1999-10-25 04:00:00 PDT YOSEMITE -- Friday's fatal plunge by parachutist Jan Davis during a protest of Yosemite's ban on stunt diving from El Capitan caused anger, grief and recrimination over the weekend among the elite community of daredevils known as BASE jumpers.

"It is sad that we lost her, but the fact is that this will impact our chances in the (national) park forever," said a BASE jumping supporter who posted his thoughts on BLiNC, a Web magazine for enthusiasts of the sport. "I can't believe that the people who set up this jump would allow this to happen."

The 60-year-old Santa Barbara woman's parachute never opened during the 3,600-foot drop from the top of El Capitan, where she was the fourth of five BASE jumpers protesting a National Park Service ban on the sport. She jumped in full view of 150 spectators, who included dozens of reporters and photographers and her husband.

Davis had arranged to be arrested by park rangers, the first step in a process intended to challenge in court the ban on BASE jumping in Yosemite National Park. Instead, the extreme sport lost a beloved figure, and what started as a political protest became a public relations disaster, transmitted around the globe in dreadful television footage.

Davis was known as the "First Lady of Angel Falls," because she was the first woman parachutist to jump the 3,200-foot Venezuelan waterfall. She and her husband, Hollywood stunt photographer Tom Sanders, led adventure expeditions to the falls.

Sanders witnessed his wife's death, photographing from Yosemite Valley among news crews that quickly captured his own agony in their lenses.

While the cause of the accident is not yet publicly known, it appears that Davis -- knowing that her costly parachute would have been confiscated by park rangers -- jumped with borrowed gear whose rip cord was at the jumper's leg, rather than on the chute's backpack. In the view of expert parachutists, this is about the worst mistake you can make.

"This is a prime directive in skydiving. You don't ever, ever borrow chutes," said Robert Simon, a former Army paratrooper now living in Marin County, who was a pioneer of BASE jumping.

Simon jumped from 420 sites before an old service-related knee injury permanently grounded him. He remains an avid supporter of legalizing BASE jumps. The acronym stands for Buildings, Antennae, Span and Earth -- the fixed points from which jumpers make their leaps.

The confiscation of equipment by police is a powerful threat against BASE jumpers, Simon said, because the specialized gear can easily cost more than $1,500. The Yosemite protesters apparently chose to use expendable older gear, which jumpers call "trash bags."

Simon said that leg-pull rip cords are almost unheard of among BASE jumpers. "I haven't seen one since the 1950s," he said.

He suspects that, in the instant adrenaline rush that accompanies a leap of such magnitude, Davis may have simply forgotten the location of the cord.

On the BLiNC Web site, pseudonymous BASE jumpers traded accusations over who was responsible for the tragedy. "With all the so- called planning that went into this, why was common sense thrown out the window?" said a posting by "Da Crip."

Another writer bitterly attacked the National Park Service, blaming rangers for Davis' death and that of Frank Gambalie III, who drowned June 9 while fleeing rangers who were attempting to confiscate his parachute.

"Frank would not have jumped into the raging Merced River and Jan would not have jumped El Capitan with borrowed gear had it not been for continuing persecution of BASE jumpers by the National Park Service. Period," said a message from "BASE44."

But other jumpers stressed that their sport is one of individual responsiblity. "Regardless of how wrong NPS policies are, they are NOT to blame for Frank's death . . ." wrote a BASE jumper. "We, the BASE jumping community, decided to hold this protest jump. We didn't have to. She didn't have to jump in it. She chose to."