The Last Flight of Dean PotterThe pioneering climber and BASE-jumper defied convention to his last day.
Daniel Duane, Men’s Journal, provided by
Published 10:00 am, Friday, May 22, 2015
At 7:25 pm on Saturday, May 16th, Dean Potter zipped up his wingsuit, and, with friend Graham Hunt stepped to the edge of Taft Point, 3,500-feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley. Their plan was to jump off, rocket across a canyon below, and, if they were high enough, shoot through a V-shaped notch in a neighboring ridgeline above a cliff called Lost Brother. They would deploy their parachutes further up the valley. Potter's long-time girlfriend, Jen Rapp, photographed them as they leapt (Potter wore neither a helmet nor a GoPro despite reports otherwise and there is no video footage of the flight). Far below, Hunt's girlfriend, Rebecca Haynie, waited for the landing. It never came.
"We jump every day in Yosemite," Potter told me a few weeks ago, despite federal laws banning the practice in national parks. Potter said that he had personally jumped from every major Yosemite formation, including perhaps fifty flights off Half Dome. He and Hunt had also jumped Taft Point many times, but a few times through the notch, which they knew to be extremely dangerous.
http://www.sfgate.com/living/mensjournal/article/The-Last-Flight-of-Dean-Potter-6281144.php