This seems like something a liability waiver and an escrow account with money for body clean up (if things go bad) would solve. A little red tape, sure, but not illegal.
there aren't that many accidents. It's also more dangerous to jump in ways that attempt to skirt laws (jumping near dark, trying to evade capture, etc)
If it had been legal, and had he jumped in broad daylight, I think he’d have survived that day.
Right. It's the Park Service to blame. Right there with the "it's the cops fault I crashed and burned because if driving 140mph was legal I would be fine".
But to your point, when some overconfident dudebro splatters himself all over the flats, we the people have to pay for the cops to show up, the medics and the ambulance even if the idiot is obviously dogfood, the body recovery, the coroner and the postmortem, and all the associated bureaucracy.
And someone will still sue because the Park Service didn't prevent the moron from killing himself. You can sue for literally anything in the US.