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Dean Potter Dies In Illegal BASE Jumping Incident At Yosemite National Park

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Taft Point is located on the south rim of the Yosemite Valley/Google Maps

Dean Potter is dead.

The climber who generated controversy over his climb of Delicate Arch in Arches National Park in 2006 and led to more specific, and restrictive, climbing regulations in the park died this past weekend in an illegal BASE jumping incident at Yosemite National Park.

Potter, 43, and a colleague, Graham Hunt, attempted a wingsuit flight from Taft Point, a 7,500-foot point on the south rim of Yosemite Valley on Saturday evening. When a companion was unable to raise them by radio, a hasty search was conducted that night by rangers, but they were unable to locate the two, according to a report on Outside Magazine's website.

Sunday morning the men's bodies were spotted by searchers in a state police helicopter, and recovered by rangers, the article added.

In 2006, Potter climbed atop Delicate Arch early one morning. That stunt led park officials to revisit the rules for climbing in the park, rules that they had interpreted as stating that no climbing was allowed on named arches. To eliminate any doubts, Arches officials later went on to formalize climbing regulations for their park.

Potter's climb also led outdoor gear manufacturer Patagonia to drop him as one of its ambassadors and to issue a public apology for compromising access to "wild places" and generating "an inordinate amount of negativity in the climbing community and beyond."

Among other notable climbs he made was an unprotected slackline crossing of the Lost Arrow Highline nearly 3,000 feet above the Yosemite Valley. You can find a video of Libby Sauter becoming the first woman to make the crossing here.

Comments

I'm a huge Traveler fan, but I've got to be honest; I'm dissapointed in this article. Rather than simply reporting the accident and providing some background on who Dean was, his accomplishments, BASE jumping in general, or anything else, really, the focus is solely on what Dean did that was illegal or wrong in the past.

I'd suggest folks interested in more information about Dean and what happened read the following articles instead:

http://www.outsideonline.com/1981591/dean-potter-killed-base-jumping-acc...

http://www.adventure-journal.com/2015/05/opinion-in-praise-and-defense-o...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/sports/dean-potter-extreme-climber-die...

 


k8tlevy, I agree, dean was a remarkable person, this a tragic incident. 


I wasn't a huge Dean Potter fan. There was a lot of ego and narcissim involved with him it seemed.  Granted, most extreme sports junkies are like this, and Dean definitely exhibited that personality trait.  And after his Delicate Rock incident, I really lost respect for him, because he obviously did everything over ego, regardless of preservation, and wanted to skirt the rules constantly.  To me his lifestyle became like a circus act, and it was only a matter of time until something like this happened, and I wasn't shocked when I read the news yesterday.  When you jump from a squirrel suit, eventually statistics catch up with you.  If you jump 100 times, looking for trickier and trickier jumps along the way, more than likely 1 of those times your head will be merged with your feet.  He seemed to have a death wish, and he got it.  And he did it while trying to flaunt the NPS rules at Yosemite, and his stunt proved fatal.  A few days before this he posted an image showing them jumping off half dome and acting like it was a great expression of freedom and rebellion.  Well, maybe in his mind, but now there's some NPS guys that had to scrape him and his companion off a rock. What about them?  I'm sure they didn't enjoy their job that day. 

He kind of flung his middle finger at the park service in order to promote a reckless and narcissitic lifestyle.  Every few months it seems, there's another one of these accidents.  They basejump off a cliff, and splat into a rock. Basejumping is practically a darwin award sport.  Doesn't matter if it's Zion, Yosemite, or the GC, there's no shortage of adrenaline junkie sthat the NPS has to go scrape off the rocks.. I'm not so sure if it's good to always promote recklessness, and i've been on many peaks in my time.. so I get the entire "Freedom of the hills" mentality, but there's a saying... "there's old mountaineers, and there are bold mountaineers, but there are no old bold mountaineers."  Dean was way too bold, and statistics caught up with him.


Gary, you are right about Dean going to the extreme and often times disregarding NP rules. But he was an interesting person, it still is a tragic incident. 


It's definitely a tragedy, and these things happen way too often.  A lot of times, social media propels these people to do more and more daredevil type activities.  There was that one girl that died in Zion last year.  She was just upping her risks week after week, and a lot of it was propelled via her facebook page and the followers she garnered.  I dont think they made money from what they were doing, but they were trying to become famous from it, and in the end they just became another footnote on the dangers of base jumping.  The same seems to have happened with Dean.  He became a circus act, and it consumed him and killed him.  Ego consumed his being. I've had a few friends die doing similar things, and leaving way too young... Don't get me wrong, I respect rock climbing, and definitely love mountaineering and seeing the views from the top of a summit.  It's purely inspirational.  I'm sure flying in a squrrel suit could be thrilling, but not when it involves attempting to skirt a cliff face.  To me that just seems foolishly stupid and statistically it seems that person may survive a few attempts, but ego will eventually be their down fall, because nature and statistics are not in their favor long term regardless of the size of the ego.  Dean was only 42.  That's older than most base jumpers live to, I guess.  The other guy was I believe 29.  Both of them lost their lives way too short.  Some will say, but they died doing what they loved. But, they are going to miss out on a lot of other things they could have loved doing too..

As I get older, I prefer the mountaineers like J Gordon Edwards - he wasn't world renowned and didn't seem to let ego get the best of him, but he also died on a mountain - at the age of 84 when his heart finally gave out in the mountain range he loved. He summited pretty much every peak in glacier, wrote one of the best guide books on the park, and was one of those guys that obviously had his head square on his shoulders. To me, many younger guys could learn from guys like that.


Gary, thank you for mentioning the late Dr. J. Gordon Edwards.  He was my professor of entomology (study of insects) at San Jose State College in the Spring semester of 1966.  When I first received an offer to work seasonally as a NPS park-ranger naturalist at Crater Lake National Park for the summer of 1966, I asked Dr. Edwards for his advice before accepting.  He said, "Owen, yes by all means do accept.  It will be a life-altering experience."  He was right.  

Dr. Edwards developed much of his climbing and mountaineering skills collecting insects at high elevation in Glacier National Park, where he worked summers for the NPS as a park ranger-naturalist.  He eventually compiled his copious field notes into a "Climber's Guide to Glacier NP," which is still sold today in park bookstores.  He was also a terrific professor, just ask anyone who took his courses at San Jose State.


Dean Potter had a GoPro camera on. Footage being used by investigators to try to figure out what went wrong. His friend may have hit ridge first, and Potter tried to take evasive action.

www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_28151003/dean-potters-base-jumping-dea...

 

 


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