Kill thrills

Death wishes are no longer the sole province of Charles Bronson. Around Sacramento, there's no shortage of ways to die rad.

For goofy-foot skateboarders, there's the Granite Skate Park north of the Florin neighborhood. It's 45,000 square feet of swimming-pool-sized concrete bowls, as well as a “challenging” street course that exists to devour your scabs.

Considering this is where world-famous rock climber Alex Honnold learned to crawl walls, we'd be remiss not to mention the Cosumnes River Gorge. Just outside of Placerville, the grouping of clefts and canyons comes outfitted with more than 50 rock-climbing routes of various difficulty levels, says Rockclimbing.com, an online community of climbing enthusiasts. Honnold is famous for eschewing ropes and other assistance, but his isn't the only way to get your rocks off.

If all these activities are too dry for your tastes, the north fork of the American River, less than an hour east of Sacramento, offers a whitewater-rafting experience that starts off intense. Rafters begin the daylong excursion squeezing through a steep-walled gorge before crashing over a Class 4+ waterfall, according to the touring company, Tributary Whitewater Tours. Then comes sharp rapids with crazy names like Tongue and Groove, Bogus Thunder and The Staircase. If you haven't guessed it already, this one's not for amateurs.

But for true rule-breaking death-defiers, there's nothing quite like the Foresthill Bridge in Auburn. The 730-foot tall structure—the tallest in California—has become a not-so-secret destination for illicit BASE jumping, a sport that involves leaping from fixed objects outfitted with little more than a rapid-deploying parachute. (BASE stands for “Building, Antenna, Span, Earth.”) In September 2012, state and county public-safety crews rescued a supposed veteran of the sport when he attempted an illegal nighttime jump and got snagged in a pine tree. The 26-year-old was cited for misdemeanor code violations of breaking the park's curfew and participating in an unsafe practice, local media reported. It could've been worse: In separate incidents, two BASE jumpers recently died in Utah's Zion National Park, where the sport is also outlawed.

While jumping off the Foresthill is usually illegal—the bridge is notorious for suicide attempts—an effort is underway to turn the state-controlled recreation area it spans into a sanctioned locale for adventure sports. A BASE jumping-centric festival is being eyed for 2016. Because tourism dollars, yo.