Seattle man dies BASE jumping in B.C.
By Globalnews.ca -
June 27, 2016
A Seattle man who died BASE jumping from the Stawamus Chief Mountain in British Columbia wouldn’t want anyone to assume the worst about the extreme sport, says his girlfriend.
Gary Kremer, a 30-year-old former marine, has been identified by his girlfriend Paige Anderson as the man who died near the popular outdoor adventure spot near Squamish, north of Vancouver, on Sunday.
“I just really want to make sure people don’t look at this sport negatively because of what happened to him,” said Anderson in a phone interview from Seattle.
“He loved it and he would not have changed a thing. He would have kept jumping for the rest of his life.”
Neither the Squamish RCMP nor the B.C. Coroner’s Service have identified the person who died in the accident. The coroner’s service said the soonest a name would be released would be Monday.
Squamish RCMP have said the person jumped from the first peak of the Stawamus Chief, a granite cliff about 540 metres above the Sea-to-Sky Highway, just before 10 a.m. Sunday.
Witnesses told police the person’s parachute failed to open until it was too late, and the person fell near the highway below, said RCMP.
Anderson said she was notified of the death of her boyfriend of two years by Mounties on Sunday. Her voice filled with emotion, she said Kremer began BASE jumping about nine years ago and fell in love with it.
“He was free. He could fly,” she said. “It was a feeling he couldn’t get anywhere else.”
She said Kremer was a former five-year member of the U.S. Marine Corps. who now worked at Boeing and was also working toward becoming a full-time firefighter. He was drawn to the marines and firefighting because he loved to help others, she said.
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