Loved Ones Celebrate Life of Fallen BASE Jumper Thirty people gather at El Capitan in Yosemite for a memorial service for Jan Davis. By Michael Baker The Fresno Bee - November 9, 1999 YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK - As a heavy fog obscured El Capitan's cliff edge, where Jan Davis jumped to her death about two weeks ago, about 30 people gathered Monday at the granite mountain's base to pay tribute to their fallen comrade. "I will never ever forget her," said Tom Sanders, her husband of 15 years. "I love her so much. She lived life the way that she wanted to, and she died the way she wanted to. Life is an adventure. She was epic." The scene was a heart-felt climax to an emotional roller-coaster of a day as BASE jumpers gathered in Yosemite. For BASE-jumping supporters on hand, the day was split into two distinct segments. Shortly after 9 a.m., four BASE jumpers - the acronym stands for Building Antenna Span Earth, objects from which the parachutists jump - were arraigned on charges relating to other events on the day Davis died. The court proceedings were continued for a month, and the defendants did not enter a plea Monday. On Oct. 22, five BASE jumpers hiked up El Capitan to jump off the granite cliff in protest of the National Parks Service's ban of their sport. They had agreed to leap, turn over their equipment and be cited by park rangers for the illegal jumps. Three jumpers successfully completed the BASE jump. The fourth, Davis, 58, of Santa Barbara fell about 3,500 feet to her death, with her husband and others watching. Her parachute failed to deploy. "We are here today for the memory of a magnificent woman, who went out in a magnificent way, in a magnificent place," said friend and fellow BASE jumper Robin Heid, standing near the place where Davis fell to the rock-covered ground. "Last night this valley cried for Jan," Heid said in reference to a rainstorm that swept through Yosemite Valley. "This morning, it smiled for her." Sanders said Davis feared three things in her life: growing old, not living life to the fullest and dying a slow death. "She went out the way she wanted to," Sanders said with tears beginning to form in his eyes. "Her work was done here, and she's moving on." Sanders said that in January he will release Davis' ashes as he parachutes from the top of Angel Falls in Venezuela. Davis was the first woman to jump from the waterfall. Placed on top of a rock at the Yosemite memorial site by Sanders and others were two bouquets of flowers, ribbons with the words "An Angel Falls" and a children's book about the exploits of Davis - a professional stuntwoman. A similar scene took place nearby on the banks of the Merced River for Frank Gambalie III, who drowned in the river while trying to escape park rangers after making the El Capitan jump in June. "We're all here to show support for the jumpers who are in court and to show our respect to the brave Jan Davis and Frank Gambalie," said Denise Williams, a member of the Gravity Girls, an all-female BASE jumping team. "I'd love to jump from El Cap," Williams said. "I will someday, when it's legal." But it's not legal, and park officials have no immediate plans to make it so. That fact landed the four other participants in the Oct. 22 protest jumps in a federal magistrate courthouse in Yosemite Valley Monday. U.S. District Court Judge Hollis G. Best granted the four men a continuance until Dec. 13.