EDITION 54 - MAY 8, 2026
Your window into the stories, history, and ongoing work to preserve Yosemite’s climbing legacy.
A Note from the Editor
In contrast to the heat wave experienced in March this spring, the last two weeks in the Valley have been cooler and wetter with intermittent rains.
Many routes are still seeping with water, and the overcast skies have kept temperatures more reasonable for rock climbing in the sun. Climbers are returning to the park and bringing the walls back to life.
After the rain cleared on Tuesday, temperatures already began to warm up from the high 70s into the high 80s through the weekend. Several signs suggest an approaching hot summer for the Valley.
Despite the unsettled weather, the park is already beginning to feel the strain with no reservation system for entry in place and increasing visitation. Traffic on the weekends is beginning to accumulate, an early indication of the crowding to come this summer.
In other news, this past week a young girl was hiking in a talus field above the rockslides trail when a boulder shifted, pinning her lower leg from the knee down. A rescue was initiated, and rangers managed to successfully extricate her by using trail crew equipment (rock bars and a grip hoist) to move the boulders that were pinning her leg. This successful rescue was a perfect example of distinct park departments with unique specialties working together efficiently and calmly to achieve the same goal. Yosemite is lucky to have such a diversely experienced pool of resources to pull from for emergency response.
Please enjoy a few YCA updates below, as well as Ken Yager’s Founder’s Log remembering Dean Potter. I’ll be back with some exclusive feature content next week!
Miles Fullman
Editor, YCA News Brief
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Dean Potter at Sean Leary’s Memorial. Photo: Ken Yager
Dean Potter
Founder’s Log | By Ken Yager
I was introduced to Dean by Rick Cashner sometime in the mid 1990’s. Rick and he were close friends until Dean passed in 2015. Dean was a tall, friendly man with dark hair. He was always out doing something and game for anything, as long as he was climbing. He had a way of encouraging people to push themselves outside of their comfort zone. He was just as excited by other’s accomplishments, no matter if they seemed trivial in comparison. I was working as a climbing guide and would see him everywhere. El Cap Meadow, the Deli, Camp 4, you name it. It was almost like we had the same schedule. We became friends and started hanging out every now and then. When I lived at Hazel Green, a remote 80 acres on the park perimeter along Highway 140, he was one of the few friends that would take the time to drive out and hike or ski in to say hello. The only other person to visit regularly was Walt Shipley.
One morning, I showed up to work and had nothing on the schedule. I went to look for a climbing partner in Camp 4. Dean was interested in doing some bouldering and exploration. I mentioned a bunch of bigger boulders in Lower Merced Canyon that I drove by daily that looked promising. He grabbed his stuff and hopped in my car. We drove past the 120/140 intersection until we parked in a turnout below the boulder strewn hillside. We hiked up the hill and were disappointed by what we found. The boulders looked like they had a lot of potential until you got to the bases of them. Dean wanted to climb. I told him about some boulders near the trail to the Cathedral Spires that I had found that had a lot of potential. I had done a few problems there and there was plenty more to do at a level above my ability. I parked on the way back into the Valley and we hiked up to the boulders. They had chalk on them. Obviously, someone had been out there a lot recently. When Dean saw the chalked boulders, he exclaimed, “Rick’s secret bouldering area! We found it.” The funny thing is that I had shown Rick the same area about 6 months previously. Rick had gone back and was slowly developing the area, quietly picking off the first ascents of some of the more classic problems. It was obvious that the area had a lot of potential. Now that the cat was out of the bag, the three of us would meet out there and work on projects. It became pretty clear that Dean was on another level. He could pull a little harder than anyone else, he was also willing to go for it higher off the ground, but what really set him apart was that he would keep trying repeatedly when the rest of us were ready to call it a day. We had a lot of good times out there. I will be honest, I found it terrifying to spot Dean. He was quite a bit bigger than me and I had visions of being flattened.
In 2000, I bought a house on a triple terraced lot in El Portal. I tied a piece of knotted climbing rope to the tree in the backyard for my 3-year-old son, Guy, to swing on over the middle terrace. The upper one had a 3 foot high rock wall that he would jump off. It required repeatedly handing him the rope. He loved it. Dean came to visit one day to see our new house. He watched Guy swinging on the rope and went over to hand him the rope. He convinced Guy to climb the tree and jump off a branch. Before I realized what was happening, Guy jumped out of the tree and at the peak of his swing he couldn’t hang on anymore and let go with his feet upside down. Guy did a backflip and landed it perfectly 4 feet shy of the next rock wall dropping into the lower terrace. Guy looked at us with big eyes and said, “Wow, I am never doing that again.” I am glad that he didn’t. I was pretty upset with Dean at the time.
We collaborated on the design of a large inflatable boulder pad for extreme bouldering. The idea was to have caps pop out of baffles that would release the air on impact. I asked my friend Hi Zorenz to make it. Hi used to sew fishing products and still had his sewing machines with plenty of materials to make things. He was a sewing genius. I received a prototype to field test. Dean and I went out to some obscure boulders below Lower Brother to give it a try. I watched his eyes fill with excitement as we inflated the pad. It was quite large. Roughly ten feet by six feet and a foot thick. Dean climbed up close to 20 feet and jumped off to test it out. The caps did not fly out as intended and the pad acted more like a trampoline. He bounced six feet in the air and went flying backwards. I managed to keep him from landing on the rock behind him. The pad needed some major improvements.
A couple days after a spring snowstorm we went in search of dry rock behind Camp 4. There were little patches of snow and the rock was damp in places, but mostly dry. We ended up at Yoho Man. I had never climbed it before. Dean showed me a backstep move at the crux. I got past the crux and slipped on some damp rock up high and came spiraling off. Dean caught my hips as I landed keeping me over my feet. Unfortunately, my left leg landed between the pads and under two inches of snow was a flat rock. The impact broke my left leg and my talus. I needed an x-ray and started to hobble out. Dean crouched down and said get on my back. He carried me to the car and drove me to the clinic. Oddly enough, Jeff Hornibrook shattered and destroyed his ankle bouldering with him and Rick Cashner about a week later at the Cathedral Boulders. I am lucky my injury wasn’t as severe as Jeff’s.
In 2001, Dean asked me to do The Nose in a day with him. I agreed and met him in El Cap Meadow at dawn the following day. He put a small rack together that seemed more appropriate for a day climb on Manure Pile Butress. We smoked a joint and I struggled to keep up with him as he ran up to the base as it became light out. Dean was training and wanted to lead the whole route which was fine with me. He gave me a hard time for bringing a Camelback full of water and some Clif Bars for energy. I insisted on bringing them and we started climbing with him short fixing. We made good time and caught up to a party halfway up a pitch on the Stovelegs. Dean asked if we could pass and they agreed. Dean went flying by the belayer and quickly passed the leader as he hung off to the right on a piece of gear to give Dean room. Five minutes after starting the pitch Dean yelled, “Off belay. Rope’s fixed.” I jumped on the rope and quickly jumared past the climbers, apologizing. After I got above them, I heard one of them mutter, “So that’s how you do it.” Within ten minutes, we were above them. It was a lot of fun to move so fast and not have to haul the bags. It felt liberating.
When I got to Camp 6, Dean was just sitting there with a dazed look in his eyes. He had hit the wall. He had only brought a pint of water, which had disappeared low on the route. I felt pretty good because I was just jumaring. I shared my water with him and gave him the Clif Bars I brought. We hung out for a while until he felt better. We made it to the summit with plenty of daylight left. Hiking down we chatted with Hans Florine for a bit, who was taking photos of his wife Jackie topping out on the Zodiac.
It took us nine and a half hours. It kind of blew my mind. I had never had so much energy after climbing it before. There was a dance in El Portal and we drove down and spent the evening on the dance floor. What I didn’t know at the time was that Dean was training for a go at The Nose speed record. He did several training runs after our ascent and knocked off time with each ascent. Later that year he and Timmy O’Neill climbed the Nose in under four hours. I ran into them when they reached the Valley floor. Dean had climbed it in his red 5.10 slippers. He opted not to bring approach shoes and had hiked down in his slippers until his feet were so blistered he had to finish barefoot. I saw his feet and they were wrecked. They were bright red from the red slippers, and he had over a dozen giant blisters. It looked painful.
Dean got into slacklining and bold highlines. He also took up skydiving and wing suiting. With his prowess in three adventure sports, he started picking up sponsorships and making a decent living. He traveled more and we would hear about his adventures in between Yosemite visits. On one of the visits, he brought his girlfriend, Steph Davis. He introduced us and suggested that she and I climb together. He had some secret project he was working on. Steph wanted to be in the shade and so we climbed the Chouinard-Herbert on Sentinel Rock. That is the only time I ever climbed with Steph. It was a fun day, and we managed to both climb it clean without falling, a surprise for me and not so much for her. Shortly after that, they became engaged and got married. Dean spent less time in Yosemite, but when he did, he had clear objectives. He had a lot of sponsors by now and felt pressured to keep that income, so he started doing riskier stunts. He was one of the more sought-after adventure athletes. He had made it big time.
News came back about the Delicate Arch fiasco, and he lost his Patagonia contract. Steph was dropped by Patagonia too, and it wasn’t long after that they divorced and parted ways. Dean was doing a lot of wing-suiting in Europe with occasional trips back to the Valley. Dean had never cared for Law Enforcement in Yosemite. He spoke out about a few rangers that he could not stand. They would hear about his exploits and were determined to catch him base jumping. They never did, not that I know of.
By now, Dean was a big name and was known around the world. The stories of him became lore. He climbed in Patagonia and tore it up. One story was of him soloing a first ascent, without a sleeping bag. Stumbling down in the dark, he found a snow cave with some Russian climbers sleeping in it. Dean crawled in with them and kept them up with his chattering teeth until he got up at first light and continued his descent.
Another time I ran into Dean in Yosemite. He had a huge rope burn on his legs and hands. Super gnarly looking. I asked him what happened and he had done a sky dive in Mexico. His objective was to drop and track through the cave entrance and deploy his chute in the cavern below. He got tangled up in his team’s ropes and his chute did not deploy fully. He somehow was able to grab the rappel rope and slow himself down enough to keep from getting injured further. He was lucky and he admitted it, I could tell it bothered him.
On the morning of May 16, 2015, I received an early morning call from Mike Gauthier, the NPS Chief of Staff. He said there were two wing suiters that were missing from the evening before and that he would appreciate it if I would drive up and assist him. My heart sank. I knew it had to be Dean and Graham because they were the most active. I was consumed with dread as I drove up to Mike’s house. Dean’s girlfriend, Jen Rapp, and Graham’s girlfriend , Rebecca, were there too. They were in complete shock. I did my best to comfort them as the chopper was looking for Dean and Graham. It did not sink in until they were found and their bodies were recovered. It was one of the worst days in my life. When the news came out, the local community was DEVASTATED. Dean was a friendly guy, and everyone knew and liked him. It hit the local kids the hardest. He was friends with many of the parents and had spent time in their homes. Dean had done a few presentations at their schools and they idolized him.
I hosted the memorial for Dean and Graham at the Lower River Amphitheater. I looked through my photos and found one of Dean and Graham together at Sean Leary’s memorial at the same venue not long before. They were bathed in sunlight, and it is a good picture of them. Little did I know I would be organizing a memorial for them 6 months later.
Dean was fun, jovial, and encouraged everyone to do their best, no matter what it was. Once he was sponsored, he became more distracted. Probably due to the stress of always being on the edge. His projects took extreme focus, I think he suspected where it was headed. The sponsored athlete must remain in the news to keep the paychecks coming. Athletes begin to risk more and more. It is not a career designed for longevity. Dean was always pushing his limits in the three disciplines he pursued. He excelled in all three. Dean appeared fearless and willing to try anything. He was inspirational. He left behind a legacy. Dean was a part of our Yosemite community and he is sorely missed.
Hayden Kennedy and Dean Potter enjoying a beer at the Yosemite Facelift. Photo: Ken Yager
PHOTO OF
THE WEEK
Blake Newby stems it out on the Northeast Buttress, Higher Cathedral Rock. Photo: Miles Fullman
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