Free-climbers [Part I]
[NOTE: It might help to have read this previous post of mine, about free-climbing El Capitan, before reading the present post.]
This article is about Dean Potter, a free-climbing star who died in a base-jumping accident in 2015. It was written before the mishap:
Potter doesn’t want to die, he just wants to come as close to the brink as possible. “I’m addicted to the heightened awareness I get when there’s a death consequence,” he says. “My vision is sharper, and I’m more sensitive to sounds, my sense of balance and the beauty all around me. A lot of my creativity comes from this nearly insane obsession. Something sparkles in my mind, and then nothing else in life matters.”
I’ve read quite a few interviews with folks who engage in these sorts of high-risk athletic adventure activities, and they nearly all say something akin to that last sentence.
We regulars can’t quite understand it. But I think that, if you feel that way, it makes a certain amount of sense to keep up the activity despite the risks—as Steph Davis, a free-climber and base-jumper who was married to Potter and divorced in 2006, and lost her second husband to a similar base-jumping accident in 2013, says:
She doesn’t like the water, for example. She says she would never surf and chance drowning or getting eaten by a shark, “because the reward I would get from the experience would be so minimal compared to the potential risks”…
“Base jumping’s not safe. Road biking isn’t safe. Driving cars isn’t safe. Living isn’t safe,” says Davis. “So if the perception of the value or benefit of any activity is based on whether it could be made ultimately safe – that’s sort of a losing battle ’cause we’re all going to die.”
We can all see the risk; it’s obvious. But they plan and train so that they reduce the risk, although it still remains high (Davis was base-jumping with her second husband when he crashed into the cliff and died, so she is well aware of it). What we don’t see are the rewards—and for the people who fall in love with these pursuits the rewards must be phenomenal. Some people take it up, feel a certain high (to coin a phrase), but not enough to overcome the perception of risk and they drop it. Others (me, for example), can’t even conceive of feeling a reward doing this activity and perceive the risks as so enormous as to be suicidal. For us, the decision is very very easy.
In that interview Potter gave in 2008, he also had this to say:
Potter’s plan goes like this: He’ll build strength by climbing tough routes and hone his focus by highlining, BASE-jumping and free-soloing projects that require him to enter a trancelike state. “I’ll be balanced mentally and physically, and hopefully it’ll all funnel together into this superheightened power to fly,” he says. “That’s all I think about.”…
Aerodynamically, of course, self-propelled human flight is a nutty proposition. Potter, like many BASE-jumpers, often wears a one-piece, bat-shape, nylon wing suit that allows him to extend his horizontal glide during a jump. Wing-suiting, or “bird-manning,” is the closest approximation humans have to real flight. But it’s not the sort of soaring Potter has in mind. What he’s picturing is an actual human body—his—taking a running start, achieving liftoff and, well, flying. With nothing but his own two arms as wings. Just like in his dream.
Seriously.
“I know it’s insane to think that I could fly,” Potter says. “But to make it possible, you truly have to believe in it – to go to a place that’s not accepted.”
You could call this crazy. But these people must go to a place where they exercise mental and physical powers that seem almost superhuman, so perhaps there’s an inherent tendency to go one step further and think they have actually, literally, defied the laws of gravity.
[Part II coming soon.]
A somewhat similar high can be obtained through robbing a bank or other criminal activity. Violence will get you high. This is a large part of why it’s been so popular. It feels good. Chemically, it’s not just adrenalin, but dopamine as well.
I once realized that I had averaged close to 100mph driving from Vancouver BC to Portland, Oregon, and knew I would probably kill myself if I kept pushing the high speeds.
But there was so much pleasure involved.
Just looking at the photos on your earlier post (2017) makes my stomach all flippy floppy. I did climb Cathedral Ledge in NH a few years ago. It was with a guide and safety equipment. I’m not a big fan of heights, but not afraid of them either. My recollection is that during the climb I wasn’t nervous about the height. Most likely because of the safety gear and a sort of blissful ignorance of the potential consequences of an accident.
My wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. While hiking around we saw all sorts of people sneaking over to the edge of great cliffs, peaking over the side, for what I don’t know. I wouldn’t go anywhere closer than 20 feet or so; get a sense of vertigo if I do.
I don’t judge or begrudge people like Potter and Honnold from pursuing their climbs and such. I’ve engaged in my own activities in which death is a possibility. I ride a bicycle on the road regularly, I drive about 15,000 highway miles a year in my car, and I’ve sailed on the open ocean in severe weather conditions (never in a hurricane). The big difference is that I don’t get the rush or focus or creativity that these people talk about.
I was a rock climber. I climbed at a relatively high level (5.10) for someone who did it as a weekend warrior. Though I trained to do parachute jumps, I never considered base jumping. That said, I understand the attraction. Just contemplating a route I was going to climb gave me an adrenaline rush. When on the route, my mind was totally concentrated on putting the holds together. It put me in the “zone.” At the top there was a rush of satisfaction, but it never lasted. I was soon hungering for that rush again. I was hooked on it. But the biggest rush always came from a leader fall. You fell, your protection held, and you were alive – and you never felt more alive than at that point.
My son and I climbed together for eight years. During that time he became one of the best rock climbers in Colorado. As he progressed beyond my abilities, he would often do an easier climb so I could climb with him, but he was mostly doing insanely difficult climbs. I understood. I knew the feeling. I was intensely proud of him. In 1979 he soloed a climb in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado. He was fifteen feet from the top, on easy ground, when he fell 350 feet and died instantly.
We were devastated by his death. My primary consolation was that he died doing something he loved. It seemed to me that he wouldn’t want me to stop doing something he loved so much. Two climbers that knew my son believed the same thing. They became my climbing partners. I dealt with my grief for the next nine years by doing more and harder climbs than I had ever done. When I wasn’t working, I was climbing or in the gym trying to get stronger.
In 1988, on a trip to Yosemite, my two partners and I climbed a series of well known Yosemite climbs. Climbs that were at or beyond my limits. I struggled on most of them. One route on Half Dome took us sixteen hours. It was on that climb that the rush failed to appear.. I just felt completely drained and thankful to be alive. It dawned on me that I was 55 years old and earned a living sitting in a chair. How could I continue to do routes that challenged even young climbers? My abilities and appetite for the game were declining. For the next five years I did mostly easy climbs and gradually withdrew from the climbing scene. I outgrew my addiction to the adrenaline rush. But I know what it’s like, I understand why people like Alex Honnold, Dean Potter, John Bachar, Chris Sharma, Warren Harding, and John Salathe do/did what they loved. It can be a very powerful addiction.
JJ – So, so sorry to hear of your loss – the passing of our loved ones never quits hurting, no matter how far in the past. Regardless of the activity, every parent’s nightmare, when the kids go out in the wild country, is that one of them won’t come home.
Our kids were brought up doing tower climbing at scout camps, but none have been hit with the mountain fever. My sister-in-law used to live in El Dorado Springs (she’s now in Boulder) – it’s beautiful country.
Dick Francis, the mystery writer, often includes poignant descriptions of the same type of adrenaline rush, one that keeps jockeys going despite the very real dangers of horse racing (he was a champion jockey himself).
One character in particular, Sid Halley in “Odds Against” and later works, faces up to what his obsession cost him when his wife left, unable to deal with the stress of potentially losing him.
His works as a whole constitute a very powerful analysis of the psychological need to experience danger in conditions that test one’s skills and mettle against both known and unforeseen conditions.
JJ, You may be interested in reading “Solo Faces” by James Salter about a mountaineer who specializes in solo climbs of the French Alps around Chamonix. He has the same obsesion that your son did though without the tragic end.
I built formula cars for folks like this, and cleaned up after some when I was on ski patrol. Everybody has their own kind of crazy. My problem is when it gets financed by the entertainment industry and put out there as “what the cool kids do.” Driving “on the edge” on the highway isn’t cool, it’s criminally anti-social. Risking the lives of ski-patrollers and medivac pilots by skiing out-of-bounds (or base-jumping where it’s banned, like in Yosemite) likewise isn’t cool, it’s simply irresponsible. I’ve known more than a few folks wired that way, and cared a lot for a few of them, and helped some of them do their things in (mostly) responsible ways. The problem I have is when they’re used by corporate interests to sell energy drinks and helmet-mounted video cameras and clicks on video-websites. Those folks are vampires. My opinion only.
J.J.:
So very very sorry.
JJ, if I am not mistaken, you were a Naval Aviator, and I believe a carrier pilot. That wasn’t enough rush for you?
Funny thing is, there is certainly a rush as the catapult fires, or on a night approach to the ship (a different one for me, call it a bit of anxiety), but I never related the experience to those extreme sports, or those (idiots) doing 80+ on the freeways on their motorcycles. I think perhaps that was due to the extensive training that preceded, and the long work up before you were ready–and the knowledge that you were certified ready.
Condolences. It is hard to imagine such loss. It sounds as though your son had done all he could to prepare; and fate intervened, as it sometimes does.
I used to do high wind windsurfing, and skied most the most of the difficult slopes in North America and have given that up with age.
I still occasionally hop on my bicycle and take a 40 mph descent out of my neighborhood, on a larger residential street. But I’ve hit an age where that enjoyable “finger in a power socket” feeling just isn’t as appealing as it once was. Ageing is many things, but one’s state of mind is a big one.
Sorry to hear about your loss J. J.
Jimmy Chin documented Alex Honnold’s successful 2017 solo free climb of El Capitan.
The finished documentary titled, “Free Solo” is coming out soon. A link to the trailer is below.
https://youtu.be/urRVZ4SW7WU
Chin is a professional mountaineer and photographer. His first feature length documentary, MERU, beautifully captures an attempted summit via the Shark’s Fin route of Meru Peak in the Himalayas.
““I know it’s insane to think that I could fly,” Potter says. “But to make it possible, you truly have to believe in it – to go to a place that’s not accepted.” (my emphasis)
Ah. The if I believe in it deeply enough, it becomes possible meme.
“It can be a very powerful addiction.” J.J.
Arguably, this type of addiction involves a disconnection from reality.
J.J., I am so very sorry to hear about the loss of your son, and glad that you found a way to live through it by doing the thing that he had loved so much.
As for believing in the possibility of flight, I was certain as a small child that of course I could fly, if only I could find the right combination of thoughts as I leaped or jumped. That’s not unusual for a young child, I know, but I kept on believing it until I was embarrassingly close to the end of childhood. Part of the problem was that I COULD fly in my dreams, in a way that felt intensely real. I’m not much of a risk-taker or rush-seeker in waking life, but yes, “rush” is the word for how it felt to remember in mid-dream that I could fly — often as a way to escape from trouble — and to leap up and swim through the air so lightly and freely. I’d wake up and think that if I could do it so easily in a dream, it had to be possible when I was awake, and I’d go outside and jump off the porch and hurt myself one more time, get up only a little discouraged and try it again. Of course I eventually accepted my flightless human state — but what a loss, really. For quite a while I did keep flying in my dreams, but at some point in my adult life those dreams became more infrequent and finally stopped happening. I’d give a lot to get them back.
J.J.,
As you say your son died doing what he loved, oh my, your loss was unimaginable to me. I would find it difficult to keep it together if one of my children or grandchildren passed before me.
I stopped skydiving last year at my wife`s request. I did that to honor her wish because I could never convince her it was far less dangerous than driving a car. I do miss the flying and then floating aspects that always put a long lasting smile on my face. To each his own.
Mrs Whatsit “I was certain as a small child that of course I could fly, if only I could find the right combination of thoughts as I leaped or jumped. ”
Your namesake would agree, I think.
There is a reason we love the story of Peter Pan — being able to fly just by thinking hard enough (and a little bit of pixie dust!).
Oldflyer, I was a Navy pilot. Like you, I felt prepared for the routine flying we did in training and in the peace time fleet. It was when flying combat in North Vietnam that I realized what an adrenaline rush it was to go in over the North and fly through the flack. When your feet were wet, and what lay ahead was only a carrier landing, then a warm meal and clean bed, it was such a rush – ALIVE! – I cheated death once more. But I wasn’t addicted to that (though I knew pilots that were) because I didn’t choose to be there. It was duty that put me there. And I had an inordinate fear of becoming a POW. (Anyone who has been through SERE training knows why I felt that way.) It was after my combat days were over and I was employed by an airline that I got back into rock climbing, which I had been involved in during my high school and college days. How that happened is too long a story for a comment.
It amazes me the way the standards in the sport have zoomed. What was hard climbing in the 70s and 80s is now pretty routine. I love to watch videos of top climbers. They are in such control and so ballet-like in their moves. That was what my son was like. To watch him do a route was to watch an artist in action. At times he danced on the rock, at others he used pure power to move upward. Grace and strength, poetry in motion.
When I read of Alex Honnold’s or Dean Potter’s climbs, it brings admiration, but it also brings a sense of dread. I know there are people who love them and what their loss would mean. If only we could make gains and take risks without the specter of loss. Unfortunately, it’s not to be.
To all those who expressed condolences: Thank you. It’s 39 years now and the scars are quite thick, but the wound is still there and the memories remain.
Mrs Whatsit: Those flying dreams are weird! I haven’t had one in years. “Swimming through the air” was exactly my sense of it.
When I’ve awakened from such a dream, even as an adult, I felt sure if I could just maintain that state of mind, I would indeed be able to fly.
The closest I have come to dying was on the road around Lake Tahoe in 1996- I was driving around the lake and hit a patch of black ice in a shady spot and spun out in front of a package truck coming the opposite direction- I had enough time to realize I was about to die horribly and the sensation was something I had never had and haven’t had since- the adrenalin rush was almost overwhelming in that instance though I was helpless to do anything about it. The car spun twice around and stopped on the right shoulder in the only place on that stretch of road that had enough room for a car. When I stepped out of the car, I almost passed out.
I don’t want death defying experiences- I can’t handle them.
when his Mommy told him he could grow up and be anything in the world, he believed her. It’s not her fault he wanted to be a bird.
I liked free climbing… New Paltz
on another note, my prediction wasnt too far off – in using a certain term
it was just not inclusive enough… THAT was the problem, not that it was offensive under the new order… too bad the point was lost…
I guess we have to get used to it now..
for those that want to climb this way – there is also tethered climbing…
The Gunks, New York Climbing Destination Guide
https://www.climbing.com/places/the-gunks-new-york-climbing-destination-guide/
The Gunks (short for Shawangunks) is one of America’s premier climbing areas. It’s just minutes from New Paltz, a funky college town of 13,000, and 85 miles from New York City, making it a popular spot on weekends. The rock is solid quartz conglomerate with horizontal, rather than vertical, cracks. Climbing here is characterized by airy roofs, big jugs, traverses, and sometimes “sporty” pro. It’s famous for stellar one- to three-pitch climbs of all levels of difficulty, including some of the best moderate trad in the country (sorry, no sport climbs). It’s also notorious for stiff ratings.
I case readers have missed it, one of the more bizarre things Dean Potter did was to take his dog Whisper wing-suit flying with him. He had a special backpack pouch and goggles made for Whisper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGWiZLy0YuI
Though I am someone who has probably not earned himself even a minimal reputation for compassion, I nonetheless want to say that JJ’s story set me back on my heels. Head swimming, mind reeling. What a horrible, devastating loss for a father; and what a tragedy too, that an obviously fine specimen of young manhood, JJ’s son, saw his existence cut short.
I cannot grasp the philosophical issues involved- as it is first necessary to comprehend and place the drive or need to take risks like that in a moral context. But for me, as a kid, nudging a Honda to 100 for a short bit, till the front wheel began to float, quickly seemed suicidal and instantly looked pointless.
But nonetheless, I feel for JJ’s loss.
This further remark should be understood has having no bearing on JJ’s revelation.
In general, I suppose, for some people, an effectual difference might emerge based on your view of existence and its meaning, if any.
Both for the confirmed and sophisticated nihilist, as well as for the unreflective and philosophically immature personality liable to be seduced by even the cheesiest kinds of notoriety, it might seem that there is no such thing as throwing your life away by taking extreme risks; and that contrarily, playing it safe, is throwing away any real chance of self-realization and deep fulfillment.
And, if life is as either of these views envision it, the holder of such views would have a point. Given the certainty, the absolute certainty that nothing matters once the lights go out, a great many of us, I imagine, would take those “leaps” (generically speaking), concerned only that if it failed, death, rather disability, ensued.
Hell, dueling, and manslaughter at the slightest provocation, would seem hardly wrong in any meaningful sense. At least to me.
But what if, just what if, in some way, under some regime of a moral law embedded in the very nature of reality(and assuming that reality has an ultimately intelligible structure), we were called to account over acts of nonchalant or vainglorious thrill seeking. What if dying like a hero for the sake of chasing an adrenalin orgasm, were objectively wrong?
Achilles, or the jingoists of the 19th century, or extreme mountaineers would not say or think so. Ultimate self-realization for them, might only occur through an “objectively” pointless death which they have imbued with meaning only (as they see it) through an act of their (as they imagine) sovereign will.
But are we really our own creators, to that extent?
May be, Freud was not far from truth asserting the existence of natural instinct he called Tanathos, or death wish, which is normally suppressed but manifests itself by many subtle ways. The pleasure some people found in extremely dangerous sports and hobbies like sky diving, rock climbing and others imitating or symbolically replicating the most usual methods of suicide is a good illustration.