What Happened to Rock Climber Dean Potter?

Fans of rock climber and extreme sports athlete Dean Potter are revisiting his 2015 death and asking what happened to him. The 2003 Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year recipient died while visiting Yosemite National Park in Northern California.

Dean was into several extreme sports, including rock climbing, BASE jumping, and slacklining, and according to People, he began rock climbing at Yosemite National Park in the late 1990s and achieved fame for his efforts. So what happened to Dean?

Dean was in an accident while BASE jumping with rock climber Graham Hunt. The two athletes were trying to navigate a notch in Yosemite National Park while wearing wingsuits — parachute-style skydiving suits with fabric between the legs and under the arms, giving a bat-like shape to jumpers.

BASE jumping was banned by the National Park Service due to the danger and deaths from athletes jumping off cliffs. Dean wrote in a blog that 25 people had died while wingsuit jumping, yet he felt safe, even at speeds og up to 100 miles per hour.

“Wingsuit BASE-jumping feels safe to me, but 25 wingsuit-fliers have lost their lives this year alone," he wrote. "There must be some flaw in our system, a lethal secret beyond my comprehension.”

Dean died while BASE jumping at Yosemite National Park, as did his fellow athlete, Graham Hunt. The two men jumped from Taft Point on May 1, 2015, and both men died immediately after striking a stone wall. Neither man opened their parachutes, and they died upon impact. Many in the world of extreme sports were not surprised by Dean's death because he reportedly blurred the lines as he pushed himself in the sport.

An HBO documentary about Dean, The Dark Wizard, will air in four parts, according to Time magazine. The documentary is directed by Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer, and it features interviews with Dean's friends and loved ones. The rock climber's journals also reveal insight into his mindset as he pursued his passion. The documentary dropped on April 14 on HBO, and according to Nick Rosen, Dean was struggling with his mental health.

“I don’t think people really knew anything about Dean’s mental health struggles," said Nick. "And the specifics of what he was going through: how they really dragged him down at times and limited him, but also empowered him to do big things. His demons were both kind of positive and negative for him.”

Dean's passion led him to invent FreeBASE climbing, in which a rock climber free-solos a 1,000 feet with a parachute only as a last resort. In 2006, he FreeBASED the Delicate Arch in Utah's Arches National Park by taking advantage of a loophole in the park's rules, which led to his sponsor, Patagonia, dropping him, but he continued to do illegal jumps at Yosemite.

Peter Mortimer said that Dean's death at Yosemite was "poetic."

“There’s something really poetic about him coming to fruition there, and then him passing there,” he said. "He’ll live on forever there.”