“If You Can't Comprehend It, It Seems Crazy:” Extreme BASE Jumper Dean Potter Praised for Inspiration, Criticized for Danger

Extreme athlete Dean Potter's hard living – which led to his death along with climbing partner, Graham Hunt, 29, on Saturday in Yosemite National Park – also had drawn corporate sponsorship cancellations and criticisms.

Hours before extreme BASE jumper Dean Potter died this weekend, he posted a photo of one of his favorite climbing buddies – his Australian cattle dog Whisper – with the hashtag #Neverleavethedogbehind.

In the comment thread that follows that Saturday Instagram post, friends, family and admirers are remembering Potter, 43, named national adventurer of the year by National Geographic in 2009, as a climbing hero.

"An inspiration to us all,” user Nathaniel Flemingo wrote. “Someone who lived his own life and stood up for what he believed in.”

“Thank you for living so hard,” another fan wrote on Instagram, one of more than 3,000 people to like the post by Monday morning.

But his hard living – which led to his death along with climbing partner, Graham Hunt, 29, on Saturday in Yosemite National Park – also had drawn corporate sponsorship cancellations and criticisms. Even his parents in 1986 forbade him from going near cliffs in Boston, which naturally, became, Potter wrote, became his "favorite hangout."

Yosemite National Park spokesman Scott Gediman said the two extreme climbers' parachutes didn't open during a wingsuit flight from atop a 7,500-foot cliff called Taft Point on Saturday. The bodies of both men were found Sunday in Yosemite Valley. They are among the 253 recorded BASE jumpers who have died since 1981, according to Mark Knutson, who compiles such a list for BLINC magazine. Tom Evans, who blogs, photographs and climbs himself, said that the climbing community has been reviewing some photos taken by Potter's girlfriend and believe that Hunt had some sort of problem, and Potter suffered a "momentary distraction" while looking at his partner, before both of them were killed. Potter's dog, Whisper, had stayed behind with his girlfriend.

To Evans, Potter was certainly not crazy. "He was meticulous," Evans said. "He never did anything rash. He planned everything. But this sport is unforgiving."

BASE jumping, parachuting from a structure of cliff in a sport that Potter helped pioneer, is illegal in all national parks and it's possible the men jumped at dusk or at night to avoid being caught. BASE stands for the buildings, antennas, spans (such as bridges), and Earth (such as cliffs and mountaintops) that jumpers can parachute from. 

Many regard this type of feat as a fringe element within the category of extreme sports, rife with inherent danger.

Patagonia dropped sponsorship of Potter in May 2006 after he made a "free solo" climb of Utah's iconic Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, saying his actions "compromised access to wild places and generated an inordinate amount of negativity in the climbing community and beyond."
 
Last year, Clif Bar withdrew its sponsorship of Potter and four other top climbers, saying they took risks that made the company too uncomfortable to continue financial support. Potter was one of the athletes featured in the recently released “Valley Uprising” rock climbing documentary. According to a source in Rock and Ice, Clif Bar  fired anyone whot "freesolo climbs, BASE jumps or slacklines."

Evans said he completely understands how companies would sever ties with these type of extreme athletes - they are not for everyone. "Little kids should not be aspiring to do this," he said. But adults, such as Potter and Hunt, also should be able to make their own decisions, he said.

Potter, whom NBC Bay Area interviewed last year, said he knew the inherent danger of his sport.

In a post on his company website, which features him being named the "Climber of the Year" in Outside magazine in 2003, Potter wrote: "The 'death consequence' removes all the other forces. They fall away and then there's just THAT PRIMARY MOTIVATION, WHICH IS STAYING ALIVE. It's so pure."

Knutson, who runs BLINC magazine, said regular people who don't engage in extreme sports just don't get it.

"If you can't comprehend it, it seems crazy," he told NBC Bay Area by phone on Monday. "But if you understand the sport, you realize that he was just pushing boundaries."

But without people who push the rules, Knutson said, "we would not progress as a society if not for the risk takers."

The biggest fear for most extreme athletes, Knutson said, isn't the fact the actual fear of the activity.

"For us," he said, "we all know we're going to die. The biggest fear is not living our lives."

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