The Dark Wizard (2026) s01e02 Episode Script

My whole life, I've been
obsessed with the dream
of falling to my death.
First, I'm in the air.
It's just massive wind speed.
And somehow there's these
strange, faceless beings
beside me.
They're making weird squeaks.
For some reason, I know to do
what they'll do, and I'll fly.
All of a sudden I'm flying,
but I become panicked
and filled with anxiety,
start dive-bombing
back towards the ground.
Right when I'm about to hit it
and impact,
I wake up, sweating,
heart beating,
you know,
wondering if I'm dead.
When Dean picked up
BASE jumping,
jumping off cliffs
with a parachute,
you could tell
that he was nervous.
He was so edgy.
- Ten seconds!
- Nine.
Ten seconds!
- What?
- I said ten seconds.
OK.
Just telling Brad.
He was drawn
like the moth to the flame,
to the most dangerous thing
that he had found in his life.
Three, two, one.
See ya.
I'm Jay Epstein-Ramirez.
You know, BASE jumping,
it's one of those sports
that runs right into you
and socks you
in the side of the head
and just changes
your life forever.
Way back in the day,
I met Dean
at this outdoor film festival.
Dean's climbing movie plays.
And then my movie plays
of me of my friends
BASE jumping in Mexico.
And Dean's standing behind me
as big as a tree.
And he's like,
oh, my God, oh, my God.
I got to learn how to do this.
Dean, you know, I knew
the minute I met that guy
he was destined for madness.
Before you make
your first BASE jump,
you need to learn
how to skydive.
Practice and learn
Where there's nothing to hit.
Nice job, Dean.
Ya!
I was like, pack up the car.
We're driving to Moab.
It's time for your first
cliff jump.
Unlike skydiving,
when you BASE jump,
there's no wind to work with,
so it's really easy
to tumble out of control.
It's a lot like free soloing.
You have to really
believe in yourself,
that you can launch
in a perfect position.
Five seconds.
In your first jumps,
goddamn, is it scary.
OK.
It's next-level scary, man.
Whoo-hoo!
Boy, you know,
Dean's one of those guys,
when he likes something,
he likes something.
Oh, yeah! Ha!
And he liked it.
All of a sudden,
he was getting
the dopamine that he needed.
This whole death
consequence thing,
BASE jumping,
the heaviest drug there was
in the heaviest dose,
and it was like, he lit up.
Ba-boom.
All right, brother.
See ya.
But it just made everybody
fucking nervous.
I can tell you that.
I had filmed BASE jumping
before Dean got into it
and had a BASE jumper nearly
die in front of my camera.
Is he OK?
I began to mistrust
the nature of the sport,
the addictive power
of raw adrenaline
in these concentrations
and these frequencies.
I warned him.
You're hitting the stuff
too hard.
Whoo!
Let's go back to climbing,
free soloing.
Whoo!
So beautiful.
Yow!
But Dean took it
as the advice of a friend
that could be easily ignored.
I had been running trips
to Mexico.
Wait till you guys
get into this place.
It's like going to Mars.
Dean, I mean,
he'd only been active
six months
when I invited him to go jump
the Cave of the Swallows.
It's just this giant hole
in the ground
that's perfect for BASE.
So you're jumping
1,200 feet into the Earth.
There's no wind.
It's almost impossible
to hit anything.
Dean hit something.
The weather had been weird.
We'd gotten some rain.
And I think Dean's parachute
got wet, and that's not good.
Ten seconds.
Two, one, see ya.
Dean jumps into the cave,
and his parachute opened
twisted up.
My parachute opened
in a spin,
and I lost the perception
of where I was flying.
We had a rope
hanging in there.
He hit the rope.
The parachute collapsed
and wrapped around the rope,
and I swung in
and grabbed the rope.
And he's 250, 300 feet
off the ground with nothing.
And he's sliding
Burning off my skin
on my hands.
And I'm like,
fucking don't let go, dude.
Don't let go.
I thought is this, like,
the dream, you know,
where I'm falling to my death?
And that feeling charged my
body with this amazing power
and I held on
with everything I had.
Literally brakes himself,
completely stops,
like, 2 feet off the ground.
And his hands are smoked.
You know, you can see tendons.
You can see bone.
When I hit the ground,
part of me was ashamed,
but mostly I was just happy
that I was alive.
As I laid there, there was
this dying bird beside me.
Similar to what I had done,
the swallow had hit the rope.
My friends came down
and rescued me.
And I questioned, why did
I live and that bird die?
"I am drawn
to the Pit of Swallows.
"I have a near-death accident.
And the dying swallow,"
which Dean has told me,
he felt came into his body
he just has, "and the dying
swallow," period.
"I enter deep depression.
"My hands are injured badly.
"When you feel
you are unstoppable,
you have to say, enough."
I'm Elizabeth Potter,
Dean's older sister,
and I'm a teacher
and a writer.
Dean was eight years younger
than me,
so he's the baby.
We grew up
in a military family,
lived for a chunk of time
overseas in the Middle East.
When he was almost five,
Dean decided
he was going to climb up
this huge stone wall
around our house.
He fell off the very top
and knocked himself
unconscious.
I probably should have
been watching him
the story of my life.
After that, he was really
plagued by nightmares
and night terrors.
Even when we were kids,
you know,
Dean always talked
of falling.
In the journals, he says that
again and again,
"The dream is back."
You know, he would say to me,
do you have falling dreams?
And I did.
I mean, it's a common thing.
But for him,
the dream was very real,
and it stayed with him.
When we moved
to New Hampshire,
for Dean,
school could be difficult,
being, you know, that family
that's not from here.
When I was growing up,
I'd arrive
at different schools
and never quite fit in.
In high school, I didn't make
the basketball team.
It was a lot political.
I didn't hang out so much
with all the other kids.
I was like an outsider.
And I started working out
in the weight room,
getting stronger.
Went from being one
of the weakest kids to now,
like, the strongest,
toughest kid.
I think that brought up
that competitive thing
that Dean,
throughout his life,
was trying to manage.
He wanted to be the best,
you know?
He wanted to win.
It's been said
that Dean was a combination
of his Army colonel father
and his yoga-teaching mother.
There was some truth to that,
but my parents were not
a stereotype.
Dad was not
a disciplinarian at all
and wanted everybody
to just have a good time.
And my mother,
a lot of Dean's spirituality,
his meditation,
comes from my mom.
But mom was a disciplinarian.
this is what you will do.
This is how you will behave.
She would say, you know,
you're not going to do
anything dangerous.
If you look at pretty much
any picture of Dean and Mom,
she's got one hand on him,
this grip.
You combine that
with a spirit like Dean's,
he felt controlled, held down.
If you look at his writing
during that time,
it's very rageful, angry
like a trapped animal.
Dean talks in the journals
about the sad gene
or crazy gene,
his code for the depression
in our family.
You know, especially kind of
leading up
to my parents' divorce,
you could feel that energy,
that darkness
of a relationship
that was coming apart.
It got ugly.
Dean was seeing
that his father did not have
freedom of voice and choice.
Yeah, that really affected
Dean in his own relationships.
He was always, "No one's
going to tell me what to do.
"No one's going
to control my life.
I'm going to do things
my way."
That was when he started
escaping to Joe English.
There was this cliff on this
army base near where I lived,
and it was just me
and this friend of mine
scrambling around,
coming across
these little crags,
going into these
off-limits zones.
It was against the rules.
And that's kind of
what attracted us to it,
was just being free,
doing what we wanted.
He would climb without
the right equipment,
using whatever he could find.
And then he would climb
without any equipment at all.
In my teens,
I started free soloing
on this cliff near my house.
Being out there alone
with no protection,
it scared me so much,
but that kind of
magnetized me to it.
I always thought
my early childhood dream
was the premonition
of my death.
And I wanted to prove
to myself
that I could overpower it,
trying to push harder
and harder into that fear.
So much of his life has been
to prove the dream wrong,
plunging forward
towards his fear
and trying to conquer it,
saying to himself,
I'm not going to die.
That near-death experience
in the cave,
it humbled him a little bit.
So I don't know
if any of you guys
heard about my little mishap
Cave of the Swallows, but
it wasn't a whole lot of fun.
And I'm still kind of sorting
things out in my head.
But then I think
less than three months later,
he actually, like, comes back
and is fully functional
and jumping again.
And, yeah, crazy, right?
Look at that.
I got the call from Dean.
He said, can you
come out to Yosemite?
I want to jump El Cap.
I want to jump everything.
For a BASE jumper
here in the United States,
huge cliffs, perfect for BASE.
Biggie, biggie, biggie.
I've always put
all my energy into,
you know, holding on
to the rock face.
Looking great, buddy.
Now, to have the skill
to fly your body
off the walls,
this whole new world
has opened up.
You've always wanted
to jump off El Cap.
Yes, you're right.
Here it is.
Here it is.
See ya, Dean.
You're the man.
Yeah!
He was horny
as horny gets, man.
I mean, the kid was on fire.
OK. No touching.
No problem, Dean.
See ya.
He owned the Valley.
I mean, he really did.
He had just been there
for so many years.
He knew all the cliff exits
and landings.
The only problem is,
Yosemite has
a steadfast policy
against BASE jumping.
The National Park Service
says they ban jumping
for a lot of reasons.
Gathering spectators
and disrupting the serenity
of the Valley.
National parks weren't set up
so that everybody could
recreate in every way
they wanted.
See ya!
In the '90s, pretty famous
All right, kids,
this is the real deal.
He was jumping off El Cap.
Somebody ratted him out,
just told the rangers,
and they were waiting for him.
He tried to outrun them
and swim across
the Merced River,
and he drowned.
The guy survives
all these BASE jumps,
and then he's killed
by just trying
to get away from the rangers.
After the death
of Frank Gambalie,
there was quite an uproar
and threats of a mass jump.
A few months later,
BASE jumpers organized
a protest jump on El Cap.
Whoo!
I was there in the meadow.
BASE jumpers land and shake
hands with the rangers.
Let's try and find
some common ground here.
I am not a criminal.
I am simply an American.
The agreement was,
the park service would
confiscate their parachutes
and their gear.
And then, this woman,
Jan Davis, jumped off,
and I could see it.
See ya!
Jan didn't want
to lose her stuff,
so she used gear
that somebody loaned her.
The problem was, she was
used to having a pilot chute
mounted on her leg straps.
And she came down
and she came down,
and then she started flailing.
She's got problems, man.
She's just reaching
on her leg
looking for this pilot chute.
And from where I was,
which was
at the top of a tree
in a meadow,
I saw her hit the ground.
Oh, my God.
What?
She went in?
What the fuck?
After that,
the park services
were, like, see?
BASE jumpers
basically became
public enemy number one.
For the next few years,
BASE jumping in Yosemite
was pretty quiet.
But Dean changed that.
Here in Yosemite, we're in
one of the most wild places
left in our country.
But BASE jumping,
this ultimate expression
of freedom,
for some reason,
that threatens them.
And unfortunately it means
that I need to evade the law.
You know, when Dean
embraced BASE jumping,
he really introduced
this new era to Yosemite.
Check him out.
Check him out. Sick.
How cool is that?
Dean definitely inspired
a lot of the Monkeys.
If you were a climber
start jumping,
you had his example.
This game of BASE jumping
in Yosemite,
it was sort of
secretive society.
It was like a ninja society.
Dean mentored
and coached all of us.
Good.
Dean was like
a father in this way.
Yeah, check me out.
He was very meticulous.
Dean was doing crazy stuff.
That looks good.
That looks good.
But he was really good
at minimalizing the risk.
Make it to a nice safe spot
on the far side.
OK, amigo.
The fact that it's illegal
adds a whole other, like,
level of tension.
But Dean had figured out
these rules.
Don't jump
in the middle of the day.
We should hold off
another 15 minutes at least.
15 minutes, Dean say.
Early morning, evening,
that minimizes your chances
of getting caught.
- Let's wait, though.
- We got a guy down there.
You always have ground crew.
It would often be Bullwinkle.
Someone talked with Winky?
My job was to ensure
that my jumper does not get
apprehended
by law enforcement.
It's looking almost ready
for us.
The first time
He got a BASE rig,
and then I had to get
a BASE rig, you know.
Dean gave us advice.
Scary.
He down climbed to a ledge
they call the electric chair.
Holy shit.
Pretty focused,
pretty gripped.
Yeah, whenever you're ready.
Fucking hell.
My glasses are steamed up, man.
Dean was just calm, relaxed.
Take them off. Calm down.
- You ready, brother?
- Yeah.
- Let's do it.
- OK.
Three, two, one.
Three, two, one.
People will be like,
you know, three, two, one,
see ya, or, like, ready, set,
go or something like that.
And then maybe
you're not ready.
I usually don't count,
though, that's the thing.
What do you mean
you don't count?
I just don't count.
I just kind of go
when it feels good, you know.
OK.
Want me to count then?
Want me to count?
- All right, Corb, you ready?
Wait, wait, wait, three,
two, one or one, two, three?
- Three, two, one.
- Wait, wait.
What about three, two, one,
see ya?
I don't like
three, two, one, see ya.
Let's just do
on one, two, three, go.
- All right.
- OK. That's the count.
All right.
Holy fuck.
One, two, three.
See ya.
Go, go, go, go, go,
go, go, go, go, go.
- Go.
- See ya.
Dean just told me,
man, I love you.
You will see
another world now.
- See ya!
- Right on down.
I can remember making
that comment.
I was, like, damn, like,
all the climbers are jumping.
He just looked at me
with a stern Dean voice.
He goes, I know.
It's happening.
He was just,
like, prophesizing.
Here I come!
Right on, bros.
Let's get it on.
Another one.
Yeah!
For the park service
and the federal government,
this was blatantly illegal
behavior in a national park.
Dean was the face
of BASE jumping
in Yosemite Valley, period.
As soon as that
parachute opens,
I'm just scanning for rangers
and looking
for my escape route.
These guys better haul ass.
Run.
There's a car.
Dean was high profile,
naturally drew attention.
The law enforcement officers
and park rangers
would have known Dean,
if caught BASE jumping,
would represent a big catch.
They are spending years now
of manpower,
but I do what I do well,
and they're not going
to catch me.
I mean, I think Dean
had to have something
to rebel against.
Yeah.
He saw that ranger
as a sort of oppressive,
authoritarian,
tool-like figure.
That was his word, the tool.
If you're looking at this,
tool, I'm not very happy.
Yeah.
Which I think means,
like, tools
of fascist oppression
or something.
Yeah, we're going
to jump this ding, ding,
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding,
diggity dog spire.
And this was one way
to sock it to the tool.
Here it is in your face,
and there's nothing
you can do about it.
Jumping the spire.
Jumping the spire.
That was fucking awesome.
BASE jumped with Dean today.
- Yeah.
- He's the man.
Yeah.
Flying with
the fucking ravens.
It had been
a couple of years
since the whole
Delicate Arch scandal
where Dean had lost
his hero status.
But now he was
something even better.
He was a fucking antihero.
He was even more like
that revolutionary,
that outsider, that outcast.
He became somewhat paranoid,
and he stayed within
this very tight-knit,
secretive group of people.
People worshipped Dean,
and they followed Dean.
- I mean, we all did.
- Yeah.
His energy was
so fucking intense.
The dark parts of Dean,
the mystical part of Dean,
was coming to the fore.
And he was convinced
that he had some connection
with fucking ravens.
You looked at him, he looked
kind of like a raven.
They both kind of had this
gothic, doomsday vibe to them.
There was something
magical about Dean,
but there was also this
darkness that lurked inside.
That's why we started
calling him the Dark Wizard.
The Dark Wizard.
He drew his strength
from this dark energy.
The whole Dark Wizard thing
and the magnetism around Dean
was very cultlike.
Dean had been
dominating the scene
in Yosemite
for almost a decade,
soloing harder than anyone,
BASE jumping
harder than anyone.
He was still
the most badass motherfucker
in the Valley, right?
Nice.
And we thought
we would never see anyone
challenge Potter's dominance.
But, you know,
nothing is forever.
The next generation comes,
and they push the limits
further.
Common slate, take one mark.
My name is Alex Honnold.
I'm a professional
rock climber.
Growing up
in suburban California,
my climbing gym showed
VHS climbing films on loop.
So I would have been 14 when
"Masters of Stone V" came out.
Watching Dean Potter going up
a huge wall by himself,
yeah, this had a big
impression on 14-year-old me.
I just remember
thinking that is what
badass climbing looks like.
I want to be able to do that.
When I was 19, I dropped out
of college, went to Yosemite,
following directly
in Dean's footprints.
Basically, I wanted
to climb everything
that Dean had ever climbed.
Alex shows up in the Valley,
hungry to repeat
the achievements of his idol,
and he starts
ticking them off pretty fast.
We're, like, who the fuck
is this kid, you know?
When I got to Yosemite,
all the cool kids,
the Stone Monkeys were
spending a lot of time
enjoying themselves,
BASE jumping,
dropping acid
and doing rope jumps.
Life's pretty good here
in Yosemite Valley, baby.
Whoo! Yeah!
- Yeah!
- Whoo!
I came to climbing
with a slightly more
focused approach.
I would show up in Yosemite
with, you know,
goals and, like, spreadsheets.
I was really into fitness
and training,
doing 150 pullups
before bed every night.
Highlining and BASE jumping,
I didn't do
any of those things.
There was a bit
of a generational change.
We were
kind of countercultural
and fuck the rules.
Hey. How are you doing?
Alex was this dork.
Do you have girls
in here a lot?
Do I look like I have girls
in here a lot?
But we all saw this talent.
I filmed with Eric Perlman
from "Masters of Stone VI."
It was a big deal for me
to make it
into one of the "Masters
of Stone" movies.
Oh, there's this new kid,
Alex Honnold.
Dean was actually jealous.
He said, well,
I free solo those.
I said, yeah, but I kind of
want to open the doors
to some other people.
And I don't think
he really took it that well.
my original climbing journal.
It is a log of everything
I've ever climbed.
Has no emotional component
to it.
It's just a list of routes.
Oh, here we go.
Hong Kong Phooey.
Hong Kong Phooey
is a climb of legend,
Dean Potter's visionary
first ascent,
the hardest crack
in the desert.
Fuck!
This was a climb
that took Dean
months of brutal effort.
The crack was so narrow
that he had
to jam his bare toes
Fuck!
Pop Vicodin
just to deal with the pain.
I made my way to Utah
seeking out Hong Kong Phooey.
I climbed it.
I don't know,
I think I did it second go.
I think.
Like, why do you take off
one shoe?
Why do you take Vicodin?
Why do you do
all these things?
I was just kind of like,
yeah, I wore my shoes.
It was great.
It's fun, you know.
I'll go climbing
again tomorrow.
With Dean, I built him up
on this pedestal,
this incredible
mythical figure.
And then, when I started
to repeat some of his routes,
I was, like, oh, you know.
It turns out that
he's still just a climber,
and anybody can go climb
his routes if they try.
Honnold was quoted in this
"Climbing" magazine article,
basically called
Dean's climb easy.
Your quote was,
"I wouldn't even
call them accomplishments,
"just another day of climbing.
"If you don't put any work
into something,
it's not nearly
as meaningful."
Yeah, I can see
how the quote would
rub somebody the wrong way.
I think now in retrospect,
I would phrase it
a little bit differently,
just so that it pays
proper respect to the effort
that Dean put
into establishing the route.
Dean definitely read that.
Ooh.
Here's a new kid on the block
denigrating his achievement.
Nobody had challenged Dean
like that.
This is no longer somebody
paying homage to their hero.
This is someone
coming for their spot.
At that point, I was young.
I was hungry, thinking,
what can I do that's new,
that's a step further?
How can I make a splash?
Moonlight Buttress is
a big wall
in Zion National Park.
When Honnold went up there,
it was the proudest solo
that had ever been done.
There was something else
about this guy
unlike anything
you'd ever seen.
Dean is all about
confronting the fear.
With Honnold, it was like
this weird ability
to not be afraid.
Oh, check out
the no-hand knee bar, baby.
Yeah.
I just don't feel fear
as viscerally as other people.
It's all just constructs
in your head,
shit that you make up.
People were stunned.
This kid, who is kind of a one
in a billion climbing freak,
dropped right into
Dean's wheelhouse,
playing precisely his game.
For someone who had
a monstrous, colossal,
psychotic ego,
that has to have been
massively destabilizing.
He always said
he hated the fact
that he was competitive.
That competitiveness,
oh, it was there,
deep down inside of him.
Honnold lit a fire
under Dean's ass.
Yeah, yeah.
He was trying to figure out,
where is my limit?
How far can I push it
and stay alive?
Fuck.
Fuck!
I'm not sure
if he has a plan.
Quicker than the human eye
Bow, wow, wow
Nobody should try
tightrope walking
unless he works for a circus.
See what I mean?
Whoa!
But, of course,
there was something cooking
in that manic brain of his.
He knew that, if he was
going to try to one-up Alex
through soloing harder things,
he was going to die.
He knew
what his limit was soloing.
Alex is a younger, stronger,
better climber than he was
and a better soloist
than anyone's ever been.
But Dean has
all these other skills.
He's got really good vision.
If you want to get into that
competition with Alex,
you're just going to have
to focus everything
that you've got,
every resource you have.
The Dark Wizard was going
to use his alchemy to create
something new, some dark arts.
As humans,
we are so limited by the fear
we have of falling
to our death,
and, like, my mind's spinning
on how to change that.
If you free solo and you're
climbing without a rope,
you fall, you die.
So generally you climb
a good notch below your limit.
But imagine
if you could find a way
to really push your limits.
Instead of certain death,
you've got a chance.
How can I turn my biggest
fear into, you know,
something I'm
comfortable with?
Dean came up
with the concept
of climbing without a rope
but with a parachute instead.
If I fall off the rock,
I think I have
a fair chance to survive
through this BASE free solo,
you know?
I call it freeBASE.
BASE jumping is
already dangerous enough,
but the freeBASE thing
just seemed so out there.
Dean had been
looking for a place
to do some test runs
of this idea.
He decided to go to Europe,
where it was legal
the first proof of concept.
When I'm on the wall climbing,
knowing I'm going to take
a fall,
I'm just feeling real scared
and real exposed out there.
Sure, I have the BASE rig,
but that's still
super uncertain.
I'm fighting
to control the adrenaline
pumping through me.
I'm kind of way over-amping.
Whoo!
Fucking intense, man.
With freeBASE, I love the idea
that I can change
the worst possible thing
to the best possible thing,
dying to flying.
The biggest danger
is hitting the wall.
I need to spin my body
and enter
into the tracking position
with my hands at my side
to rocket away from the wall.
It's all really difficult
to do,
but I want to get to a point
where I feel a comfort level.
At least in my mind,
this allows me to try things
that I would never try
to free solo.
I think it has good potential
to be
taken further and further.
Once he knew
it was possible,
he wanted to take this
somewhere iconic.
He chooses this route
in Switzerland on the Eiger,
this mythical place
in climbing lore.
The Eiger.
On its north buttress,
there's a shield
of blue limestone.
It's the perfect route
for the first freeBASE.
Up through here.
When I heard about
the freeBASE concept
on the Eiger,
it's an incredible idea.
And I thought,
from the beginning,
it was possible.
I got a call from Dean,
and he said,
I have some money
for working on a documentary.
He has this whole
production company involved,
but he wanted
to keep things small,
just a one-man camera crew.
We had been friends
for a lot of years.
And I had been there for most
of Dean's big ascents.
People would call me
the Dean Whisperer
'cause I could navigate
the mood swings.
When he asked whether or not
I'd want to come along
and film it,
I instantly said yes.
When I joined him
in Switzerland,
he had shaved his head.
Gave him kind of a aggro look.
Instead of hippie Dean, it was
like Dean here to do business.
Dean wanted to BASE jump
as much as possible
to prepare himself.
We stayed down beneath
the Eiger in Lauterbrunnen.
See ya.
That whole area is like
the BASE jumping capital
of Europe.
Dean was enamored
with the BASE scene there.
But in my opinion, the whole
scene was pretty disturbing.
It was like hanging out
with drug addicts.
No, and I've never
smoked crack either.
Yeah.
You'd be hanging out
with people,
and they'd go out
BASE jumping.
Somebody would die.
And like, people just
didn't really talk about it.
They just kept jumping,
kind of joking.
Hopefully not splattered.
Set.
Go.
One morning,
things didn't go as planned.
He kind of got
this side-to-side wobble.
Oh, damn it!
A bunch of BASE jumpers
showed up.
25 meters, yeah.
They all thought
it was kind of a funny thing.
Hey!
It's quite amusing to see
the best climber in the world
get stuck in a tree.
Yeah, it was lucky.
Dean had this really
out-there emotional energy.
It worried me, his behavior,
his decision-making.
Eventually we headed up
to the Eiger for the freeBASE.
He wanted to climb this route,
Deep Blue Sea.
You do this traverse.
All of a sudden, it drops off
a couple thousand feet.
Then you climb up
this headwall to the top.
Wild to think about
free soloing this route
with nothing but a parachute
to save himself.
Dean rappelled in
to practice the climb.
The climbing was
more difficult
than he was expecting.
He was having a hard time
doing the moves.
He needed to practice
a lot more.
But, you know,
the weather would come in,
and then the rock would
stay wet for days.
Don't have to go very far
for the water.
Drinking from the belly
of the Eiger.
We built a camp right on
the side of the Eiger.
Anything you want to say?
It feels
pretty claustrophobic
inside this fog.
Ooh, lightning.
Could be setting in
for another
14 or 16 hours of sleep.
After days
festering up there,
Dean would kind of go
to a dark place,
just stare off
into space for hours.
I think he felt pressure
to do this climb,
to make this film,
and stay in the limelight.
solo stuff you can control?
It all came
to a head one day.
He was, like, getting
really impatient.
The weather had been bad
for a long time,
and he's like,
I'm going to go for it.
It didn't seem good to me.
It didn't seem like he was
in the right headspace.
He starts out on the traverse.
I'm up above
on this fixed line,
and there's clouds moving in.
The problem was,
if he does fall,
he needs to be able to see
his landing zone
and any obstacles
that could be in the way.
I was hoping he would
climb back across
and bail on the attempt,
but he kept going.
He was forcing it.
It just felt like
really forcing it.
And he gets up to, like,
the hardest section.
And he has this sequence
he has to nail.
He blows his sequence.
Fuck.
And he looks at me like deer
in the headlights like, fuck.
I'm fucked.
he couldn't reverse
the move he was doing.
But with the clouds,
he couldn't jump off.
He's like,
you got to come get me.
Jim, drop the end.
OK.
I've got all the rope
coiled underneath me,
and he's like, dude, hurry,
I'm barely in here.
If you don't drop the end,
I die.
OK, I will.
Please, Jim, will you drop
the frickin' end?
- It's twisted.
I need it dropped.
Got a little slack to it,
a whole bunch.
More. More.
More.
Ahh, fucker.
Get the anchor.
And then get down to him
and I get near him,
and he grabs onto my leg,
like, onto my foot.
And from my leg, he grabs
my harness like that
and clipped into the line
and then rapped down
to the ledge.
I'm going to dangle now, Jim.
I was really angry.
I was like,
tell me if I'm wrong,
but everything about this
today felt wrong,
and you went anyway.
And that was, like,
I don't know.
It was like the first time
that had happened.
And then it got worse
'cause I called him on it.
And I said, if you're doing
this for any other reason
than you wanting
to do this climb,
you're an absolute
fucking idiot.
And he tweaked, of course.
Alpha male,
being talked to like that.
He said, well, at least
we got the footage,
and I'm like, dude,
like, you know,
there's a bigger picture here.
I thought of the one thing
I could do
that could really get
his attention.
And I was like, I'm going
to delete the footage.
He's like, you're not going
to destroy my art!
He took a rock, and he, like,
threw the rock at me.
And I'm like,
you motherfucker,
and I put the camera down.
And I took a rock,
and I threw it at him.
This whole time, this weather
has been moving in,
and he's literally chasing me
across the Eiger.
I ran off and hid.
Kind of, what the fuck
am I doing up here?
Eventually
the testosterone subsided.
I hear this voice,
"I'm so angry!
I can't find my way down!"
I was like, dude, I love you.
We got back to camp.
He was embarrassed,
really unhappy.
I'm Dean Potter.
And I'm a great guy.
I don't have much value
for my life.
Just going out on the solo end
where I'm probably going
to eat it just for the camera.
That's pretty much
what I come down to.
I don't think I'm a very good
role model for children.
I think he cried all night.
The next day, we wandered down
and took the train
back to Lauterbrunnen.
I was, like,
fully intending to leave.
I had had enough Dean.
But he wanted me to stay.
I felt like
I was there partially
to try to help keep him alive.
The weather had been bad
for weeks and weeks,
and I was kind of freaking out
that I couldn't do my thing.
Instead of being
the zen master
I want to be or whatever,
I gave in to some thoughts
that I should have said no to.
That's the whole underlying
is, no going over the line.
And then I did.
You know,
the clouds were there.
You're going to die
if you fall into clouds.
to rescue me all because
I was feeling the ego pulling
and couldn't control myself.
I was trying to push
than was there.
Dean, he was often
asking himself,
what is my primary
motivator here?
Why am I doing what I'm doing?
He had the devil
on the shoulder
better than somebody
or just wanting
to be recognized.
And I think, in his
most centered moments,
he knew
it's getting in the way
of that pure expression
of what you're really
capable of.
A couple weeks later,
the weather cleared.
Somehow he convinced me
to go back up with him.
It's like drinking hard,
you know.
Once you forget how bad
it really was,
you're like, oh, yeah,
why not?
My whole body's tingling.
And he gets up to the spot
where I had to rescue him.
He gets everything perfect.
Up there on the Eiger,
kind of had
this crazy feeling
where I knew I was doing
this totally out-there thing
that I would never do
without the parachute on.
But with the spark of the idea
and the intention
and the willpower,
the impossible
can become reality.
Whoo!
It was kind of classic Dean.
The entire thing was a fiasco,
and then he pulls it off.
Three, two, one, see ya.
It was mad genius.
Whoo!
People thought this
crazy freeBASEing shit
was so compelling.
And it went to newspapers
and television.
Standing at the base
of the world-famous Eiger
for Dean Potter's
free solo BASE climb.
And then Dean wanted
to take the concept
to different disciplines.
Combining BASE jumping
with highlines,
losing the idea I once had
that falling off the line
was death,
it's like a huge
perception change.
Pretty quickly, you know,
Dean was everywhere.
It wasn't just
inventing new sports.
It was this
Dark Wizard mystique.
This man performs to no one.
Some of that
media attention,
it was pretty over the top.
This is a man obsessed
and willing to risk it all.
But he didn't care.
He created
this incredible spectacle
that took his shit
to a new level.
"Dean Potter:
Adventurer of the Year."
Dean Potter is a paradigm
shift in athletic achievement.
And now he's got
some brand-new
sponsorship contracts.
He's, like, becoming
more and more famous,
getting more and more money.
Like, bling.
And everybody was impressed
except, of course,
for one guy.
I mean,
it's easy to be the best
if you're the only one
doing it.
And I feel like Dean really
took that to darker pastures.
When I saw Dean freeBASEing,
I was like,
that's a fun trick.
Like, that's a weird gimmick.
You know, it's, like,
really beautiful to watch.
Like, it's really good
on film.
But why don't you just solo
the route without a parachute?
That's way cooler
of an achievement.
like, leave it
to circus performers
who probably do it
better anyway.