INTERVIEW: Dean Potter sounds off on life in Yosemite

From his intrepid speed-soloing in Yosemite National Park, a place he calls home, to his carefully measured climbs of some of the most famous rocks in the world, Dean Potter is someone who definitely lives by his motto: “Fly free.”

Potter’s story is one of several tales featured in the new documentary Valley Uprising, which will premiere on Discovery Channel 8 p.m. Saturday, April 25 as part of Elevation Weekend. Think Shark Week without the sharks but still the danger and awesomeness.

For Potter, climbing began in earnestness back in 1985 when he was 13 years old and living in New Hampshire. His parents forbid him from going to a nearby cliff: one, because it was on a military base and two, because the wall was too dangerous to climb.

“So, of course, as a rebellious teenager the first thing I did was, as soon as they turned their backs, I ran off toward that cliff, and then I found myself up near the wall and saw a piece of metal sparkling up there,” Potter said recently during a phone interview. “I climbed without rope up to it, you know, with my Converse All-Star canvas basketball shoes on and saw that there was another one and another one above that. So I ended up doing my first climb, and the first couple years of my climbing was through free-soloing, climbing without ropes, and learning by myself.”

Potter said that after his first forays in rock climbing, the typical “normal life” of a teenager never seemed to fit him well. Rather than busying himself at college, he traveled the country to different rock-climbing destinations. On this adventure Potter met the legendary “Chongo” Chuk, who taught him how to walk on a line in Joshua Tree, Calif. A few weeks after that, the climber headed to Yosemite and ran into some other influential mentors, and he soon entered the world of BASE jumping, an activity where the jumper uses a body parachute to fly/glide off a cliff.

From climbing to line walking to BASE jumping, Potter is an enterprising figure in the world of extremes.

“Unfortunately there can be a lot of competition in rock climbing,” Potter said. “A lot of what Valley Uprising talks about is this one-upmanship. … The golden era of Yosemite rock climbing was the late 50s to early 70s, and with Warren Harding and Royal Robbins, the two best climbers of that era kind of going back and forth on who was doing the hardest climbs. And really it’s been like that since. This has always made me uncomfortable because I kind of got into climbing because I didn’t like the competitive nature of the rest of the world and team sports or getting into college, and so I climbed not to be competitive. But as I started getting better and better, I did notice that it is quite competitive.”

Today, Potter tries to be more creative with his attempts rather than relying on the competitive nature of rock climbing. In some ways, he is on a quest to compete with himself, pushing his boundaries and seeing how far he can go to make his creative dreams a reality. “Though I have done the fastest times on routes or done many routes first, for me my biggest breakthroughs and the way I pushed myself the most is when I have gone past that competitiveness and just created new ways of doing things that are beautiful and that allow for easier travel on big walls and alpine bases than trying to beat somebody,” he said.

Potter admitted that he climbs because he needs to climb. He has similar thoughts on his need to fly and cross lines. “Part of the reason why is when I put myself at risk, and I’m exhausted, and I’m in a beautiful setting, my sense is heightened and I receive the world more acutely than I do in normal everyday reality,” he said. “And so all that I’m consciously focusing on when I climb is focus on the breath and my intention to go up, but what comes from that simple act of focusing on the breath and moving upwards, all of a sudden … I start to perceive the world more acutely. And I start to feel what’s going on in myself, feel my emotions, tap into my intuition – the place that I’m at, the weather, the beauty, the animals, the birds, my connection with the rock, my hearing heightens, my sight heightens, and a lot of it is because I’m focusing every possible thing on my intention and my breath.”

Potter said he does feel fear when on the rock face; he’s unable to turn off that feeling. However, his goal is to keep the fear under control and still focus on that breathing. This keeps him relaxed in a situation many people would find impossibly dangerous.

After Potter arrived in Yosemite, he never truly left. He’s been living in the national park since 1993, and he uses the many iconic spots to free-solo or solo. In the 1990s, he also created a new style of climbing known as speed-soloing. “It was like an art of no rules, a climbing style that put all the styles together and allowed a single person to climb a big wall more efficiently than ever before,” he said. “And that was kind of my first innovation to the sport was speed-soloing, so I was able to climb El Cap[itan] at Half Dome in a single day in this new style.”

Speed-soloing relies on free-soloing, which is climbing without ropes; however, if the journey becomes too difficult, Potter has a little kit that allows him to use “a trick piece of gear” like Batman. Sometimes it’s a short piece of rope that helps him overcome the hardest section of a rock face. After the challenge is vanquished, he returns to climbing rope-less.

After speed-soloing, he started to bring new ideas to human-body flying and BASE jumping. He also brought parachute protection into line walking and climbing, something he called a “hybridization.”

“And that seemed to revolutionize what rock climbing meant because now rock climbing just wasn’t climbing up rocks,” he said. “It was also you could fall and fly instead of die, and you can also set up horizontal lines and explore these empty spaces.”

The California national park he calls home has obviously been his playground; it’s a place he called the “best climbing location on earth.”

“It’s unrivaled, and I’m not just saying that because I live here,” he said. “You’ll talk with any climber worldwide, and they might say that their home area is the best. But really when they tell the truth, they’ll be like, yes, nothing compares to Yosemite. The climate is so stable and sunny most everyday of the year. And it’s the birthplace of modern rock climbing. It’s the birthplace of big wall BASE jumping.”

Add in the impressive waterfalls, 3,000-foot cliffs, enormous trees and iconic shapes of the rocks, and it becomes clear why Yosemite is so legendary. “Nothing really compares to it that I’ve ever seen in all my travels all around the world for the beauty, the climate and just the rock quality that allows us to push the limits here still to the farthest reaches that there are currently,” he said.

Many people will never rock climb in their life, and many will not be able to visit Yosemite. However, Discovery Channel allows an open window on rock climbing with the airing of Valley Uprising. It’s a documentary that both highlights the extreme nature of these impressively dedicated athletes and offers a chance to live vicariously through their accomplishments.

“I hope that when people watch this film, of course, they’re not going to be doing exactly the things they see on the cutting edge of rock climbing, but maybe it will empower people to pursue their unique way of living as well as to make them feel more strongly about the necessity of being free in our national parks and in our most wild lands in the United States,” Potter said. “The real story of Valley Uprising is more of a story on freedom and a story about these guys starting with John Muir in the late 1800s, and going through the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s to the golden age with Royal Robbins and Warren Harding, and the psychedelic ’70s with Jim Bridwell and John Bachar and Ron Kauk and Lynn Hill, and to the modern era with me and Alex Honnold and the Stone Monkeys.”

He added: “There is a different way to live, and you shouldn’t feel that you’re forced to do anything but what your one life should be. And the one life should be following your passion and doing that unique thing that only you are perfect for.”

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Valley Uprising will premiere on Discovery Channel 8 p.m. Saturday, April 25. Click here for more information.