Dean Potter dies in yosemite

This thread has become just another version of any thread about FKT's, or doing anything that involves any king of athletic effort. There's always somebody who jumps in to threadsh*t, an extensive explanation of why you are doing it wrong, your motivation is wrong, your relationship to nature is wrong, you're just an attention seeker, why not relax and go slowly the way civilized people do.

Always signed off with a disingenuous "HYOH".

Welcome to the disingenuous "LYOL" thread.

Sometimes I wonder if Skurka died on his wilderness hike if he would be put in the same category as Timmy Treadwell and Christopher McCandless. I realize the latter two were reckless, but sometimes people mumble about the strangest things.

Some of the folks I met up in Alaska are very cynical about any "greenhorns". I can understand why after seeing how so many trappers from the Lower 48 move up there with a fantasy, and acts like they are experts.

"Sometimes I wonder if Skurka died on his wilderness hike if he would be put in the same category as Timmy Treadwell and Christopher McCandless."

By some people, no doubt. But I don't think by knowledgeable people. Skurka knew what he was doing and his skills allowed him to mitigate the major risks: water, falling, hypothermia. McCandless didn't know what he was doing and his skills couldn't mitigate the main risk: starvation. Treadwell put himself in an unusually dangerous situation summer after summer and was overconfident in his ability to control interactions with wild animals.

I like the title of your post Ralph.
I have worked with a number of farm workers from Oaxaca and other places in Mexico; these folks get up and are out in the fields long before others hit the road to work. They know the soil, the weather, the crops, the bugs, the birds. Many come from small villages in southern Mexico. They also love their music and chairs and hammocks and being outdoors for them might not be the same "escape" that others are looking for, but I could not say that my preferences for quiet, reflective experiences outdoors make me any closer or more in touch to nature. I still prefer not to hear music or other reminders of civilization while I am out there, but the older I get, the less I am looking for anyone to approve how I backpack ( or….insert most verbs here) and with that I am also less likely to feel the need to approve or disapprove what others do if it does not affect me or hurt anything.
I think there have been some great posts on this thread.

"By some people, no doubt. But I don't think by knowledgeable people."

That was sort of my point. The only ones who would know about his skill set are within the thru-hiking community. To everyone outside of that community, he would be another person who failed in the wilderness.

One time I reposted that incident about the Alaskan Mountain Wilderness Classic to my Facebook wall, and there were loads of harsh criticism from people who didn't know the details involved. I tried explaining Rob Kehrer was well-respected, and was thought by many others like him to be competent, but everyone is an armchair expert these days.

Dean Potter was one of my idols when I was rock-climbing as a teenager. But I am not really surprised that he died, considering how many close calls my cousin had during the 20 years he climbed and other related activities before he was too crippled to do anymore as the result of his injuries acclimated over the years. Good thing he quitted before his wick ran out, because I don't think his body was able to take any more abuse.

Things like alpinism and rock climbing is really a matter of shuffling the deck and drawing the card. One can increase the number of cards in their decks by developing skills and fitness to draw fewer chances of drawing the wrong card, but it's still a risk every time they decide to climb.

It's the same for other venues of recreational sports like BASE jumping, boating, hunting, dirt biking, mountain biking, skiing or quadding. Or even hiking. Some have smaller stacks containing fewer cards than others.

Out of all the outdoors sports out there, from what I know from the local SAR team, quadding has to be one of the riskiest. So many people get stuck, then try to walk out to find help and drown in the swamps. Yet it remains more popular than any other form of recreation, and no one talks about those incidents.

" rock climbing is really a matter of shuffling the deck and drawing the card. "

Getting pretty annoyed that all types of climbers are getting pushed into one big group. There are many different types of climbing that all have different levels of risk involved. Soloing has the most risk and gets the most EXTREMEEEE (effing hate that word) attention. Bouldering, sport climbing, top roping, even trad and aid climbing can be done very safely by people who know what they are doing. I have been a climber since 1999 and have never felt like I was "shuffling the deck". I've taken falls while sport climbing plenty of times with zero injury. The worst injury I ever got was at the rock gym 3' off the ground and landing on my shoulder wrong.

If your cousin had so many injuries due to climbing then he never had the skills to do so safely.

as for the topic, not really shocked about a wingsuit accident while going for a gap.. small margin of error etc etc.

Then I had been coming longer than you have (only by two years though), and my cousin has been climbing since I was a wee baby. :) Climbing became safer over the years though. I still remember the evolution of gears while growing up.

The science behind sport-specific training is much more refined (Eric Horst wrote some good books on the subject) which reduces overuse injuries and improved endurance. There are now new gears which weren't available back in the '80s. Good nutrition are now more accessible and more affordable. It wasn't uncommon for climbers to be dumpster diving. Well, some of them still do, but still better than expired peanut butter and half-eaten ramen.

Remember, climbing didn't really become mainstream until the last 15 – 20 years, and the manufacturers responded which improved the safety margin for the general public. Hell, the first climbing gym didn't even exist until 1987.

But I still stand by the shuffling the deck thing. It applies to everything in life from driving to going grocery shopping. At the moment, considering the shape of the rusty truck, I am probably a few cards short in the deck compared to someone with a brand new Google self-driving car.

I will give you that.. the gear has improved and many climbers have better ways to learn before heading out. The accidents these days tend to be miscommunication, fatigue related mental lapses and stuff like that.

I don't think his life as a climber has anything to do with the BASE jumping. Most climbers would rather not fall/jump. Hell I don't even like being lowered too fast haha

I don't follow climbing and know next to nothing about Dean Potter. Little I've read leads me to believe he lived an exceptional life and died a good albeit unfortunate death. Not sure how I'm going to go but when my time's up, hopefully it's not while I'm sitting on the crapper or anything along those lines.

Was reading about this cosmonaut today and thought of this thread. From Wikipedia:

"For the forerunners it is always more difficult. They tread the unknown paths and these paths are not straight, they have sharp turns, surprises and dangers. But anyone who takes the pathway into orbit never wants to leave it. And no matter what difficulties or obstacles there are, they are never strong enough to deflect such a man from his chosen path. While his heart beats in his chest, a cosmonaut will always continue to challenge the universe. Vladimir Komarov was one of the first on this treacherous path."

That's a beautiful quote Ian. Funny, because I was discussing Potter's death with my wife the other day and astronauts came up as well.

I especially like the line "…anyone who takes the pathway into orbit never wants to leave it."

I have nothing to add to this discussion, which repeats itself every time someone at the cutting edge dies doing what they love. Except that the whole thing is so predictable and dull it makes me want to go fly off a cliff in a national park.

'…died doing what he loved.' Nobody would ever say that they were happy to be swept off the mountain by an avalanche. The headline is, they died. Everyone would take a mulligan if they could. I find this phrase to be an empty gesture. It doesn't take the sting out. It's a form of avoidance, of dismissal: oh, that's all right then, he died doing what he loved.

Nobody is celebrating death, making empty gestures or avoiding anything. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out what "he died doing what he loved" means. It's shorthand for:

"He LIVED doing what he loved; it was intrinsically dangerous, but it was his life to choose; and more fitting that he died taking a calculated risk in something that gave him joy and fulfilment than being randomly hit by a truck."

Ueli Steck on Eiger
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjRGHGV_MVI

Alex Honnold on Moonlight Buttress
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/ng-adventure/adv-beyond-the-edge-honnold

Proximity flying

Proximity flying
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF214wDC4L8

In addition to that nightmarish flight in Colorado, the 38-year-old Jeb Corliss has had several other unenviable experiences, such as slamming into a rock face in 1999. I spoke to him at his home in Los Angeles.

“A lot,” he says. “I’m not sure about the number. Of my close friends, I would say 50 percent.”

http://www.newsweek.com/thrilling-deadly-world-wingsuit-flying-267468

I think discussing risk/reward is a worthy topic because both are undeniably real.

"I think discussing risk/reward is a worthy topic"

Indeed, but is there any controversy? Is somebody claiming that BASE jumping is not phenomenally dangerous?
I don't see a discussion of risk-reward in these comments, I see pompous condemnation of the choices he made for his own life.

"Death wish granted"
"risky attention seeking behavior"
"Overconfidence"
"It looks like Miss Nature decided to teach him an important lesson about intent and motive"
"an example of taking things too far"
"Also affects loved ones"
"a stupid and illegal act"
"Doing high risk activities produces some of the same brain chemical things as drugs"

The last one is my favorite.
Perhaps a chemical imbalance in the brain can explain a whole lot of things, about a whole lot people.

^^^^ and the fact that a lot of people cannot stand those who choose their own path and do so unapologetically.

/

The guy obviously did it for the attention as well as other reasons.
And so he is getting his attention… some of it here on BPL.
People's judgements about his intelligence and motives are part of what he wanted.
It's all good.
Not to worry, almost no one in the world outside of a very small slice of humanity knows who this guy was. A hundred years from now almost no one will remember who any of us were.
So just live and let live.

billy

^^^^ and the fact that a lot of people cannot stand those who choose their own path and do so unapologetically.

I don't understand how any thinking person could not have a complex response to these events. Talking about this is not at all the same thing as condemning. I haven't seen any voices here who cannot stand Potter because he chose his own path. Come on. You're unfairly belittling people who have a different perspective.

I can't imagine that Potter's friends and family aren't experiencing a gamut of mixed emotions. That's entirely normal and legitimate; so is talking about it.

"'…died doing what he loved.' Nobody would ever say that they were happy to be swept off the mountain by an avalanche. The headline is, they died. Everyone would take a mulligan if they could. I find this phrase to be an empty gesture. It doesn't take the sting out. It's a form of avoidance, of dismissal: oh, that's all right then, he died doing what he loved."

Would it have been "all right" or somehow "better" if he died doing something he didn't love? For instance, in a car wreck on the way to a job that he hated in a cubicle in an office building somewhere? Or if he died of a sudden heart attack or cancer? Or what if it was an industrial accident? Death stings, I don't see how another mode would change that in a positive direction.

I was hiking in yosemite last year and was very nearly killed by a huge dead tree that fell on the trail 20 feet in front of me. I've been climbing for over 20 years and this was the closest I've come to being killed in the outdoors. I've also nearly been killed while driving, more than once. Risk is unavoidable if we are going to truly live. Saying that someone like Dean "died doing what he loved" is both accurate and respectful of the choices he made in life, fully aware of the risks he was taking and fully accepting that death was a very possible outcome.

Dean was not the first and will not be the last to go in this manner. While he lived, he was exceptionally inspirational to an immense number of athletes and outdoor enthusiasts across multiple disciplines. Had he chosen to live a "normal", risk-averse life, he would have inspired no one, we would have never heard of him, and life would have been that much more dull and uninspiring for all of us. For many of us, that DOES help to take some of the sting out of his death. But the truth is, for someone like Dean, playing it safe is not even a real choice – trying to play it safe and NOT take risks would have killed him for sure.

I find it crazy that this same discussion has to be rehashed every time something like this happens. I tried not to get sucked into it, but I agree with Ralph, there is too much thoughtless criticism to just let it pass.

"Had he chosen to live a "normal", risk-averse life, he would have inspired no one,"

Not necessarily true… You can inspire in thousands of ways other that his way… just one for instance: writing a book.

"..we would have never heard of him,"
Of the billions of people on the earth almost none of them heard of him.
More people may have heard of him if he had written a book or some other activity… not that being 'heard of' is a good thing anyway…

" and life would have been that much more dull and uninspiring for all of us."
Not me… couldn't care less about the guy… and my life is not dull and I find thousands of things to inspire me…

"But the truth is, for someone like Dean, playing it safe is not even a real choice – trying to play it safe and NOT take risks would have killed him for sure. "
I doubt it. It may not have been a real 'choice' for him at all… there term "adrenalin junkie" is rooted in some reality.

None of the above meant to criticize the guy… or anyone or thing said on this post… just trying to widen the discussion a bit beyond these sweeping diatribes…

billy

Billy

I was looking for a quote, I can't find it so I must have it wrong but I thought it was by Reinhold Messner, and he had said something like "Is your life worth your death?" No matter who said it, and how they said it, I agree with the sentiment. For many people it is worth considerable risk to live a good, full life.

Again, I think it was up to Dean Potter to make make his own life decisions. I think he was out of line in making this illegal jump though. Those two deaths only reinforce the Park Service rule and will make it much, much harder for legal base jumping to ever take place on Park lands. I imagine it was a traumatic and expensive body recovery as well.

Dean Potter was an inspiration to many and will be remembered a long time regardless.

Jeffrey said, "'…died doing what he loved.' Nobody would ever say that they were happy to be swept off the mountain by an avalanche. The headline is, they died. Everyone would take a mulligan if they could. I find this phrase to be an empty gesture. It doesn't take the sting out. It's a form of avoidance, of dismissal: oh, that's all right then, he died doing what he loved."
==========
This isn't a commentary on Potter specifically but I agree 100% with Jeffrey on this. I hear this platitude all the time. "At least he died doing what he loved." I'm pretty sure most of us would rather LIVE doing what we love. Dying wasn't the goal. I do NOT want to die doing what I love. I want to live to keep doing what I love. One of my great loves involves being in the mountains in winter. I take avalanche safety really seriously, because avalanches scare the daylights out of me. If I ever die in one and someone says "At least she died doing what she loved" I'm going to haunt them, I swear.

"I don't understand how any thinking person could not have a complex response to these events. Talking about this is not at all the same thing as condemning. I haven't seen any voices here who cannot stand Potter because he chose his own path. Come on. You're unfairly belittling people who have a different perspective."

+1

Jeffrey,
I am not saying everyone that is discussing this can't stand those that choose a different path. Those that stop at "he was doing something illegal" are doing just that though.
David Chenault has a good take on this and the responses on his blog. I agree with him.