Climbing at the Speed of Soul (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine December 2002

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Climbing at the Speed of Soul (Cont.)

ONE OF POTTER'S burdens as a leader of the Yosemite wallrats is dealing with the friction between climbers and the Yosemite rangers—an old and perhaps insoluble problem. Back in 1958, Warren Harding's unprecedented Nose climb was denounced by National Park Service director Conrad Wirth as a "trick or stunt climb," and aid climbing was temporarily banned in the parks. Today the main sticking point is a long-standing Yosemite regulation prohibiting visitors from spending more than one week camping in the Valley between May and October—a policy that's taken its toll on the old dirtbag tradition of living in and hanging around Camp 4 all summer. Another Yosemite tradition that's long been illegal is that of bivouacking at the foot of a big climb the night before you undertake it. Potter still does that occasionally; sometimes he'll head to El Cap Meadow to watch the stars and then curl up in the nearby forest. Though he's been repeatedly rousted, those things seem almost mandatory to him—sacred traditions that honor the spirit of the place.

Talk to park officials, of course, and you get a different picture: that of an embattled agency trying to strike a tricky balance among competing "user groups."

"The 'death consequence' removes all the other forces, the lesser motivations," says Potter. "They fall away and then there's just that primary motivation, which is staying alive. It's so pure."

"This is a funny place," says climbing ranger Lincoln Else, 25, the park's liaison to the climbing community. "People complain about how overcrowded it is, then flip when they're told they can't camp for more than a week in the season. Climbers make a 'grandfather' argument based on their historical usage of Yosemite. They say, 'I'm not hurting this place, I'm experiencing it as one should experience it.' I go with the spirit-of-the-law concept, which leaves a little bit of room. We're not out there with a stopwatch monitoring you. If it rains and you leave your ropes up for an extra day, OK. But climbers really need to learn to be constructive, not just pissed off."

One potential flash point comes after our feast at The Rostrum, as a convoy of merry slackliners heads down the mountain to Yosemite Valley. Pulling up in front of a pizza parlor, we find Shawn Snyder spread-eagled on the side of his truck while three rangers, two of them armed law-enforcement rangers, search his pockets and his vehicle. His offense? Not using his blinker to signal his intention to turn into the parking lot.
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Fifteen minutes later, Snyder is still there, and Potter is livid. "You see, this is exactly what I'm talking about," he snarls. "The guy filed a complaint last week because they cut down his slackline in the woods near Camp 4. So now they're getting even."

Potter's hardest feelings have to do with the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two of Yosemite's more notorious daredevils, Dan Osman and Frank Gambalie. Osman died in 1998 at age 35 when a knot on his 950-foot dynamic rope broke during a free fall in Yosemite Valley—his offbeat specialty was rigging and surviving elaborate jumps. Potter was summoned to sit a night-long vigil next to the body, the idea being to keep bears and coyotes from disturbing it. The next morning, when a team of rangers arrived to carry the body out, Potter bridled at the "disrespectful" way Osman's body was handled. Seven months later, BASE jumper Frank Gambalie made an illegal leap from El Capitan's west wall, then drowned in the Merced River while trying to elude a posse of pursuing rangers.

"You don't go chasing somebody into Class IV waters because they jump off El Cap," Potter says of the second incident. "It's just way out of proportion."

Sensing Potter's anger at their treatment of Snyder, one of the rangers tells us to get moving. I can tell that part of Potter—a big part—would like to pick a fight, and to hell with the consequences. Older climbers-turned-diplomats, like Tom Frost, have made it clear they'd like to see Potter step up and take a leadership role in scaling back the tension. But Potter doesn't seem too interested. "I've never tried to be the leader," he says. "All I focus on is climbing. If something comes up, if there's an opportunity to create better relations with the rangers, then I'll put some energy into it."

The confrontation in the parking lot threatens to become an ugly standoff, and for a while I'm not sure what Potter's going to do. Then, slowly, he begins to cool off. It helps that Snyder seems utterly unfazed. "Don't worry," he tells Potter. "I'm legal. These guys got nothin' on me. Just go."

Potter nods and takes a deep breath. "OK," he says finally. "Let's get out of here."

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