BLM approves commercial tandem BASE jumping in Grand County

If you have ever looked at the cliffs around Moab and wondered whether tandem BASE jumping could be part of the trip, the answer is now yes, but only inside a tightly controlled permit system. The BLM’s Moab Field Office authorized commercial tandem BASE jumping in Grand County on May 12, 2026, through an environmental assessment and decision record that lets two existing operators add specific locations to their permits for the life of those permits.

For a traveler, that changes the adventure menu in a very practical way. Tandem BASE jumping is now a bookable commercial use on BLM-managed land, not an informal gray-area thrill. The project, DOI-BLM-UT-Y010-2026-0005-EA, titled Special Recreation Permit Augmentations - Commercial Tandem BASE Jumping, analyzed four named locations: Jay Leno, Welshman’s, Electric Chair and Four Horsemen. The rules are as much about stewardship as adrenaline. Jay Leno is closed to commercial BASE jumping from March 1 through August 31 to protect Mexican spotted owl nesting habitat, and Four Horsemen is closed from April 1 through August 14 for bighorn sheep lambing habitat.

The other site stipulations show how narrow the operating window is. At Welshman’s, participants have to walk only in the wash after landing to protect riparian habitat. Electric Chair requires an approved landing location on lands managed by Forestry, Fire and State Lands. The proposal also caps each outing at four clients, four guides and three additional staff, with no more than two vehicles at any one location, keeping the commercial footprint small even as the sport moves deeper into the formal public-lands system.

That matters in Grand County, where the BLM says its Moab Field Office covers 1.8 million acres and anchors a recreation economy built around off-highway vehicles, mountain biking, climbing, hiking, horseback riding, river rafting and base jumping. The agency says the area draws millions of visitors and supports hundreds of recreation-related jobs, so even a niche addition like tandem BASE jumping ripples through the local adventure market.

The sport is not new to Moab’s scene. Tandem BASE Moab says it began operating in November 2022 and says tandem BASE jumping in Moab requires insurance and a business permit. A 2023 Moab Sun News profile said Moab had more than one BASE jumping company and identified Tandem BASE Moab founders Matt LaJeunesse, Katie Hansen LaJeunesse and Ryan Katchmar. The company also said its Turkey Boogie fundraiser had raised and donated more than $180,000 to groups including Grand County Search and Rescue, Grand County EMS, Seekhaven, Grand Area Mentoring and The Garden Youth Project.

For anyone building a Moab itinerary, the takeaway is simple: tandem BASE jumping has moved from local legend to regulated commercial access, with named sites, hard seasonal cutoffs and strict group limits now defining how the jump fits into Grand County’s adventure map.