No. 256

Just as last Saturday the lives of the two Americans Dean Potter and Graham Hunt. As reported, both died on a wingsuit flight from the almost 2,300-meter-high Taft Point in Yosemite National Park. Potter had continuously made headlines with his extremely dangerous projects: climbing free solo, balancing over highlines between two rocky pinnacles – or jumping with a wingsuit from cliffs. Potter is No. 256 on the fatality list of base jumpers, which is maintained since 1981.

Since 2010, 111 jumpers have died; the death toll in this period was between 15 and 25 per year. A statistics is included: 71.5 percent of these base jumpers died when jumping from cliffs, 12 percent of the victims had jumped from antenna masts, ten percent from buildings. The most frequent cause of death was that the canopies did not open (38 percent of cases), followed by clashing against cliffs (30 percent).  Just over a third of the victims (35.5 percent) had used wingsuits. The first of these flight suits were introduced just about ten years ago.

No. 254

The sad list includes the names of twelve Germans. Last Thursday, just two days before Potter and Hunt, a German base jumper (not using a wingsuit) died after he had jumped from Monte Brento in Italy. It is still unclear why his canopy did not open. Maybe he just miscalculated. He was only 25 years old. Now he is No. 254 on the fatality list.

Always after fatal accidents, the call for a ban on this extreme sport is getting louder. One and a half year ago, I asked the wingsuit flyer Alexander Polli what he thought of it. “Regulating something like this is almost impossible. The locations from where you jump, how do you gonna have a little security checkpoint on top of the mountain? ‘Yes, you can jump! No you can’t!’”, Polli answered, laughing.

Inevitably high casualty rate?

Mountaineering legend Chris Bonington finds that there is hardly any difference in the kind of motivation of base jumpers and extreme climbers. “If you have the adrenaline junkies which we are and if you want to take that to the extreme and go out to the outer limits inevitably there is going to be a high casualty rate”, the 80-year-old Briton told me recently. “And there is a high casualty rate amongst extreme climbers at altitude as there are amongst for instance base jumpers, wingsuit fliers and so on. I think it’s not people who have got a death wish. It’s something that people are turned on by the huge excitement, euphoria of taking your body and yourself to the absolute limit to achieve an objective.”

Dean Potter (1972-2015)

One of the most extreme among the extreme athletes is dead. The 43-year-old American Dean Potter died in a wingsuit accident in Yosemite National Park, his 29-year- old compatriot Graham Hunt too. Both had jumped from Taft Point, an almost 2,300-meter-high view point on Saturday. Their bodies were found near a notch in a rocky ridgeline on Sunday morning. Obviously both crashed into a rock. Basejumping and wingsuit flights are prohibited in Yosemite National Park.

Always on a narrow ridge

Potter never cared about standards or what others said or thought. He was an extreme. Limits existed for him only in the sense that he wanted to overcome it. As a climber, he made two first-time solo ascents of legendary routes in Patagonia in 2002: Dean solo-climbed the “Supercanaleta” on Fitz Roy and the “Compressor Route” on Cerro Torre. But Potter’s main playground was Yosemite. On the granite walls there, he set new speed records, made free-solo-climbs or high-lined over abysses without any backup.

“Free as a raven”

Potter also fueled debates by taking his dog “Whisper” in a backpack on his basejumps and climbs. “I’m basically socially inept and can barely accomplish many rudimentary tasks of getting along in our modern world. My artist mind and athletic body leave me stranded much of the time”, Dean wrote three weeks ago. “I really don’t know how I’ve survived? Maybe it’s because I admire and study the adaptability of the forest creatures. I long to be as free as a Raven, away from cluttered normalcy and modern ‘needs’ such as screen time and conference calls. Somehow I’ve made a life of dipping my toes in icy water, feeling the lift of fresh clean air and the pull of planets overhead. Sure I lack a lot but it’s equally for sure that I Fly Free.”