Dean Potter Highlining Lost Arrow in Yosemite National Park

 
Dean Potter - Who is he?
Dean Potter is an American free climber, alpinist, BASE jumper, BASEliner, and highliner. He is noted for hard first ascents, free solo ascents, speed ascents, and enchainments in Yosemite and Patagonia. Hangs around and lives in Yosemite.

Speed Climbing El Capitan
In 2001, Hans Florine and Tommy Caldwell showed that the 1992 NiaD record of 4:22 was not out of reach: they clocked the second fastest time ever at 4:31. A couple of weeks later, Dean Potter and Timmy O'Neill set the new mark at 3:59:35. Two weeks later Hans Florine answered back with partner Jim Herson to lower the record by a little more than 2 minutes, clocking in at 3:57:28. Not to be discouraged, Potter and O'Neill went back up five days later and set the current record: 3:24:04.

In July 2006, he climbed The Reticent Wall, one of the hardest routes on El Capitan, in 34 hours and 57 minutes with Ammon McNeely and Ivo Ninov, shaving five days off the existing time.
     

Dean Potter by prAna  
Dean Potter is characterized by creativity, commitment and challenge. He started climbing as a child, with a free solo fall from a stone wall as one of his earliest memories. Since that time, he has speed soloed Half Dome and El Capitan, Cerro Torre, and Fitzroy. He was the first to make a one-day free ascent of El Cap and Half Dome, and a one-day speed linkup of both of those big walls and Mount Watkins, Yosemite's third Grade VI wall. He has also established test piece crack routes in the Utah desert and highball boulder problems in Yosemite.

Dean has walked the longest highlines, often without a safety leash, though he has dedicated over a decade of engineering and testing to create the safest highline systems currently used. Most recently, he has combined BASE jumping skill with highlining and free soloing, using a specially engineered ultralight BASE rig as his backup system.