Dean Potter Discusses BASE Jumping in Yosemite
Pro climber and all-round wild card Dean Potter was killed in a BASE-Jumping accident on May 16, 2015. Here he is speaking in Telluride, where he revealed how thoughtfully he contemplated the dangers of his chosen pursuits. Watch below.
Potter made numerous groundbreaking climbs in Yosemite and Patagonia, including a notable free solo of a section of El Capitan. He pioneered Easy Rider by descending the slabby upper pitches of Lurking Fear (5.10a) and traversing Thanksgiving Ledge to complete the final six pitches of Free Rider (up to 5.11d). This marked the first major free solo on El Capitan, though he avoided the harder 5.12 pitches below.
In July 2006, Potter, Ammon McNeely, and Ivo Ninov climbed The Reticent Wall on El Capitan in 34 hours and 57 minutes, cutting five days off the previous record. In November 2010, Potter and Sean Leary set a speed record on The Nose of El Capitan, finishing the 31-pitch route in 2 hours, 36 minutes, 45 seconds—20 seconds faster than the prior record.
Potter was a pioneer in highlining and BASE jumping, often crossing lines up to 3,000 feet above Yosemite without safety gear. Introduced to slacklining by Charles “Chongo” Tucker III, he completed daring highline walks, including across Lost Arrow Spire. In 2008, he invented “FreeBASEing” on the Deep Blue Sea route (5.12+) on the Eiger’s north face, combining free solo climbing with a BASE parachute as a fallback
Fellow climber Doug Robinson, a Yosemite clean climbing pioneer, noted Potter’s relentless pursuit of new challenges, saying he was “pushing the envelope all his life.”