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.)

WHEN I CATCH UP with Potter in Utah in March, a month or so after his return, he's still suffering the pangs of reentry. "I had some big plans to go to the Karakoram in Asia this summer and, you know, take it to the next level," Potter says as we drive out of Moab in his van. "But I'm still pretty mentally frazzled from that output. Plus, I'm superswamped with business opportunities. I have all these endorsement offers, and six magazine stories I'm supposed to write. I haven't even been to the Valley yet."

Potter's destination today is a twisting canyon called Kane Creek, site of a great sandstone monolith called the Tombstone. Potter points out the problem he's been working on, which he's dubbed Epitaph. Originally put up by his friend Jimmie Dunn, 54, who called it Playin' Hooky, the route is an intimidating 450-foot crack with an overhanging corner about halfway up.

"When I did it, I used aid and had to put in a slings belay at the corner to take a rest," Dunn tells me later. "Dean is trying to do it all in one 200-foot pitch. Free. It's unbelievable. The crux is just manky finger locks, not much feet. Then you have to turn this roof and back into a 50-foot corner where the wall on the right is smooth as glass. It's slippery, brutal, and huge energy is required."

"I don't rate climbs, but I will say it's one of the hardest climbs I've done in the desert," Potter tells me as we stand at the foot of the climb. "You barely know if you're on the rock or not. In one afternoon, you can take a 50-foot fall half a dozen times, because there just isn't any place to put in protection."

Why this obsession with Epitaph? Potter says that in Patagonia, he came to a realization: The soloist could be "the most efficient and the fastest climber"—the purest of them all.

"It gives me all kinds of ideas for Yosemite," he says. "The problem is, if you go to the great ranges for a few months, you pretty much make the decision not to be a great free climber, because you let your fingers go." Potter glances at his callused hands. "I know I'm not a cutting-edge free climber. Free soloing, I'm comfortable to 5.10+ or 5.11a. But if I was a grade higher I could do some amazing things."

Potter is reluctant to share his list of "amazing things," but in September he pulls off the first of them: his back-to-back free climbs of Half Dome and El Cap in less than a day. "It was pretty hard, especially the stuff at night—I had four headlamps on at once," he tells me afterward. "But it's also safe, because there's someone belaying you the whole time. Now that I'm 30 and, you know, married, I want to avoid the life-threatening stuff, at least for a while."

Two weeks after Potter's twin free climbs, Hans Florine comes through on a vow he made several months earlier, reclaiming the speed record on The Nose with a Japanese crack-climbing prodigy named Yuji Hirayama, 24. With Hirayama leading nearly the entire climb, the two blitz the route in a remarkable two hours and 48 minutes—remarkable, that is, to everyone but Potter.

"I'm really inspired by Yuji," Potter tells me. "He has a good attitude, and really ripped it up—hats off."

But 2:48—is that unbeatable?

"I think that there's a long season left, and I haven't even started speed climbing," Potter replies coolly. "It would be nice to be the Zen master and not feel competitive—but either way, I have way faster in me. I'm not worried about that record at all."

"All of these guys are to be commended," says Yvon Chouinard, Potter's employer at Patagonia and, 40 years ago, a blazing Yosemite star himself. "It's a healthy competition. It's not man against man. They're racing the clock. Man against the clock. There's also a huge element of risk, which I feel is missing in a lot of sports these days. Without risk, climbing isn't climbing, it's gymnastics."

Potter has not yet made another speed attempt on The Nose as Outside goes to press. And in any case, there are other climbs on his agenda—including one that is truly, madly over the edge. "In The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran says something about perfection only being reached by stripping something to the point of nakedness," Potter tells me before I leave Moab. "That's the ultimate project—the naked climber doing the greatest climb."

I look at Potter, not quite sure I'm hearing him right. "You're saying you want to climb—"

Potter cuts me off. "I don't want to mention any names, because I don't want to be held to anything. But what I'm thinking of is something...huge."

"And you want to climb it naked?"

"Just shoes and a chalk bag."

"That's it?"

"That's it," Potter says. "That's the grand finale."

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