Dean Potter FreeBASE - Climbing Free Solo With A Parachute
2021 · 7 min · Free Solo, Documentary · Reel Rock
This short film follows Dean Potter’s 2008 ascent of The Rostrum in Yosemite Valley, a long, overhanging route finished through the Alien Roof and climbed at roughly 5.12. Potter climbed without a rope while wearing a BASE-jumping parachute on his back, a combination he called “FreeBASE.” The parachute was intended as a last-resort safety device rather than conventional protection; at the time the ascent was widely noted as one of the earliest examples of FreeBASE and, by some accounts, the hardest long free solo done in Yosemite up to that point. The cut on REEL ROCK is a remastered and slightly extended edit of that climb. The value of the film is documentary and technical: it records movement on steep, sustained terrain and preserves a moment when Potter was explicitly combining disciplines—free soloing, BASE jumping, wingsuit and highlining—into a single practice. The footage is useful for anyone interested in the history of extreme soloing and in how climbers have negotiated margins of safety on hard, exposed routes.
Review
Seven minutes on one of the strangest ideas in climbing history, and Reel Rock's remastered cut is the version to watch. In 2008 Dean Potter climbed The Rostrum in Yosemite through the Alien Roof, a 5.12b finish on a 700-foot route, without a rope and with a BASE-jumping parachute on his back. He called it FreeBASE.
This is for anyone interested in how climbers have negotiated margins on hard, exposed routes. The parachute was a last resort, not protection, and the film is clear about that distinction. At the time it was regarded as the hardest long free solo done in Yosemite. Skip it if the premise bothers you. It should bother you at least a little, and the film does not argue you out of it.
What works is the movement on the roof. A powerful move from a jam to an undercling, then twin finger cracks up a steep headwall, all of it with a pack that could either save him or catch on the rock. What it leaves out is the reasoning at any length. Seven minutes gives you the act and one sentence of philosophy.
Alex Honnold Solos The Phoenix is the comparison: a 5.13a crack in the same valley, three years later, no parachute. Honnold's solo is harder. Potter's is stranger, and it comes from a mind the rest of the sport still has not caught up with.
