why do you admire them? Why do you admire the pros in the sport of [01:53:00] skydiving, right? Why do you admire them? Because what they're doing and who they're being in the world, we are human beings.

Harry Parker: Who you're being matters. So if you start you instead of taking your attention and putting on who's dying Why don't we take it on and put your attention on who's doing what in the sport for the betterment of the sport and themselves? And the world around them and make that the focus then your You're celebrating people in real time while we're alive.

Harry Parker: And that's a different mindset, but that's a cultural choice. And that's a huge shift because evolution is messy and it takes a lot of time and a lot of work and anything you do in that arena is you're working well past yourself. And not a lot of people are going to do that. So I think this is a start.

Matt Blank: let's talk about that for a second. what are some of the things in the modern BASE jumping culture that y'all are stoked on? What are some of the things that you'd love to highlight that, you've seen, pop up in the last [01:54:00] few years about that? I'll just give you some highlights. we're here 

Dennis McGlynn: goes without question, the gear watching the evolution of gear, where it's come, where it's come from, where it's at now.

Dennis McGlynn: when I started parachuting, I was skydiving, I was running, jumping around parachutes. That's what we had. to see where it's come through skydiving and then BASE jumping, it's, that's impressive. And, The ability to jump with friends in the open in the daylight, that's great. That's what I always dreamed of.

Dennis McGlynn: It should have been that way. Jumping classic clandestine at night. That's cool and groovy and all, but it gets old. It's, it's a lot more fun to jump with your friends during the day. Like I saw yesterday, that was awesome. some of the things that the cons about it is, these guys are doing what I perceived to see is crazy stuff, the crazy exits and doing all this, some of this crazy stuff.

Dennis McGlynn: Like my folks, they didn't like rock and roll. it's the same thing. I guess we're just from a different culture, but it's, but they're, 

Matt Blank: Avery, yeah. what's gotten you stoked in the last couple of years? [01:55:00] 

Avery Badenhop: over the whole time, really what really changed And really was advancing BASE jumping was the whole gear thing is like just making better gear.

Avery Badenhop: I completely agree with Dennis about, the whole, we're not sneaking around the bushes at night doing dangerous shit now, at least one and, in a hurry. because we're here, we got to get the fuck out of here as quick as possible. Now we can take our time and mosey along to so many exit points now and hang out and enjoy the everything and the all that it is and just make these peaceful BASE jumps.

Avery Badenhop: Dennis taught me how to BASE jump. It was rudimentary at the time just because that's how it was done. Now there's, A lot of actual real live BASE jumping courses by people who really know what they're doing and they stick to it and they're [01:56:00] hardcore about it. And so instruction has come a long way with that has come the influx of BASE jumpers.

Avery Badenhop: or people who now BASE jump that only go to their course and then they're set out into the world and they don't have, one thing that we had to learn when we started BASE jumping was rigging. You had to be a rigger to be a BASE jumper and there are a lot of BASE jumpers nowadays who are not at all riggers and they don't completely understand their gear.

Avery Badenhop: this whole popularity rise has come through all the different manufacturers making all this wonderful gear that really works and all these guys teaching BASE courses and so at least people are having like, more instruction on how to BASE jump other than here's how you fold it, this is what you do, hang on to this, jump, count to three, throw that thing, you'll be alright, so it's a lot different in that regard.

Matt Blank: Though I'm not sure that's actually led to. more people jumping sustainably. and here's the opposite [01:57:00] opinion while they do receive excellent instruction in the beginning, right? there are a great number of people who have dedicated their lives to just creating BASE jumping curriculum and be there to teach those new people.

Matt Blank: After that, there are so many people now flooding into the community that there aren't enough mentors to bring them the rest of the way. And now you see People, not part of Cruz, not part of, anybody that's, part of the history, just trying to figure it out on their own without even a friend like you had.

Avery Badenhop: Oh, I know. You're 100 

Dennis McGlynn: percent right. Mo Valetto had a term he used to say, we're arming the soldiers of destruction. I remember that. 

Harry Parker: Mo Valetto. Oh my God. So much to talk about. Giving 

Dennis McGlynn: these people gear and. 

Harry Parker: In answer to that question, dude, like to give you context, like back in 1994, when Dennis had this brilliant idea to start the CJAA, we, had to force the current manufacturers, Todd Shubotham [01:58:00] at TNT Rigging, Anne Helliwell, Martin Tilly, Adam Filippino, we had to force them to agree on some standards of protocol, right?

Harry Parker: Remember, everything's secret, right? We produced like, it was under 20 pages of the, a BASE jumping protocols. No one had ever done it before. And that stood the test of time till 2010 when, around 2010, when Matt Gerds came out with a book of BASE, right? That's three editions. He's putting out the third edition now.

Harry Parker: And so when I look at that and I look the ability of the digital space to share how BASE isn't, so secretive, you're actually sharing information. That's a longevity component. No 

Matt Blank: question. No question that there is, more available information now and, coursework is. More readily accessible than it's ever been.

Matt Blank: I guess my question is, how do we deal with the massive influx of [01:59:00] people? 

Harry Parker: my question is, how did you, not didn't you guys learn something from Jimmy 

Matt Blank: Poucher? I got, I'm going to say the same thing. I got lucky. I grew up, I came up BASE jumping at Paris when, when apex was right across the street before I even walked into AFF level one.

Matt Blank: I was in their office leaders and innovators, man. And so I got to get to know them through my entire AFF progression. I was never. In, I was never in need of a mentor. I was never in need of somebody that was highly experienced that had been like in the sport for 30 plus years. I I can't say that, my progression is what everybody else got.

Matt Blank: They did. They wouldn't, they didn't have the opportunity. look at everybody that had to learn this in another state and another drop zone without, talking about it. Todd and Jimmy and Marta, like literally right there in front of you every day that you were trying to get this done 

Harry Parker: luxury.

Harry Parker: Yeah. But like he [02:00:00] created, I look at Jimmy Pouchard and the gang, all, of those guys and you guys, they created this deep, sense of community here and it provided a homecoming every year for Thanksgiving and created that community. And my question is, that, The answer to your question is there, but it's so independent that who's going to lead those charges.

Harry Parker: And what, where's the, why big enough for the vision big enough for people to go in a certain direction. I see some of it. Like I see like an emergence of collective consciousness and Moab, right? You got the big Turkey boogie bash, right? You've got certain things that are. Still happening in pockets, being a BASE jumper is about being a survivalist.

Harry Parker: And so what I think separates some BASE jumpers from others is the ability to unionize and group yourself and get this flash bang of a few years of just these golden opportunities to spend together and [02:01:00] make all those journeys together and jump together. And that's your mentorship clans.

Harry Parker: Cultivate that like now and in the future. I'm not sure, but I am sure it's 

Matt Blank: possible. maybe we just need to go back to creating more teams. 

Avery Badenhop: Could be. I do notice that the younger generations of jumpers actually, when I go to place like twin falls. And there's lots of people there. I see most people are with other people.

Avery Badenhop: And I see also a lot of the younger people are like, maybe they're newer jumpers and they're much more willing to be friends and talk and create comraderies and create units and create their gangs and find out, Oh, we're from the same area. We should start doing stuff together. it's.

Avery Badenhop: As for the individuals that are just like, the loaners that are doing on their own, they're going to maybe have a harder time getting more [02:02:00] information about the things that they're doing or their gear or locations, where to jump objects, what safe, you know, evaluating objects that they haven't been to by their self and they don't have a buddy to go and talk it over with or, But I see more of them doing a lot of stick together and of this 

Matt Blank: stuff. I guess here's, the issue, rather than looking at the community as like groups and loners, I don't think that there are a lot of loners. there are certainly a lot of individuals that go out and they really want to like, progress.

Matt Blank: As a soloist, but even in the groups, there is still a huge gap in the information exchange, from the generation of jumpers that innovated to the generation of jumpers. That's now, I got that direct experience. I was, Involved in communication directly across the street from some of the innovators.

Matt Blank: Now [02:03:00] it takes a couple of transfers to get there, right? Like you three are not in the, you just mentioned that you were out at tombstone with like hundreds of these jumpers, right? Or dozens of these jumpers, how many of them knew That you would have some of the information that they actually need.

Matt Blank: Zero. Very few of them. None of them. That campfire doesn't exist anymore because the community has scaled so 

Harry Parker: drastically. Okay. I'm going to challenge you then, Matt. I'm going to challenge you. Like, when we travel overseas, Avery and I went, spent, did my 55th, he took me to Switzerland for my 55th birthday.

Harry Parker: And we were in Lauterbrunnen and we just happened to go into the coffee shop and we got to hang out with the Swiss BASEd association. Remember that? Yep. And these were the leaders. And all we had was accolades just go, thank you, man, for doing all of this work and hurting all this cats, in this selfish, [02:04:00] amount of work that you put into this.

Harry Parker: And I look at the States and it's embarrassing. We don't really have anything now with that. I'm going to, I'll take a step back and go, you know what? Thank you, Matt Lodge. Thank you, Taz. I look at the, I look at the Moab BASE association and dude, Why are we represented? And why is it so resisted?

Harry Parker: And if you were to put that as a center point for information, and I could walk to that table with a hundred ideas BASEd on experience that what worked and what didn't. So we're waiting 

Matt Blank: on it. Yeah. And That is something that I definitely question. Like, why is there such a resistance to associate? 

Harry Parker: It's insanity, dude.

Harry Parker: It's insanity. And it's always been like that. It's like I said, same shit, different 

Matt Blank: day. Because from my perspective, all three of you have had amazing careers BASEd on doing a large part to your associations as a team, your associations as event coordinators and organizers, as, [02:05:00] Industry, leaders and innovators like, you had no problem with it.

Matt Blank: I wanted 

Dennis McGlynn: to associate, we were bushwhacking there in the beginning though, we were, there weren't any standards really. It was, we have to make some stuff up as we went. 

Harry Parker: Okay. I was just, dude, you got thank you very much. And at the same time, sitting here and having this opportunity, I cannot, we did not do it all alone.

Harry Parker: when you look at Todd, she's been a hell of a world, Marty, Tilly, Adam, Filipino, and you look at some of these people who started in the early days, we were all doing it together in our own way, bumping it up against each other and putting up with each other and knowing that we had to do something and trying to figure out a way, but it wasn't all that easy.

Harry Parker: Just us, every person that showed up and helped out every person who saw the vision and made the sacrifice, every person that like got along when we needed him to get along, like every person that made it pull through, like we're, and we're standing on the shoulders of [02:06:00] giants before us, Nick D, G, Mo Valetto, like all these people that were, that, Prompted us to carry the torch and move in our own way.

Harry Parker: and it wasn't just us, right? You had all these other people doing their own things. I'll never forget any of it. We'll tell her to be like, I said, Hey, look at my new business card. She's I have a business and I'll just roll. He's yeah, you got it. and we all played our own parts in this out of sheer survival.

Harry Parker: And the, just the. And just the tenacity that this is what we wanted to do and saw the opportunity to make change to lead Even when we were young and didn't know what we were doing. We 

Dennis McGlynn: wanted to expose the sport too, though We were gonna go a lot of guys didn't they wanted to keep it clandestine keep it underground because they knew it was gonna They felt it was going to ruin the sport, as soon as it got exposed and it was going to be over and there was we it Was a battle between that with a lot of the guys.

Dennis McGlynn: Oh my god. It's in 

Harry Parker: paragliding right now. It's sick. It's [02:07:00] stupid 

Avery Badenhop: Yeah, when we first did events here in Moab There was a certain contingent of the BASE jumping community who like really weren't stoked that we were doing it now There was a predominantly There was the predominant group was all stoked for it because there were people that were itching to do the same thing that we want to do, which was once again, get out of the bushes in the dark of night, sneaking around on shit.

Avery Badenhop: They wanted to come out and just be able to enjoy nice, casual daylight BASE jumping. But there was a whole bunch of guys like, you guys are going to fuck this up for all of us. It's shut up, let us jump in the dark and Moab and here and there, nobody will know we're there. And all you're doing is creating a focus and something's going to happen.

Avery Badenhop: And then of course there's going to be a twist by the news of these maniacs and how they're doing this dangerous stuff. And so there's always going to be the different sides of the thing. Yeah. 

Harry Parker: And you're never going to be able to withhold, you're never going to be able to really [02:08:00] withhold information and growth like that.

Harry Parker: And you're never going to be able to do it if you try to put a cap on it. And you're never going to be able to pull the cap on people's passions. when you look at what the young people are doing now as leading on the edge and literally creating, leaning into the edge of the future and creating You know, the future with new possibilities and stuff that we couldn't even have dreamed of doing.

Harry Parker: You're never going to stop that from happening. It's just not. 

Matt Blank: let me, let me start to wrap this up with a question that we've asked a lot of guests. And that is, if you look back over your career, is there anything that you would have done differently? 

Avery Badenhop: actually, I would have done more stuff that I didn't do.

Avery Badenhop: Yeah. I do tell. just opportunities that I had basically in BASE jumping when I was maybe overly cautious or, just, places I could have gone and should have done is I don't know, should I have made different career [02:09:00] choices? Eh, I don't know. I'm pretty happy. I had some bad years, but whatever.

Avery Badenhop: And I've been hurt BASE jumping and I've been to the hospital. And Yeah. there's that, I've raised a child. It didn't come with a book. That was a, a challenging task of raising a child. I've been in relationships, longterm relationships with women and I'll say, so what in my life would I have done differently?

Avery Badenhop: not a lot. There's only, things that I, the only, it's better to regret something you have done than to regret something that you haven't. And so there are things that I didn't do that I wish I had done just because they seem so dangerous. But I might've, been more fulfilled had I done them, what, can you change about your life?

Avery Badenhop: I don't know. You can't. 

Harry Parker: I withheld, should've gone bigger. we should have gone bigger. we should have pushed in, kept pushing, after a while, I think we had a [02:10:00] good 10 year run, you get tired and a lot of just the stuff that you deal every day and BASE jumping and relationships gets tiring and disappointing sometimes.

Harry Parker: But, yeah, if I look back, it would have been go bigger, push harder. you only got one life and it goes by quick. So when I think back, that's, yeah, I would have just kept pushing harder than I did. 

Dennis McGlynn: I wouldn't change. I would not have changed much. I had a great ride. It was a lot of fun. Got to do pretty much everything I wanted to do.

Dennis McGlynn: Like I said, when it finally hit me that I was jumping off of low, stuff, low buildings, and it wasn't, I wasn't getting the buzz out of it anymore. It's time to go do something else. But yeah, I had a lot of fun, a lot of ride. Turned a lot of people onto the sport. turned a lot of people on the ability and the way to have fun doing something like that I love when I'm passionate about something, I enjoy turning other people onto it.

Dennis McGlynn: Grits. I don't have a whole lot of regrets. [02:11:00] you can't second guess fate, right? You can't be somewhere you might've been somewhere else at the wrong time. I've been taken out by a drunk driver. You can never tell. So I try not to look at regrets. Try looking like I had an awesome ride. It was a lot of fun.

Dennis McGlynn: I ain't done yet. A lot of memories. This little interview has stoked up a lot of memories. Jesus. 

Harry Parker: Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity to be on here and, thank you for all you do. And, a big shout out to all the people who supported us and hated us and, put up with us. Like it, it, It's huge.

Harry Parker: there's so many people to mention. I do before, before you close, I do want to mention Tom Sanders because Tom Sanders and aerial focus along with David major documented everything we did for 10 years. Tom supported everything. If it wasn't for those guys, like we wouldn't have gotten the film permits.

Harry Parker: We wouldn't have been able to do a lot of what we did. We [02:12:00] were known. for over a decade as the three headed dragon for because we each had our own individual personality. and we did, we had a really great run, but we have a lot of people to think about it. And I wish I had prepared a real list. Mo Valetto joked a lot about building antenna BASEd on the tombstones of those who passed.

Harry Parker: And, yeah, there's just a lot of people to thank. and I think that getting the community to understand more of the history is going to help further some of 

Matt Blank: your goals. Absolutely. and while we're understanding the history, I've got another closing question for you. BASE jumping gives a lot.

Matt Blank: It certainly takes away a lot as well. And if you look back over your careers in BASE, what was the biggest sacrifice that you had to make and what was the biggest gift that the practice gave you? 

Avery Badenhop: That's the. [02:13:00] Yeah, that's interesting. there's a little funny story about, that I have about, the whole BASE thing.

Avery Badenhop: So when, Alexandria, my daughter was really young, my, her mom left me and so I was a single dad. And then I, I just started skydiving again and I just started, BASE jumping in 93 and I, had this girlfriend. I lived with her for Three years, I think, in Santa Rosa. And then it was at one point that this girl who now had a really strong relationship with my daughter, she finally said, look, it's me or the parachutes.

Avery Badenhop: And so I started packing my shit to move out of the house, right? So because That was a sacrifice. I was not willing to make. It's funny because Alexandria still has a relationship with this lady in Santa [02:14:00] Rosa and she's, they're still friends. They have their own relationship, but this lady married this regular guy.

Avery Badenhop: And he has a regular job. And so Alex goes to visit him. And I just had a talk with Alex the other day, cause now Alex has now become a BASE jumper and it's one of her new passions. And I said, so Alex, you remember that time that she said, it's me or the parachutes? And Alex is all. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.

Avery Badenhop: And I said, and I chose the parachutes. I'm all. Yeah. And so you still go visit her and you've met her new husband, Greg or whatever the hell his name is. I don't know. And he's just like this regular, nice guy and doing this regular, nice life. And I was yeah. I said, all right. Aren't you glad that I chose the parachutes and I'm not that guy?

Avery Badenhop: And she laughed. oh yeah, dad, you made the right choice, man. You didn't need that girlfriend. You needed those parachutes. So that was like, that was one sacrifice that I made, but totally selfishly because parachutes were way more important to me than a [02:15:00] stable relationship. 

Matt Blank: Okay. So had to sacrifice some relationships of people that were putting you at odds with who you really were.

Matt Blank: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, what about, on the other side, GIFs? GIFs? Yeah, what was one of the biggest GIFs that the sport's given you, or the practice? 

Avery Badenhop: Just because it has helped me become who I am. In what way? I am BASE Jumper, I am Parachutist, I am Risk Taker, I am Adventure, I am Danger, I am Party, I am I don't know.

Avery Badenhop: Team. I am camaraderie. I'm all, I'm travel, I am new places, I have new exit points. So it is just I can't imagine myself being anything other than a BASE jumper. And 

Matt Blank: so it allowed you to manifest destiny. 

Avery Badenhop: Oh, absolutely. It's just, and like I say, fortunately for me and all the parachuting things that I've ever done in my life, it's come to me naturally.

Avery Badenhop: It's never been a chore. For me, I [02:16:00] didn't have to learn how to skydive the first time they threw him out of an airplane. I'm all, Oh, I'm skydiving. This is how you do it. as soon as I made my first BASE number, I'm all, Oh, I know how to do that. I can do that. We're doing it. 

Matt Blank: Gentlemen, sacrifices 

Dennis McGlynn: and gifts, my ridiculous passion for the sport.

Dennis McGlynn: Ended up costing me several years of, fighting the federal government. It consumed me for years and years. Changed me, too, by the time it was over. It was disappointing, because we were right. The argument was right. We were right. And, to find out that the government was not going to let it happen, they just said no all the way to the appellate courts.

Dennis McGlynn: And then they just said no. Even though they agreed with us. And they put me in jail. That was, Pretty big sacrifice, several years in there, six, seven years in there. And, I don't know, one of the greatest gifts is I got to do it, and I still get to do it. I love it. I met a lot of cool people and hang out with cool people, traveled all over the world doing it.

Dennis McGlynn: it's, I [02:17:00] would have never been at Angel Falls. I never would have been some of these places getting to experience some of that stuff. Running off the edge of a cliff with a parachute. that's a pretty big gift to be able to do it over and over again. And, as when you're there in the moment, It's yours.

Dennis McGlynn: It doesn't belong to anybody else, and you can't take that away from you. But yeah, my biggest gift, the biggest gift to me was I still get to do it. And, the bottom line is, all those people yesterday, they're jumping legally, in the daylight, taking it for granted in a lot of ways. Because we didn't have any legal BASE jumping.

Dennis McGlynn: There was nothing. It was nothing except bridge day, maybe the occasional demo here and there, whatever, but there was no, you just run out the cliff with hundreds of friends and jump all day long and rage and everything. It was none of that stuff going on. That's cool to see that would that fruition of a dream is a big reward to it's cool to sit back and look and 

Harry Parker: So glad you made it out here Dennis So glad [02:18:00] like my biggest loss probably my body.

Harry Parker: I beat myself up pretty bad overtime didn't sink maybe as much time as I should have into a business, I'd say almost minor stuff, but the gifts, like it wouldn't change any of it, what I got to experience with these guys and a lot of the BASE jumpers that are around, in the environment that we share in life and death.

Harry Parker: all the travel I got, like I said, I never would have gone to Angel Falls. I would never would have gone to, I never would have gone and seen these places and lived a life on the road. Less traveled was very, I think, very enriching for me. with my backstory in history as a kid, like to be able to achieve some of that stuff in acceptance in community, we had a lot of wins, they may not have changed the world, maybe we didn't solve starvation, but we.

Harry Parker: I had the opportunity to live in some, into something that was bigger than me. And like [02:19:00] Dennis says, you come back out here and you just see it. It's wow. So I give you an example, and thank you to all the people out there listening, all the young people that actually still let us hang around.

Harry Parker: And remember who we are and still accept us as the old guys, man. It just means the world. So I think being able to cultivate that over time, like that's the gifts way out, outweigh the sacrifices in any, Kind of a manner, I, it drove me into spirituality because of, the way we have to face death.

Harry Parker: So I got a lot out of it, a lot of gifts and like right now this is our 26th year since 1997 only since we started coming here. So that's a big reunion, which was a catapult. You guys, Jimmy and Martin and you guys came out here and made the turkey boogie. We get to come back and enjoy that and relish in it and still be accepted into it.

Harry Parker: At this age, that's a gift. [02:20:00] We're at the Waterham Ellen House where we started in community consciously building, a yearly homecoming for us as we get older. man, I, there's a lot of gifts that came out of it. A lot of things and experiences we got to do that would not have happened without the sacrifices we put in.

Matt Blank: Well, Avery, I want to end on you. And, I want to ask you, now that we've got a large part of the community listening to this, is there anything that you'd like to express to everybody? You got the mic. Is there something that you feel is important for the people around you and the people around them to know?

Avery Badenhop: These new generations of BASE jumpers and they're all, it's funny cause I jump with kids. It's so funny for me to go out BASE jumping and I get hooked up with a little [02:21:00] group of kids. We're out there jumping, find out they're all like 20 something. I go, Oh fuck, I've been jumping longer than you have even been a conception.

Avery Badenhop: And so the only thing is that, yeah, just, try and maintain some of the old. The old ways that we started with take only pictures, leave only footprints, don't desecrate some of these objects that we, have to jump that are so beautiful, pick up your trash, be conscience of who's to come after you when you're at some of the accepted objects and don't try and do stuff that's just so ridiculous that it could cause us any more scrutiny than we already have.

Avery Badenhop: love each other, look out for each other, jump good gear and, keep everything kind of safe ish. 

Matt Blank: Avery, first of all, thank you for coming on the show and, thank you for bringing Dennis and Harry [02:22:00] with you. it's been a pleasure. To talk to all three of you about the history of BASE jumping and where it's come from, where you guys started and, where you see it going from here.

Matt Blank: So again, huge thanks. And, I'm looking forward to the next generation. 

Avery Badenhop: Thanks, Matt. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Just as a, it's amazing that we have lived this long. Like you say, there's a hundred years of BASE jumping, right? And it's like for me and Dennis and Harry to still be in it, in the game, doing it together as much as we can, and to just have an association and also that there's the desire for you and anybody else who's interested in some perspectives from some old dinosaurs who are still in it, 

Harry Parker: All you kids out there keep crushing it.

Matt Blank: We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any thoughts [02:23:00] about what you've just heard, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Big shout out to Mark Stockwell, our sound engineer and co producer. We love you. And we couldn't do this without you. If you'd like to learn more about the podcast, visit our website, exitpointpodcast.

Matt Blank: com. And if you're jumping out there. Remember, that fame is simply being recognizable, infamy is to be storied, and legendary is something else entirely.