[Adam Lincoln]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/14/sports/othersports/14climber.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&hp&oref=slogin

Scroll to video!

[slackline]

Looks like an excerpt/trailer of Aerialist.

[Houdini]

Potter - one of the world’s best climbers. 

One of the world best rompers of trade routes.  Certainly one of the world best slackliners, now that here there can be no doubt.

What pish.  And balls!     

[erm, sam]

Crazy bastard. That is a brilliant idea.

[Johnny Brown]

Potter - one of the world’s best climbers

I don't see how that fact can be disputed.

[grimer]

Yeah, hasn't he done mind blowing stuff in Patagonia on his first visit, and in Baffin?

[Houdini]

Everyone has their own idea re. definitions.    IMO to use words like best, dude would be ripping up 8a+/8b OS - 8c+/9a RP - 8B+/V14 - Regular E7 OS E9/10 HP - M12 - A5 - etc..   Thought Dean was a great bigwaller/slack/high liner.  Not a 1st class all rounder.  I think he's bold as brass, mind.  Just an opinion, like.

[grumpycrumpy]

I realise that I may be a cynical old bastard , but this strikes me as a blokes last ditch attempt to get some interest back on his career ...... Still , have to agree he does have the cahones of highly tempered steel  ....

[Johnny Brown]

The slacklining thing is boring to me, as is the raven/ metaphysical bully. But as for free climbing granite big walls, he's in a league of his own. Only Tommy's two in a day came close to what Potter is doing.

IMO to use words like best, dude would be ripping up 8a+/8b OS - 8c+/9a RP - 8B+/V14 - Regular E7 OS E9/10 HP - M12 - A5 - etc..

No one is doing all of these. Don't assume Potter doesn't boulder hard just cos he's not spraying about it on 8a.nu.

[Idol eyes]

The guys a soul climber, given the fact that he is not only unaware of you, let alone your opinions, makes me believe he is on a solo mission to push his own boundaries, and is not on the "Best climber in the world" trip that consumes the media attention, this is also only an opinion...

[yankeepete]

I think the thing that bothers many people about Dean is the disconnect between his quasi-spiritual empty babble and the shameless media whoring. If your ascent of Delicate Arch is so profoundly deep then why call a news crew from Salt Lake City to film the whole thing? If you're really soloing Astroman for yourself, why arrange to have Eric Perlman poised to take photos of The Big Media Event for the mags? Name a major Dean ascent that wasn't photographed or videoed ad nauseum. Beneath the Zoolander-ish attempts to shape his media image is just a person like us all: craving attention. He's the Ron Kauk of our generation: open your video segment with some soulful-yet-meaningless platitudes followed by shirtless lat flexing and intense smoldering looks for the babes. 

Compare and contrast people who really climb for themselves: not to many people around when Croft first soloed the Rostrum or Astroman, much less a news crew. Alex Honnold is quietly and humbly crushing. Much of the "everything Dean does gets on a video" phenomenon arises from the new You-Tube mentality that it's not valid if not documented digitally, yet many of Potters contemporaries are demonstrating the meaning of truly doing something for oneself.

[Houdini]

I think I'm closest to Yankee Pete's opinion.

All I wanted to say, though as ever, it's so very fucking hard to do so on UKB before the long knives are drawn, that I am suspicious of people who may either acknowledge themselves "the best"; secretly think of themselves as "the best"; or allow their fans/hanger-ons/friends to massage an ego and use phrases such as "the best".  Outside of the hard and fast rules of sport there is no such thing as "the best" (and even then it's only for a short time).

Not every one craves attention to the same extent; observe climbers and people in "the business" of climbing; their egos, motivation . . .   

(Idol Eyes:  Personally, I can't wait to be a hazy memory on the edge of my last living friends conciousness.  I'll leave nothing but genes behind.)

[Johnny Brown]

Your original quote doesn't say 'the best', it says 'one of the best'.

having said that, in terms of soloing granite big walls and patagonian routes, he is the best. How much he sprays about is irrelevant - no one else is doing the stuff that he is. I'm not a big fan, I agree with the above on media hypocrisy - anyone who can get themselves dropped from Patagonia strikes me as foolish. But at what he does, he currently is the best.

I think folk struggle to identify with him cos it is genuinely a stage removed. Look at Tommy freeing El Cap - that's the trad we all do but at a level we dream of. Look at Dean soloing it - ack! What the fuck!

[Houdini]

Part of our respective opinions must come down to what we consider significant in rock climbing. 

I don't and never have believed that for an experience to be significant one must risk everything.  Many do.  As an part-time observer of that style of climbing (fuck, dude, I read a little of what gets on UKB but I don't get Alpinist, Climber, Climbing, not even Klettern!) I think he's impressive.  Who wouldn't?  But only in the same way as I see a man on a "wall of death" zipping round at full-throttle, or that man who used to jump over Lambo's at high speed . . .   It piques an interest but that's as far as it goes.  So he's a soul climber?  Shit, isn't everyone? 

[Idol eyes]

I can think of exceptions!

[grumpycrumpy]

He's a SOUL climber ? How so ? Please slake my thirst for knowledge .The bloke organises stunts to get himself media attention .He may well be one of the finest big wall climbers known to humanity , but he's sucked a lot of Satans' cock to get there ..... Soul climber .... Ptcha ...

[Houdini]

Weeeeeeeell . . .

I guess it would be easier to understand if we were Americans.  I think I'm correct in saying that the US has historically put more stock to the soloist and the solo ascent . . .   Witness the ex-cult of Reardon RIP / Reggie Perrin (?) for example.

Personally speaking, I don't think solo ascents push anything forward at all.  It's a private and personal pursuit best kept that way.

Mind, I do have a certain respect for soloists, having done a reasonable amount of it in years gone by.  To this day, I've no idea what possessed me; as most of it was done alone w/ out an audience.

[lagerstarfish]

Perhaps we only know about the stuff he feels that he needs to publicise to make a living? Maybe he does loads of really satisfying soloing on his own and without an audience that he doesn't tell us about because that would detract from the soulness of the experience? I'm sure he can't go round having his whole life filmed, can he? He must do the equivalent of 40 hrs a week of media-whoring and getting all the attention he needs and then gets the rest of the time to do his own soul thing - or perhaps he's full of shit?
Good effort though - he looks to be having a lot of fun. Possibly more fun than most; and we all know that the best climber is the one having the most fun, eh? 

[yankeepete]

True that.

[Idol eyes]

Oh yeah, right, sorry, hes a photo slut, yeah his sole basis for climbing is to impress you! yeah, he must be so depressed that you are not impressed!

[Houdini]

Quit the green Idol, you sound crasser than Dean,  Pfft!

[Idol eyes]

Well leave him alone then!!!

[Houdini]

Only if you stop taking drugs and forcing us to take your opinion w/ a pinch of halluncinogenic salt, you triphead!

[Idol eyes]

Grrr!

[Houdini]

Skin up hippy