Summertime Skyline: Calculated Risk or Miscalculation?

[Hikin_Jim]

It would be altogether easy to characterize summertime Skyline hikers as daring athletes taking a calculated risk, operating on the edge of human endurance. In this characterization, these Summertime hikers, like the late Dean Potter, view the calculation of life vs. death a little differently than the rest of us; they accept more risk and, like Dean Potter, find that risk taking makes them feel more alive. This would be altogether easy -- and altogether wrong.

The difference between most summertime Skyliners and Dean Potter is that Dean Potter really knew what he was up against. Dean Potter fully understood the dynamics -- and the risks -- of what he was doing. He was a superior athlete making an informed choice, taking a calculated risk.

By contrast, many summer Skyliners don't really comprehend what they're up against. They do incredibly stupid things like bring only a bottle or two of water or starting late. Failing to bring enough of something so basic as water would be the equivalent of Dean Potter forgetting to bring a parachute for a BASE jump. Why do people look at Dean Potter with a certain admiration? Because he was good. While we might not accept the same risks, we can admire Dean Potter for truly knowing what he was doing and doing it exceptionally well. Had Dean Potter failed to bring something so basic as a parachute, we'd all shake our heads in disbelief and mutter "what an idiot."

The fact that there are people on Skyline in the summer without proper water, getting late starts, etc. shows them to not to be of Dean Potter's ilk. These are not extreme athletes living on the edge, taking calculated risks. These are fools who haven't a clue as to what they are doing. It would be a great public disservice to glamorize fools as extreme athletes. The two are not the same. Glamorization of foolhardiness only serves to encourage it.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't those few who truly do know what they are doing. There are those few who do understand the deadly calculus of the desert: Start early enough and climb fast enough that you get to 7,000' (roughly the start of shade and cooler temperatures) before it gets hot or you very well may die. It is these few that, like Dean Potter, really are extreme athletes taking a calculated risk.

The trick in any discussion of a Summer Skyline ascent is to clearly differentiate between the two. Only a few can reasonably assess the risks and make an informed choice to ascend in the summer. The majority are amateurs that have no business being on Skyline in the summer. They are essentially BASE jumpers without parachutes.

One man's opinion.

HJ

[cynthia23]

Good post HJ. I like your statement that it would be a 'disservice to glamorize fools as extreme athletes." Agree 100 percent. Virtually everyone doing those summer skylines simply does not understand, or fully understand, the risks.

[Wildhorse]

I have read that Dean Potter thought of himself as an artist, rather than as an athlete, and that he enjoyed living on the edge confronting his fears.

I don't know how many people hike Skyline in the summer or how the ones who do think of themselves or how they approach life and risk. I suspect that some who hike Skyline are confronting their fears, knowingly living on the edge, but I seen enough of people to know that not all are artists.

Dean Potter has been quoted as saying it is foolish to believe that one's system is not flawed (that one has not miscalculated.) He jumped anyway. Artists, whether they draw, or write, or base jump, or hike, know that their system is flawed.

Among my friends are one who hikes Skyline in summer and one who hikes to remote places in the heat, such as Pinto Mountain in Joshua Tree. I have friends who risk death in the mountains other ways too. One amazing friend leaps from boulder to boulder on the edge of a cliff. Loss of balance, or miscalculation, would be fatal. He knows it and he is neither show off, nor narcissist, nor fool, but art itself. He is music. Another amazing friend knowingly gets into situations that will be hard and dangerous to get out of. He makes no pre-calculation, he just goes. He jumps, if you will. Hiking is art to these friends, just as base jumping was to Dean Potter. I have enjoyed many days in the wilderness with them. When I read about Dean Potter, I feel like I knew him because he sounds like these friends.

It is good to live on the edge. This is Dionysian wisdom. Art enables one to do things that are otherwise impossible.

In a an article in Men's Journal, a friend said that before he died, Dean Potter was feeling "turmoil about risk." His friends thought he was stepping back.

It is irrational to hike Skyline in summer. The risk of self annihilation is high for those who do it. It is way more rational to ride the tram.

Nietzsche observed, with regret, in The Birth of Tragedy, that rationality overcame irrationality a long time ago in the West. He wrote, or warned, "We are to recognize that all that comes into being must be ready for a sorrowful end; we are forced to look into the terrors of the individual existence – yet we are not to become rigid with fear."

That may be what happened to Dean Potter on his fatal flight – when he saw his close friend crash into the rock, he became rigid with fear.

[scotts]

Food for thought wildhorse. Surely there are degrees of rationality which bleed into the irrational, more or less so. Un unrecognized flaw in the system is not the lack of a system. Does your friend hike skyline midsummer day with no water? Would he be more vital and alive if he did so? I think he'd just start by having a really big headache, then end up requiring rescue or die.

Experience, ability, system, judgement, plenty of courage and probably several moments of sheer luck are the tools that got Potter as far as he went. But at some point the edge is a brick wall. The margin of error zeroes out, performance cannot prevail and fear, art and accolades are the least of your worries. Adrenaline ceases to thrill and transcendance is not possible. You're dead, just like Nietschze said.

[cynthia23]

Good points, ScottS. Sure, I agree with Wildhorse that modern life has deracinated us, and that human beings aren't biologically meant to live life without risk. People have a legitimate, deep-seated need to test themselves in the wilderness. However, in our society, that simple human urge toward risk-taking has become corrupted and deeply entwined with capitalism. It's about selling stuff--shoes, watches, gadgets, magazines and tv shows--so that someone whose life is basically that of a corporate wage slave can delude himself into believing he's leading an authentic life if he buys something from Patagonia and does some 'extreme' jaunt over the weekend--or just reads about somebody else doing it. Much of the needlessly risky climbing and mountaineering and trekking is about scoring points in a race for status that is absolutely no different than Victorians who went on lion-hunting safaris. Bluntly, it's a way of saying you have enough money that you have the means and leisure for dangerous pursuits--unlike some 'loser' who's working three minimum wage service jobs and doesn't have the time or money to climb El Capitan. All this "extreme sport" crap is just a fantasy corporations are selling people whose lives are empty of meaning. It's just another kind of pornography.

And, while Dean was pointlessly flinging himself off a cliff, sixty million people (NY Times June 18) are currently political refugees, fleeing murder, rape, and starvation. In the face of their truly dangerous reality, I have zero admiration for First World people who jump off cliffs so they can get media attention and a hot girlfriend. I'll save my respect for Dr. Tom Catena, the only physician left in the South Sudan, who risks death from bombing and gunfire every day so that other people can live. There is a true man, and THAT is risk-taking worthy of my respect.

[scotts]

Strong cynthia. I agree -- extreme youth culture often seems preciously isolated from reality. Almost as if by design.

The workings of hundreds of ad departments and think tanks, the cultural dumbsizing, the destruction of history and of any humane social context to the human experience.

Now *that's* some dedicated, 24/7, year-in, year-out rationality at work.

I watched the keyhole dive suit video zippetydude linked in the other thread. The lead-in ad was from GoPro!

[cynthia23]

LOL! Or is that The ads are so omnipresent now I didn't even notice it, consciously. Which is exactly how they want it.

Where are the rebellions of yesteryear? Fight the power, people!

[Wildhorse]

Hiking Jim wrote,

"Only a few can reasonably assess the risks and make an informed choice to ascend in the summer."

It is true, of course. The Skyline ascent is hard and hot, and, in summer, as risky as base jumping. Failure is likely. Even the few eventually fail. Even the artists.

Experienced athletes develop an increased awareness of the limits of their bodies and when they push limits, they exercise caution informed by awareness. They also know that the limits of our bodies vary from day to day, and they become able recognize the signs of this. And yet, every trial involves an element of surprise or chance, even for an athlete, or artist. As Dean Potter observed, every system is flawed – our bodies, our natural senses, our internal calculators – all are flawed.

I think of Dean Potter as someone like Norman Maclean's brother Paul in a River Runs Through It. Even those who loved him could not understand him or protect him. But as his father said, "He was beautiful."

I have a cousin who is like Dean Potter and Paul. He takes unthinkable chances. He breaks laws. He breaks hearts. He has been savaged by moral critics. And yet, he is beautiful.

I do admire Dean Potter. I admire him in an aesthetic way. I would never take the specific risks that he took, nor would I would risk Skyline in summer. Still, to live at risk is the only way to really live, even if it shortens the span of life. This is not a moral choice. It is existential. It is an affirmation of life itself, in all its terror, not of the good. To die for the sake of the good is to be a martyr. Dean Potter's death, and life, is something quite different.

We are equipped with an unreliable calculator. We don't know what we don't know. Dean Potter would spit over the cliff before he jumped to assess the wind – a calculation – to make sure it was not an evil wind. I have read that he would spit, then grin at his companions as the joy of life welled up inside, and, then, jump.

Upon his death, Black Diamond republished a brief message that Dean Potter wrote in 2000 that sums it all up: "I'm in the meadow, eyes fixed on the stone, running, on the rock breathing, never sacrifice safety, always stay in control, lock to lock. I've done this thousands of times, in my mind it's already done. In reality there is nothing except the moment, and in this moment I am alive."

[cynthia23]

Your posts are always lovely and lyrical, Ken, and I have to credit you for reminding us that 'living wild' has value.

But the cynic in me feels compelled to point out that Black Diamond is traded on NASDAQ, and that, according to the Wall Street review site "247", "This stock ended the week just shy of $10, with a $326 million market cap".

Wonder how much the net worth of its investors went up the media-crazy week after Dean went splat?

[Wildhorse]

Cynthia - Thank you. I know that you appreciate writing, as I do, and I am glad that you think this way of mine. I have a hard time with the word "value" in the context of what I wrote, even while I have used the word "good" occasionally to describe living wild. I don't think living wild has economic or moral value. I think of moral claims as aggressive. I think of Dean Potter as not being aggressive in that way, even while he aggressively confronted his fears. I don't think much about economics at all and don't find economic views of humanity or life believable.

Darwin wrote about how the queen bee, living wild, kills her fertile daughters. He observed, or lamented, how nature or natural selection is indifferent to maternal love and hatred. I don't like to think that. Surely my mother's love had meaning, I want to believe. It mattered to me. At the same time, we cannot avoid seeing that we are came into existence through a process that is indifferent to love and hate, at least if we believe, with Darwin, that natural selection accounts for the origin of species and something analogous to natural selection has shaped everything in the universe. In this narrative at the heart of modernity, life is just one thing after another.

It is terrifying to think this. Dean Potter dealt with this terror in a beautiful way. Beauty itself is terrifying.

BTW, I carry Black Diamond on my back all the time. I bought it in the little outfitter shop in Idyllwild. I chose it because it fits well and is very light. I don't believe it is large enough to carry the water one needs to hike Skyline in the summer. Every system has faults.