Extreme athlete Dean Potter one of two people killed Base jumping in Yosemite

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Rock climbers Dean Potter and Graham Hunt, who died in a BASE-jumping accident at Yosemite National Park on Saturday, were attempting to clear a "notch" on the mountain but slammed into the rock instead, an official said Monday.

Mike Gauthier, chief of staff for Yosemite, described a notch as a steep and rocky ridgeline that is “spiny like a stegosaurus.”

Related: Dean Potter knew dangers of extreme climbing

Potter had jumped from the same point at least 20 times, and Hunt may have too, Gauthier said.
Potter and Hunt jumped around nightfall from Taft Point, an overlook about 3,000 feet above Yosemite Valley, said park spokesman Scott Gediman. They were wearing wingsuits, Gauthier said.

Dean Potter and Graham Hunt died Saturday when attempting a BASE jump in Yosemite Valley.

Gauthier said he was told that neither of their parachutes deployed. The pair’s spotter, a woman, was at Taft Point during the jump, but has asked not to be named.
The spotter photographed the jump, which Gauthier said occurred around 7:30 p.m. Gauthier said the spotter heard what she thought sounded like parachutes opening or an impact sound. She couldn’t see them crash, and called out to them.
She tried to contact them as they had planned, which was via text. No answer.
At around 9 p.m., she informed park officials of their disappearance.
A search-and-rescue operation was launched early Sunday morning, with up to 100 people, including park rangers and volunteers, surveying the park for the men, Gediman said. Crews in a California Highway Patrol helicopter spotted their bodies at two locations on the wall of rock along Yosemite Valley, and both were flown out, Gediman said.
It was not immediately clear whether either deployed his parachute, and Gediman said a full investigation by park officials was underway.

Potter and Hunt jumped separately but at about the same time, Gediman said, and their bodies were found on a rock outcropping below Taft Point. Gediman would not speculate on what went wrong, saying the cause of their deadly fall was still under investigation.
"Base jumping in and of itself is a high-risk activity. You're jumping off a cliff with a parachute."
Below Taft Point, there's are rock outcroppings and slabs of granite. Generally, when people jump, their goal is to land in the Yosemite Valley.
There were witnesses to the men's jumps, and they are being interviewed by investigators, he said.
Both were well known within the tightknit climbing community that has proliferated around Yosemite, and their deaths struck a blow.
“I can't emphasize enough how tragic this is,” Gediman said. “Dean just loved Yosemite. He loved the park and everything it stood for.”
The dangers of BASE jumping, which entails leaping with a parachute from the relatively low altitudes provided by ledges, buildings or antennas, have prompted the National Park Service to ban the sport.
The 6-foot-5 Potter pursued rock climbing, slack lining — which is walking along a length of nylon rope across chasms — and BASE jumping as a form of art, regardless of park regulations.
“The attractive thing about rock climbing,” he told The Times in 2001: “There are no rules.”
Potter, 43, acknowledged the dangers, writing in his first blog post on his website about facing the “reality of the dangerous arts,” following the death of his longtime friend and wingman Sean Leary.
Leary, 38, died last year while BASE jumping in Zion National Park.


“Though my body is warm inside the nylon suit I start to shiver and wonder if what we’re doing is right,” Potter wrote in the blog. “Wingsuit BASE-jumping feels safe to me but 25 wingsuit-fliers have lost their lives, this year alone. There must be some flaw in our system, a lethal secret beyond my comprehension.”
Potter's mother, Patricia Dellert, told The Times that his affinity for climbing began at a young age when his father, an Army colonel, brought his family on assignment to Jordan.
At the age of 5, Potter tried to climb the stone wall that surrounded his family's temporary home but fell on his head, she said.
By his mid-20s, Potter, a college dropout, had solidified his reputation as one of Yosemite's finest climbers. He was the first person to free climb three-quarters of the way up the face of Half Dome, a feat that took him just over four hours, shredding the previous record by more than 16 hours.
He later became the first person to free climb in less than 24 hours both Half Dome and the towering granite monolith El Capitan, scaling both with only his hands and feet, using ropes to prevent him from falling. This year, two men became the first in history to free climb the Dawn Wall of El Capitan.
Off the rock, Potter continued to test boundaries and draw controversy. He was kicked out of Yosemite several times — for staying beyond the park's two-week maximum, for sleeping in the meadows and, The Times reported in 2001, for snapping the stems off a head of broccoli in the park's Village Store.
His 2006 ascent of Delicate Arch, the most recognized natural landmark in Utah's Arches National Park, led clothing company Patagonia to drop its sponsorship of him.
And just last year, Clif Bar ended its sponsorship of Potter and other extreme athletes after renouncing activities such as BASE jumping that were “taking the element of risk to a place where we as a company are no longer willing to go,” according to a company statement.
Potter was joined by a new companion on recent adventures: his miniature Australian cattle dog, Whisper. Bringing along his pet made him realize the danger of his calling, he said.
“It wasn't until I started having to think through the likelihood of something happening to Whisper that I finally got it,” Potter told the Denver Post last month. “This is really serious stuff that we do."
Whisper was not with Potter on Saturday.
When Shawn Reeder heard the news of Hunt’s and Potter’s deaths, his heart sank. The longtime rock climber was acquainted with Potter and had been close friends with Hunt for 10 to 12 years.
“I saw two pictures and I just thought, ‘Oh my god, no please,’” Reeder, who lives in Nevada City, said Monday. “Losing two people at the same time, it’s hard to even put words to what it feels like.”
Reeder first met Hunt, 29, while in Yosemite, where the two would spend most of their time together over the course of their friendship. Reeder described Hunt as “super talented and humble” and said the two became fast friends.

He said Hunt was a “little bit of a vagabond” but that his home base was in El Portal. Just last month, the pair spent time together hiking and rock climbing in Moab, Utah, and Reeder said he had been hoping to go to Yosemite with Hunt this week.
While in Utah, the two talked a lot about how Hunt and Potter were jumping together. Hunt would describe the feeling as “flying” and as a sort of “alternate freedom,” Reeder said.
“They were very well-aware of the risks but they chose to live life fully and completely … Looking death straight in the eyes,” Reeder said. “I just can’t help but want to celebrate what these two men did. They lived life to the fullest and that’s inspiring.”
Reeder said Hunt was careful, choosing not to jump if conditions weren’t ideal.
“Graham definitely was very aware of what conditions he needed and if they weren’t right, he wouldn’t jump,” Reeder said. “He loved adventure, but he was pretty even keeled person. Very calculated, very methodical. He wasn’t an over risk taker.”

Following Hunt’s death, Reeder shared a tribute to his longtime friend on his Facebook page. He included photos of Reeder climbing in Colorado and in Yosemite, with a message about wanting to “celebrate Graham’s incredible life.”
“I knew Dean was going to get worldwide attention and there’d be no lack of images celebrating him,” Reeder said. “I also knew not as many people knew Graham and he was really special. Not only to me but to many people his life touched.”
Times staff writers Matt Hamilton and Lauren Raab contributed to this report.

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How Dean Potter Reinvented Climbing, Jumping, Flying

The BASE jumper who died over the weekend said facing his fear of falling to his death is what drove him.


Picture of Dean Potter on Heaven, a steep and difficult roof climb

Dean Potter was the first person to free-solo “Heaven,” a difficult climb 2,000 feet above Yosemite Valley. Half Dome stands in the background.
Photograph by Mikey Schaeffer, National Geographic Creative
By Andrew Bisharat, National Geographic

PUBLISHED May 18, 2015

In 2003, with less than a year of BASE jumping experience under his belt, Dean Potter stood at the precipice of the Cave of Swallows, a 1,200-foot-deep hole in the ground near Mexico City. He jumped and free fell about 600 feet before opening his parachute. His rig, however, had gotten wet overnight. When the parachute opened, its lines twisted and the canopy eventually collapsed on top of Potter.

A 10-millimeter rope, rigged to allow jumpers to climb back out of the cave, dangled in space just beside the free-falling Potter.

Now just 200 feet above the cavern floor, Potter managed to grab onto the rope, gripping with all his might.

Jimmy Pouchert, Potter’s partner and BASE-jumping mentor, had jumped moments before Potter and was now standing at the base, watching the whole thing happen above him. “Don’t let go!" Pouchert yelled.

"Don’t let go!”

With a literal death grip on the rope, Potter slowed his fall and survived crashing onto the floor. When Pouchert pulled the canopy off Potter and saw him wide-eyed and alive, he was so happy he kissed Potter on the forehead.

Potter was not totally unhurt; the rope had gouged half-inch ruts in each of his palms, yet they were strangely not bleeding. The intense friction had cauterized his wounds.



Nicknamed the “Dark Wizard” for his brooding, intense personality, Potter was a world-class rock climber and one of the most experienced wingsuit BASE jumpers in the world. His contributions to climbing, highlining, and wingsuit flying are the stuff of legend.
Photograph by Jimmy Chin

Stories like this one led much of the global climbing community to believe that if anyone could survive pushing the limits in such risky activities as free-soloing (climbing without a rope), highlining (walking a slackline strung thousands of feet above the ground, sometimes without a safety tether), wingsuit BASE jumping, and speed climbing Yosemite’s biggest walls, it would be Dean Potter, a six-foot-five, 180-pound, larger-than-life character who was widely considered one of the most influential climbers and aerialists of his generation.

Dean Potter was an event ... a force of nature.

John Long |

Climbing writer

Potter’s greatest fear, of falling to his death, came true last weekend in Yosemite, where he died BASE jumping at age 43.

Climbers were quick to paint Potter as an iconoclastic giant.

“Dean Potter was the ‘chosen one,’” said John Long, a longtime climbing writer. “He was perhaps the first person to ever achieve world-class proficiency in three adventure disciplines: climbing, slacklining, and BASE jumping.

"Dean Potter was an event," Long added. "A force of nature.”
Accident in Yosemite

Just after 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Dean Potter and Graham Hunt, 29, died from impact during a wingsuit flight from Taft Point, a promontory 3,000 feet above the valley floor in Yosemite National Park.

Hunt, from El Portal, California, was a charismatic Yosemite denizen, who worked odd jobs in the valley and was a mainstay in the climbing scene there. He had also recently become one of the most active wingsuit BASE jumpers in Yosemite, where all forms of the sport are illegal.

Wingsuit BASE, a sport that’s just over a decade old, is considered to be the most dangerous sport on Earth. For example, simply BASE jumping—the act of parachuting from “fixed” objects such as buildings, antennas, bridges, or cliffs—is estimated to yield one fatality for every 60 participants, according to one 2008 study.

Meanwhile, wingsuit BASE is generally considered far riskier. It also requires the demanding skill of flying a wingsuit—a full-body costume that resembles a flying squirrel, with webbing between the arms and legs—at over 100 miles per hour, often in close proximity to terrain.

Potter often flew with his best friend, his dog Whisper, strapped to his back. This video is a trailer for the film he made about those experiences, called When Dogs Fly.

BASE jumping of any kind is illegal in all national parks for safety reasons, although the law has done little to deter motivated individuals from practicing their sport.

Critics contend that although the federal law is intended to keep people safe, it has had the opposite effect. Because of the law, those who choose to jump within national parks, where most of the biggest cliffs in the United States are located, usually do it at times they are less likely to be seen: during the night or at dusk, when visibility is low.

Low visibility may have been a factor in Potter and Hunt’s accident, but it's not a certainty. Though people have flown wingsuits from Taft Point before, Potter and Hunt’s exact line of descent was new and uncertain—one reason why Potter didn’t bring his dog, Whisper, this time. (Potter had become notorious for flying with his miniature Australian cattle dog strapped into a harness on his back.)

Carving through the air, Potter and Hunt tried to clear a notch in the granite walls but impacted into the cliffs, according to the initial observations from the Yosemite Search and Rescue (YOSAR) team.

When the jumpers didn’t return from their outing, Jen Rapp, Potter’s longtime partner, and Rebecca Haynie, Hunt’s partner since January, approached Mike Gauthier, Yosemite National Park's chief of staff, who was a friend of Potter’s. They told Gauthier that the jumpers had missed their scheduled arrival.

Gauthier helped arrange a team from YOSAR, and a hasty, ultimately unsuccessful search on foot was done Saturday evening.

On Sunday morning, a California state helicopter quickly located two subjects that matched Potter and Hunt’s descriptions. By noon, two rangers were lowered out of the helicopter onto the site. They confirmed Potter and Hunt’s deaths, and performed the recovery.

You don't meet many old wingsuit BASE jumpers.

Cedar Wright |

Professional climber

The climbing and BASE jumping worlds were left reeling, if unsurprised.

“Dean was pushing the limits. He was living right on the edge,” says Cedar Wright, a professional climber from Boulder, Colorado. “You don’t meet many old wingsuit BASE jumpers. It seems like the better you get, the more dangerous it gets.”



In 2009 Potter set a wingsuit BASE jumping world record for duration. Jumping from the infamous north face of the Eiger in Switzerland, he stayed in flight for 2 minutes and 50 seconds, a feat that made him a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.
Photograph by Corey Rich, Aurora Photos
An Outspoken Critic

Tom Aiello, the owner of the world’s only formal BASE jumping school, Idaho's Snake River BASE Academy, says that BASE jumping has always been subversive.

“In the U.S., BASE jumping comes from illegal roots,” Aiello says. “Most of my peers—and there is an ever diminishing number of them—started out BASE jumping at night off of illegal objects. We’re talking about antennas and buildings and sneaking into national parks.”

Potter positioned himself as perhaps the most outspoken critic of national park laws that prohibited his kind of extreme athletics.

“It’s about basic freedom,” Potter said in an interview with me on May 12, days before his death. “Being allowed to travel in nature in a way that doesn’t harm the environment shouldn’t be illegal.”

That tension, between exercising his personal freedom and running up against the law, was perhaps the defining theme of Potter’s life.

Potter began climbing in 1988 when, as a 16-year-old military brat, he trespassed onto Joe English Hill, a 1,273-foot mountain controlled by a local Army base near his home in New Boston, New Hampshire. Lacking ropes and gear, Potter’s first experiences involved simply climbing barefoot, free-solo (no ropes or gear for safety), and alone.

He went on to complete three semesters of college at the University of New Hampshire before dropping out and becoming a quintessential itinerant climbing bum in the 1990s.

Potter lived on Saltine crackers and slept in caves, avoiding rangers who tried to kick him out of Yosemite National Park for overstaying the two-week camping limit.

In 2011 Potter walked a highline over California's iconic Yosemite Falls, contending with water spray and high wind, at a height of 1,400 feet.

He walked everywhere barefoot and climbed that way, too. He often spoke in mystical overtones, referring to his sports of climbing, highlining, and wingsuit flying as “arts.” Most of all, he was known for his brooding moods, garnering him the nicknames of “Mean Dean” and, ultimately, the “Dark Wizard.”

“Dean could be the most amazing person to hang out with,” says Wright. “Hilarious, awesome, and really insightful one minute, and then the next minute he could turn into this kind of dark soul.”

In 2006 Potter was the subject of a scandal when he free-soloed Delicate Arch in Arches National Park. Though climbing on Delicate Arch was not technically illegal, Potter drew criticism from park rangers, Utah government officials, and even some in the core climbing community for his flagrant media exposure and potential damage done to the soft rock on the arch. Ultimately, Potter’s main sponsor, Patagonia, dropped both him and his then-wife, Steph Davis, over the incident.



Potter had a mantra: “Never leave the dog behind!” Potter’s best friend Whisper joined him on many adventures, from climbing El Capitan to wingsuit BASE jumping, a stunt that was featured in the film When Dogs Fly.

Photograph by Jimmy Chin, National Geographic
Mastering the Dark Arts

Potter said that falling to his death was his greatest fear. But facing that fear of falling was also what initially drove him to start free-solo climbing, and later, wingsuit BASE jumping.

By the mid 2000s, Potter’s success as a professional climber had brought him a home on 30 acres in Yosemite West, just outside of his beloved Yosemite Valley where, over the past 22 years, he had pushed the limits of what was considered possible in climbing famous, huge granite walls.

Potter has intermittently held numerous speed-climbing records in Yosemite. He'd recently pioneered a new “running” record, reaching the summit of the iconic Half Dome via the technical Snake Dike rock climb in 1 hour and 19 minutes.

For the past 13 years, Potter had combined climbing, running, and flying into hybrid “sports,” though it is hard to label some of these endeavors as sports because they are so technical, so dangerous, and so difficult that oftentimes Potter was the only person even practicing them. For example, Potter invented “free BASE,” which is free-soloing (climbing without a rope) tall walls (at least 1,000 feet in height) with a parachute for safety in the event of a fall.

In 2008 Potter achieved the first free BASE of the infamous north face of the Eiger in Switzerland, one of the “three great north faces of the Alps,” via a difficult route named Deep Blue Sea. He’d routinely climb up the wall, working up courage to put fear aside, not to mention the strength to climb such a demanding route with a parachute on his back. To survive a fall, he would need to have the catlike agility to turn around the right way, steady his body position, and deploy his parachute before crashing into the slabs below.

This concept of turning dying into flying is a metaphor for my basic life principle.


Picture of Dean Potter climbing in Yosemite

Potter pioneered a style of climbing called “speed solo,” in which he climbed alone, mostly free-solo (without a rope), but using rope and gear for the toughest sections. The hybrid style gave him a modicum of safety and a huge increase in speed. This visionary approach to climbing big walls—such as El Capitan, shown here—allowed Potter to achieve several record times.
Photograph by Jimmy Chin

“This concept of turning dying into flying is a metaphor for my basic life principle,” Potter wrote of his free BASE solo of the Eiger.

Potter continued to push the limits of wingsuit BASE jumping too. In 2009 Potter set a record in the wingsuit BASE jumping world for duration. Jumping from the Eiger’s north face, he stayed in flight for 2 minutes and 50 seconds, a feat that made him a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

In the weeks leading up to his death, Potter had been testing out a new paragliding rig that weighed only three pounds, including the harness, and could fit into a fanny pack. He said he was looking forward to putting this technology, as well as his highly technical skill set, to use in other areas around the world, where deploying a parachute isn’t illegal.

“To be able to practice my three arts, and experience the simplicity and beauty of moving quickly in the mountains and on big walls," he said, referring to climbing, flying, and highlining: “What could be better than that?”