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RIP Dean Potter (Read 50987 times)

andy popp

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RIP Dean Potter
May 17, 2015, 10:17:25 pm
....

No real details but it seems Dean Potter has died in an accident in Yosemite.
« Last Edit: May 19, 2015, 01:47:14 am by habrich, Reason: format for front page »

GCW

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#1 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 17, 2015, 10:21:16 pm
Wow.  :'(

shurt

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#2 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 17, 2015, 10:31:32 pm
gulp. grim scenes.

bigd942

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TheTwig

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#4 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 17, 2015, 11:07:37 pm
Half of me is really not suprised, and the other half thought he would live forever. He had such a big presence, alot of people will miss him. His freebase big wall climbing was pretty awesome...

Bubba

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T_B

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#6 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 06:59:09 am
Almost seemed inevitable. Very sad.

slackline

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#7 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 08:03:34 am
Read this the other day, thought it was good...

The Call by Dean S. Potter

dave

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#8 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 08:18:56 am
Sad to hear this.

You have to wonder when someone is into that type of proximity basejumping if they're on borrowed time from day one.

erm

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#9 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 08:40:40 am
So sad.

Grubes

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#10 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 08:52:20 am
really sad but as T_B said it seemed inevitable

bbc article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32776686

Nibile

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#11 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 09:32:26 am
Sad news indeed. It seemed inevitable, with that constant level of risks taken. And let's not forget his flying partner died as well.

roddersm

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#12 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 09:54:31 am
Shit news. RIP.

shark

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#13 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 11:17:27 am
Kept rolling the dice, but what a life.

Condolences to is nearest friends and his family,

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#14 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 01:04:25 pm
Wow, sad news. RIP

DAVETHOMAS90

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#15 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 01:15:10 pm
This from The Guardian gives some great insight into his motivation:

He developed the skill to climb difficult walls without ropes, relying on a small chute on his back in case he fell. “I love the idea that I can change the worst possible thing to the best possible thing – dying to flying,” he said in a video from Sender Films.

I hate things like this. You hope people will live long enough to enjoy the memories.

dave

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#16 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 01:56:43 pm
Dave, as someone who's known for some fairly hard necky soloing in his time, how do you reconcile your experiences of big solos with what you know of Potter and folk like Dan Osman, i.e. high profile deaths doing big-number spinoff activities like roped jumps, wingsuit stuff etc. Is that crossover and relentless "dice rolling" (to coin a phrase) something apart from the usual soloer mindset/character, or just a natural/inevitable extension of it when given a big enough canvas (Yosemite) to play itself out on? Its hard when viewing others soloing exploits to know whether its all the controlled rationalised activity we like to think it is, or whether there's an element of recklessness that we probably don't admit to, but is easy to hide for as long as we get away with it (I notice you're not dead).

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#17 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 02:18:51 pm
Interesting question. The first thing that occurred to me was whether any of this generation will actually die climbing? Can't say I agree with the inevitability thing though, maybe I am naive.

I hadn't realised Dean was as good at wingsuiting as he was to be honest - the first 3 minute plus BASE flight for example. Though perhaps not as good as he thought. It's worth noting that whilst Stanley and Dean died flying challenging lines, Mario (Steph Davis' bloke) was not.

I wonder if the confidence borne from soloing at the cutting edge - where control is perhaps greater than it appears - leads to overconfidence in BASE etc - where control is perhaps less than it appears, even to the participant. Even Ron's worst injury was paragliding wasn't it?
 
Sad day though. Dean was a big inspiration to me even though I found him increasingly ridiculous. I guess some of the bullshit was less ridiculous in the context of California, but I still respect him for putting it out there and not being conformist. If he had been a bit more in on the joke he might have been the coolest climber ever.

Bonjoy

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#18 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 02:22:27 pm
Its hard when viewing others soloing exploits to know whether its all the controlled rationalised activity we like to think it is, or whether there's an element of recklessness that we probably don't admit to, but is easy to hide for as long as we get away with it (I notice you're not dead).

My guess would be that the people doing this sort of thing wrestle with that question too and probably never come to a definite answer.

SA Chris

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#19 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 02:35:19 pm
The first thing that occurred to me was whether any of this generation will actually die climbing?

If I understand your question, then yes?

http://www.climbing.com/climber/john-bachar-1957-2009/

Yes, it's a tragedy, more so for those close to these guys than for themselves, but they were big boys and had a fairly good idea what they were getting theselves into, and died doing something amazing in a beautiful place, which most of the rest of us are unlikely to.

Johnny Brown

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#20 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 02:40:53 pm
That's why I wrote 'this' generation. Death by climbing seemed pretty common in the previous generation (not least British mountaineers), although Bachar made it into the modern era.

I mean Osman - ropeswing, Reardon - drowned, Potter BASE. And our own Alan Mullin, who pushed the limits of Scottish winter soloing perhaps farther than anyone, but killed himself in a police cell.

T_B

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#21 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 03:06:47 pm
.

DAVETHOMAS90

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#22 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 03:22:36 pm
I think there's a good discussion to be had here, perhaps somewhere else another time, but my feelings are that the "extreme" is a way of wrestling with what lies deeper. Deep Play (Pritchard).

It can take a long time to understand that "the line between terror and joy" (Jean-Christophe Lafaille) is less precise, less narrow, less defined than it appears. And yes, I believe those of us who flirt with that line, believe deep down, somehow, that we can be responsible for bad things happening. Or not - or that we once were. However, we do not want to live a life burdened by control and that is what we're trying to resolve.

The major rewards come from those moments when, in a perilous situation, we explore not being in control - to learn that chance doesn't always have to lead to disaster. Paradoxically, the game is set up in a way that forces us to relinquish control - a desire for meditation, as some have put it.

Dean Potter may not have died slipping off a highline, but I believe he really wanted a one inch webbing tape to be as wide as a sidewalk, and for him to still feel at peace there.

I don't want to reference my own stuff here, but lots of people think that extreme sports protagonists believe they're invincible, that it couldn't happen to them.

The opposite is true. On a hard solo, I'd set off after preparing myself for the reality that I might die - in full awareness of that fact. But I'd be aware of that possibility on a V Diff.

I'm sure Potter would have been the same. His death was not the result of recklessness, but of trying to make a very difficult to control flying machine even safer to use. Perhaps his own life experiences had yet to demonstrate that joy needn't be found in the absence of terror.

It's the life he could have enjoyed after finding some inner peace, that has been taken away.

I hope it's   OK to say that here, and that his life was a celebration of his attempts to get there.

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#23 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 03:57:32 pm
I hope its Ok to say that or we might as well all give up anything risky and just watch TV and likely die of a heart attack instead. Dean was one of a few climbers I've met who just seemed to be thinking and operating at a different level and he packed more in to a shortened life than most climbers would in several. I find the 'inevitability' stuff a bit odd for climbers.... we all roll the dice...we also don't say this as much with high altitude alpinists (when on risks per climb the odds are arguably stacked higher).

jwi

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#24 Re: RIP Dean Potter
May 18, 2015, 04:00:19 pm
Excellent post DAVETHOMAS90, thanks.

The first thing that occurred to me was whether any of this generation will actually die climbing?

Michael Reardon was of "this generation". ("this generation" climbers in their 30-50s???)
Bjørn-Eivind Årtun. OK he was maybe not an A-list celebrity, but then again he should've been.

 but I get your point.


ahh... now I get it, you mean "this generation of Yosemite climbers?"
« Last Edit: May 18, 2015, 04:05:39 pm by jwi »

 

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