Original subtitles

Hey, buddy.

You going to fly with me, pal?

Yeah.

Right now, I'm going down this path

of learning and pushing myself more in the flying arts.

The wingsuit is basically a flying squirrel suit.

You got little wings between your arms and legs

that allow you to glide.

The shape of the suit changes downward speed

to forward speed.

So I can shoot through the air at 100 miles an hour.

It's this amazing feeling, just spreading your wings

and soaring unhindered by earthly bounds.

It's the evolution of human flight.

And I don't know where it's going to lead,

but that's where I'm headed.

- Wow. - Wow.

In China, Dean was at the end of the line.

He's done. He's spent.

I mean, yeah, I was fucking pissed.

The way he treated me was so unacceptable.

Right after the walk, Dean comes up to me,

looks at me, and he goes, I'm sorry.

And I was like, for what?

I can understand his anger toward me

was his anger toward himself

because he kind of felt like he sold out.

He had been driving off every person in his life.

When we got back to the States,

he was pretty fucking vulnerable and very quiet,

not being around anybody.

It's late, around 10:16,

got a good wood fire going.

I don't wanna…I just wanna escape society,

just go off into Never Never Land.

Having these massive snowstorms here in Yosemite,

the valley's closed.

The electricity's out.

Part of me just wants to be some simple guy

that just lives alone with a lover girl.

Maybe somehow I'm supposed to be the spiritual master.

I'm so far from that.

Oh, yeah.

Coffee's an amazing drug, feeling all sorts of energy,

thinking that a big change is coming.

I feel guilt about the way I treated people,

things I've done.

Need to start doing all the things I know are right.

Maybe this is the beginning.

Back in 2006, when I worked at Patagonia,

Dean was one of their ambassadors.

And he was fired for climbing the Delicate Arch.

After Dean left Patagonia, I didn't hear much about him

for a while.

And then a few years later, I ran into Dean

at the Outdoor Retailer show.

He saw me.

It was like, hey, you know, how are you?

We gave each other a hug, like, catching up.

And he said that he'd been through kind of hell and back.

He had lost friends.

He was just, like, very open about everything.

It was really nice to reconnect with Dean.

And then he's like, how's your marriage?

I was like, it's great.

It's…everything's great.

All's good.

Great to see you, Dean.

And then later that night, I was mad at myself

for not answering honestly.

In reality, I wasn't happily married.

We were struggling as a couple,

but we have children.

And I thought I would never leave that relationship.

After that meeting, Dean and I,

we ran into each other a couple times, and, like,

we had so much fun.

We had a similar interest in arrowheads.

He would send me a picture when he found

an arrowhead in Yosemite.

I would send pieces that I would find in Santa Barbara.

For a while, Dean and I were just friends.

But once I realized we had feelings for one another,

it was like, all right, it's time to end my marriage.

But all signs pointed to, like, this is a really bad idea.

I happened to be the spokesperson

and publicist for the company that famously fired Dean.

All my friends, especially at Patagonia, were going,

what the fuck are you doing?

Have you gone crazy and left your husband for Dean Potter?

You're ruining your family.

You're ruining your career.

Despite all of that, when I was with Dean,

I just felt good about myself.

I've never felt more, you know, alive.

And so one minute, I'm being a mom

and working in Santa Barbara.

The next minute, I would find myself on a rock wall

with Dean hip belaying me, afraid I was going to die.

There you go.

Yeah, perfect.

The excitement and risk…

Good job.

I realized I needed that.

We were genuinely in love.

Like, at that time in my life,

I had not experienced something like that.

Hey, buddy.

Good thing I'm not jealous.

Dean, in his best moments, is better than anything.

So suddenly Dean found himself

in a relationship with somebody

with very young children.

And he totally surprised me.

He placed such value on the kids.

Show me how to jump.

- Everyone jump! - Everybody. Whoo, yeah!

He very much thought about his role in their life…

Nice one, Ro-Ro. Yeah!

and the impact on them.

♪ Happy birthday to you ♪

- Nice. - Yay!

Yay.

I loved bringing the children to Yosemite.

There you go.

Just be playful with it and jump right up on it.

Don't worry if you fall 20 times or 100 times.

And see, now, this is the movement.

Walk backwards if you want.

These kids, they were fascinated by Dean.

- Jump up on it. - I don't know.

He seemed like a cool guy to me always.

And we'd be real excited when he was going to come over.

Good. Nice.

We'd go climbing every once in a while.

- Whoa! - Good job.

We'd go out there, and he was always trying

to teach us how to do stuff.

All the way.

Dean's unique way of loving…

To the next one, again, again.

I look back at being like, Rowan,

climb this, go up 25 feet.

You're going to break both your legs if you fall.

So be really careful, but do it.

I was sitting up there trying.

But looking back on it, I don't think risk is bad at all.

I think risk's really important…

to grow and try new things.

- Yeah. - Nice, Ro.

These kids, they loved him.

He was Dee-Dee.

We miss you.

Hi, Dee-Dee.

I love you so…

I think my brother always had that longing

for a stable, calm, loving home.

And we didn't have that because of my parents' divorce

and the stress in their marriage.

That helmet's pretty cute.

Dean had always been driven in a way

that didn't have a lot of space for other people.

Whoa.

She'll still do OK.

And it was quite a process of him learning how to love.

Jen and the kids, you know,

they were just a beautiful gift.

But of course, Dean still had his struggles.

It wasn't all smiles.

That's for sure.

His whole life, he had such severe depression.

He didn't have an easy path.

I remember he'd come over, and sometimes he'd bum out.

He'd get real bummed, yeah.

Blanket over him and sitting underneath that all day long

for days, just sitting on the couch.

Be a different person at times, that's for sure.

Dean knew something was wrong with his brain.

There was something chemically off with him

that made him struggle more than the average person.

And he really wanted to fix it.

We saw Western doctors, Eastern doctors, naturopath.

He went on this fucking mung bean diet.

Wheat gives me the walking farts.

He wasn't willing to take antidepressants

because, I think, he didn't want to lose whatever edge

his mental illness gave him,

like his drive, his ideas,

his dark arts, as he called them.

Like, you take the darkness away,

and, you know, you're just a creepy wizard,

not the dark wizard.

Come on.

Come on.

But nothing helped him more than Whisper.

Yeah.

Good girl.

She was his princess.

Come on, Whisp.

Dean became a total softie around Whisper.

Good girl!

We love the doggy.

Whisper was very much her father's daughter.

She's a complete asshole 90% of the time…

and the sweetest thing 10%.

Whisper bit the children.

Whisper bit a lot of people.

Ooh!

Whisper, you don't bite. No biting.

But to Dean, she was the most loyal dog on the planet,

and Dean needed a lot of validation.

And a good, good, good.

She basically wouldn't let anyone near Dean.

She was Dean's emotional support animal.

We don't want to crash.

So he brought that dog everywhere.

Come on, girl.

Good girl.

We had to climb with Whisper all the time.

She went on the side of El Cap with us.

Good girl.

Whisper, you like it?

Whisper flew to Switzerland eight times,

climbed the Jungfrau, roped between us,

went over crevasses.

When Dean was like, hey, we might fall in a crevasse,

he wasn't like, here's how you save yourself.

He was like, here's how you save Whisper.

At that time, Dean was laser-focused

on wingsuit BASE jumping.

That was rad!

We would walk up to an exit.

And when Dean would jump, Whisper would bark.

She would try to run after him.

And he thought that was sad.

So Dean was like, hey, if I can climb with her,

maybe I can BASE jump with her.

I remember him saying, why am I not jumping with Whisper?

And I was like, well, because people don't do that.

But lo and behold, couple weeks later,

we found ourselves working with a designer

to develop the Whisper rig.

Perfect.

Very good. Very good.

She'd get in. She'd kind of be calm.

You like that.

You like it.

She'd kind of fall asleep.

Dean thought it was like a dog putting their head out

of the car on a freeway.

They protect those eyes, huh?

You ready, sweetie pie?

3, 2, 1, see ya.

Whoo, Whisper!

Whoo-hoo!

The video has gone viral.

First BASE jumping dog.

The whole thing was immediately divisive.

Some think it's amazing.

Others say it's cruel.

Should a BASE jumping dog give us pause?

Yeah. I said pause.

What a douchebag.

This fucking asshole Dean Potter taking his dog

BASE jumping.

That's fucking horrible.

Someone's making that decision for the dog.

See, how does he know the dog doesn't hate it?

But like, Dean just thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Dogs, whether they're sitting with us on the couch

or, you know, flying through the air at 100 miles an hour,

they've always been man's best friend.

He looked at all of the shit online and was like,

here's where you can put your opinions

about me and my dog.

By now, Dean and I had been together for a couple years.

We bought a big parcel of land

in Yosemite West in the national park.

We were clearing the land to build our first house on it.

I had never seen Dean happier.

Something had fundamentally changed with him.

He's got Jen, the kids, and Whisper.

So there was this base there.

I think that was kind of the mood stabilizer

he always needed in a lot of ways.

It's like calling me ungrateful.

Oh, come on.

He told me…he goes, you know, I'm getting older,

and I kind of know some things now

that I wish I had known, you know, back then.

Come on. Go get some.

I've gone through a whole life

of emotions, wondering about my life

and what life really means.

And it certainly isn't just to rock climb.

It's like, feeling happy, having love…

Hi, Dean.

being with Jen and Whisper…

These are priceless.

friends and family.

Yeah, this is good.

That's really the thing

is, try to figure out how to be up more.

No way.

Not all angst-ridden or depressed.

Wow.

I got that.

I have such a good life.

It's hard to realize how I could be down.

It seemed like the Dark Wizard

had found the light, in a way.

Yeah.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Yeah, little Whispie.

When I met Dean in 2014, for some park rangers,

he was a devil.

He was…he was a rascal.

But I was a climber too.

So good.

And so we'd share time together bouldering.

Yeah, buddy.

Dean and I became friends.

I mean, literally, Dean Potter climbing

with the chief of staff at Yosemite

helping him be a better rock climber…

it shows that people's minds evolve and mature,

and Dean's was definitely going there.

I remember one time, I had a dinner party in my house

in Yosemite Valley.

Dean came to the party, and Alex Honnold was there.

I went to this get-together of, you know,

friends and climbers.

Dean and Jen were there.

And she was just so much more of an adult than either of us,

in terms of being well-adjusted

and emotionally available

and sort of a healthy human.

Maybe her being there with him sort of brought out

the best in both of us,

where we could just be normal adults and chat.

Ate and hung out.

And it was all kind of lovely,

didn't feel overtly competitive in any way.

And it was the first time where I could see myself

maybe climbing with Dean as a partner,

you know, like, oh, let's go do something together.

Like, that'd be fun.

We could hang out and climb.

Dean put up this post paying credence to who Alex was.

It seemed like, for the first time,

maybe Dean was ready to pass the torch.

I felt, you know, he was back to the love of things.

He was back to why he originally

started all this stuff.

Dean spent a lot of time in the Yosemite backcountry

at night, coming down after climbing

or evening BASE jumps.

Moon is fucking beautiful.

He figured out the day, hour, moment

that the moon would pass between these two features.

It seemed like Dean was sort of backing away from,

I'm going to be the best of the best

and beat the other guys and do the next achievement.

Now it was more like, this is just

my creative self-expression,

his way of getting closer to nature

and his undeniably beautiful vision.

I've always wanted to fly with the ravens.

The best wingsuit fliers are pretty much the dorks

compared to the ravens.

Deep in his soul, Dean wanted to be a bird,

and Dean wanted to fly.

It all related directly to dreams that he

used to have as a child.

In my dream, I'm in free fall,

and these creatures come up next to me,

gesturing to do as they're doing,

and I'll fly.

With wingsuit flying, you shape your body

into a wing, kind of create this vacuum on your back

that lifts you up.

He was exploring new possibilities

for how he could fly further.

So it mostly would come down to minimizing pressure drag.

Dean reached out to scientists studying

the movements of birds.

from the equivalent of the thumb digit,

and a bird would elevate that and help control local flow.

He would look at the wings and the structure.

So it uses its body to produce a little bit of lift.

It helped me visualize

what's going on when I'm flying…

wings out of the air flow…

and what needs to happen

with the evolution of the wingsuit.

Nice, so now the air is just going to flow

over there and not be hitting angles and slowing me down.

Exactly.

I need to figure out how to move my body

in tune with that wing shape.

All these little idea changes and design changes

allow you to push the limits of human flight.

When I look at just how young wingsuit flying is,

these next years, it's going to transform.

I can't even imagine where it's going to be.

He went to Switzerland and opened up the higher…

the highest point of the Eiger.

At the time, it was the biggest jump in the world.

I mean, Dean, he's like a mythological creature, right?

I mean, the guy just had to fly.

Usually BASE jumps last seconds.

And now I'm closing in on a three-minute flight.

Potter set the record for the longest wingsuit flight

by a human being.

All my life, I've been rebelling against the dream.

But I started realizing, maybe it wasn't

me falling to my death that I was dreaming about.

Maybe it was me flying.

Back in Yosemite, Dean was seeing

all kinds of possibilities for new exits.

Yeah, this is one of the places I've been wanting

to fly from for a long time.

But have to escape this gully here,

down there to the sandy landing zone.

In Yosemite, Dean was flying with this small group

of elite wingsuit BASE jumpers.

Safe flying. Safe flying.

It was like this magic moment in time

where we were starting to figure out

all the different flights we could do in the valley.

The new wingsuits were allowing people to fly

closer to terrain, fly lower.

Also, the wingsuit made it easier

to avoid getting caught because you can land

somewhere much farther away

that the rangers might not see.

It seemed like we could almost do anything we wanted.

It was just a bunch of kids in the candy store.

Whoo!

There was a good little group of us.

You guys are rad.

And that's where Dean met Graham.

Graham Hunt, this sweet young climber

that showed up in the valley.

My name's Graham Hunt.

I like flying wingsuits, rock climbing,

going on adventures.

Graham's one of the nicest dudes ever.

He was the youngest on the scene.

We immediately clicked with Graham.

He had this little French bulldog.

Whisper and his little Frenchie played together.

Whisper, who was totally skeptical of everyone,

loved Graham.

It takes a lot for Dean to, like,

welcome someone into the fold.

Watch it.

Graham had immediate entrance.

Dean respected his quiet ways.

Like, Graham was trying to figure out life still.

He literally had, like, 10 bucks in the bank.

What do you do?

Right now, I'm just doing labor.

He was working for us on the land.

He spent a ton of time at our home in Yosemite.

Dean really did think of him as a protégé.

Fight it, Graham.

Fight it. Fight it.

Whoo!

Awesome, Graham.

It's so hard to do this.

You good?

Dean and Graham began, you know, partnering up

on a lot of these jumps…

OK. Let's do it, bro.

pulling off all kinds of high jinks,

like the first-ever flight off of the Lost Arrow Spire.

Look like studs.

Flying over Tool Town, where all the rangers lived.

They really loved flying with each other.

They had such camaraderie.

Following you.

They would do these trips to Europe together…

where they would jump these big mountain exits.

They were feeding off of each other's stoke.

Whoo-hoo-hoo!

♪ This is fucking awesome ♪

But at a certain point, Graham began

really kind of pushing it.

Graham got really comfortable,

really good quickly.

Ready.

He definitely flew, like, aggressively

in proximity flying.

Proximity flying, you're just skimming the terrain…

flying as close as you can above slabs and between trees.

At first, most of us were like,

we're never going to proximity fly.

It's just too crazy.

But Graham started going to the extreme.

When you're flying close to something,

it's like riding in a car.

You know, the yellow lines right next to you

are just moving real fast.

That relativity makes it feel

even more so like you're flying.

And now that's kind of become the new psych.

Up next, a look at wingsuiting,

the deadliest sport in the world.

With proximity flying, the body count

was just breathtaking.

1 of every 20 have now died.

Guys were smacking

into stuff all over the world.

And they were people Dean knew.

I'd interviewed Dean for a magazine

about his wingsuit flying.

You know, he said to me that he had rules that he followed

that would protect him.

Dean was the most opposed

to any sort of proximity flying.

It seemed like Dean was always, like,

being really conservative, flying away from the wall,

not flying next to terrain,

long glides that would mitigate the risks.

But as Graham got better and he

was able to do more and more technical fights

and exceeded Dean…

Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

this pure mentorship that Dean had with Graham shifted.

A little sketchy.

I think Dean felt like he had to maybe keep up with Graham.

Yeah, buddy!

That's when Dean's competitive nature

started bubbling up again.

Like, oh, you're doing all these badass things.

I could do them too.

Whoo!

I think, in Dean's head, it starts to escalate.

And then Dean, at some point,

he crossed that line, started proximity flying, like,

getting as close to stuff as he could.

Yeah, buddy. Nice.

I don't know.

There's a certain point in people's careers

where you're like, he's made it.

He's good.

I thought Dean was past all that,

where they're still a danger to themselves.

I was like, he's covered.

He's smothered and covered.

He's not going to be somebody who burns in.

But the minute you throw in competition,

it becomes ego-driven.

Fly these lines and getting lower and lower,

and you're like, oh, my God, more is possible.

Everything's possible.

And that's where you get in trouble.

It's such a weird sport.

You have to believe.

Whoo!

You got to believe in yourself so much.

Now, that's some fucking human flight for you.

But, you know, your ego's not your amigo, right?

Fucking intense.

I don't think I'd get too close.

I'm a fucking… might rip your head off.

I'm wild.

Oh, it was fucking ledges in my face.

That spring, Graham took a trip to Moab.

Dean had told Graham about all these towers

and features that had never been jumped with a wingsuit.

Like, right in the middle of the horizon line.

The jumps in Moab are from off of all these

smaller cliffs.

So you need to start flying forward fast.

You know, you've got to jump off,

get started, and have enough glide to clear

the terrain at the bottom.

OK, here we go.

Come on.

Come on.

Fuck yeah.

If you can nail that start,

you get this insane proximity flight,

skimming these huge talus slopes.

Holy crap.

Oh, my God.

Graham didn't know this at the time,

but Dean had really hoped to be the first wingsuiter

to open these exits.

Opening new exit points, first jumps…

who is going to get to lay claim

to these pioneering moments and experiences?

Oh, my God. That was sick.

Sick, dude.

One after another, Graham jumped off every tower.

Holy shit.

Whoo!

Graham came back to Yosemite on fire.

He was so proud, so excited to share this with his mentor.

But Dean didn't take it that way.

Dean said he was pissed that Graham had, like,

done all these tower exits that someday Dean thought

he was going to open first.

He never let on to Graham that he

might be feeling jealous or competitive with him.

He was also mad at himself for feeling that way.

Having problems with my ego,

a lot of competition still in me.

Unfortunately, I feel, like, jealous or envious,

wanting to be the best and stand alone.

But that's hard on me and makes me

want to push super hard.

The ironic part of this whole thing is,

here's a guy that, inside, was living in darkness

for so fucking long.

He even gave in to that darkness.

And then he pulls himself out.

He struggles.

He claws.

He climbs.

He gets to a place where finally

he's going to get the peace that he needs.

And you think the demons are gone.

They're just waiting.

And he gets pulled right back into it.

Taft Point is this majestic overlook.

Graham and Dean would go there all the time

for evening BASE jumps.

There's two ways you could jump.

If you go left, it's the safe route.

You have this long, beautiful flight down to the valley.

But to the right is the notch.

The notch is this obvious feature

where the ridge from the rim comes down.

For years, all the guys would joke around,

you know, we'll know when suits are getting really good

when we can fly through the notch.

Let's do this.

But the skills and technology advanced,

and people started trying to do it.

It's a dangerous proximity flight.

The notch was, like, the gnarliest line ever.

It was perfect or dead.

If you barely made it,

you would go skimming between boulders,

tree branches going by.

It was one of the riskiest flights done at that time.

See ya.

You've got to get your suit flying as fast as possible

and decide if you're high enough to clear it.

If you're too low, you have to do this

turn maneuver to get out of there.

Otherwise, you're going to splatter.

I noticed that the really experienced wingsuit fliers

just decided that it's not worth it.

Like, the margins are too slim.

One of the first people to fly through the notch

was Graham.

And that became Dean's next big objective.

I think his mindset was like,

I'm just going to show you I can fly

the same line you can fly.

Dean always jumped first…

- I'm on red too. - Yep.

and Graham would film Dean.

Yep.

When Dean exits… he's a big guy…

he sinks for a while.

You know, it takes a few seconds to get going.

So he would be too low for the notch

and have to bail out.

But Graham would just go scraping through.

And then he would actually do the second notch.

Graham had the talent.

He had the technical skill that Dean did not have.

Dean just couldn't keep up.

And ultimately, I think that competitive side that he was

trying to control for so many years,

like, got the best of him.

It was a beautiful spring day.

Graham came over to work on the land with us,

and the boys decided they wanted

to go do an evening BASE jump.

So we drove up to Taft.

The vibes seemed extremely chill.

Both of them were like, this is such a beautiful night.

Like, neither of us even care if we jump.

They weren't hell-bent on going through the notch.

They were just like, let's see what happens.

Dean and Graham are getting ready.

They're suiting up.

And they didn't even bring a camera.

So Dean had just his iPhone facing backwards

to film Graham following behind him.

I, being the photographer, am, like,

trying to figure out the frame.

They're at the exit point, and unceremoniously, they jump.

And I realize, oh.

Oh, they're going for the notch.

Graham had a faster start

and immediately gets above Dean.

It didn't seem that Dean was high enough.

He had a few seconds to decide,

do I have the altitude?

Do I, like, feel good about this?

Meanwhile, Graham is on track,

but maybe he sees that Dean is too low.

All of a sudden, Graham makes an aggressive left turn.

Like, maybe he's going to go around the notch.

Maybe he doesn't think they can make it.

But Dean just keeps fucking going.

Just before the notch, Graham veers back right.

And I lost track of Graham.

But I saw Dean go through the notch in my photos.

Like, that's who I was following.

Like, fuck yes.

They made it.

Then I heard, like, a thwack, like…

and I was like, holy shit.

Someone panic pitched.

A panic pitch is like, something's going wrong.

I need to pitch my parachute.

And I'm standing there on the edge looking for a parachute,

and I didn't see anything.

There was no parachute.

And I'm going like, fuck, what do I…what do I do?

I just turned and started running back to the car.

I'm texting Dean, calling Dean, being like,

something feels really off.

Like, where the fuck are you guys?

And I go down to the valley floor to our meeting spot.

Neither of them are there.

And I was like, fuck, something happened.

I just, like, started running and ran to, like, the base

of the climb, and I was just like, I'll go find him.

And I just remember, like, yelling for him

and just thinking, like, he probably could hear me, like,

which is just so ludicrous.

Like, he couldn't have.

And I still didn't, like…

I just knew something was really wrong,

but I just didn't think he was dead.

That night around 10:30, I heard a knock.

It sounded urgent.

Opened the door, and I saw Jen.

And immediately, I saw the terror on her face.

I knew what had happened, or I felt I knew

what probably had happened.

So we reported Dean and Graham missing.

It was a really long night.

They had to bring in a heli.

I still don't like the sound of a helicopter.

Search and rescue spotted two bodies

in the wingsuit equipment.

They were able to confirm the fatalities.

I don't even remember who told me that they…

I just remember being told they're both in the notch,

and they're both dead.

I remember really wanting to watch Dean come down.

And when he's down, I want to go see him.

Like, I want to go and, like, be with him.

And they were like, no, no, no, no, no, it's not good, Jen.

Like, he impacted with his head.

And I was like, I don't give a shit.

I want to go see Dean.

I walk in the room,

and they're both in these black nylon bags.

I immediately, like, took off all of the shit

they had put on him.

His body was perfect.

His head had been impacted, but, like, there's no scrapes.

There's no fucking limbs sticking out.

Like, there's…

when someone dies, the only thing you have

is them, like, their body.

As weird as that sounds, like, I didn't want

to let go of his body.

I felt very, very, very protective of it.

I didn't want to let it go.

I was driving to the Grand Canyon.

A friend called, and he said, did you hear?

Dean died.

I was like, whew,

and I took a bunch of really deep breaths

and turned around and drove to Yosemite.

There were a lot of questions about what had happened.

A friend and I descended from the top into the notch.

I was really afraid, going down there,

that I wouldn't be able to handle it emotionally.

Top of tree laying right there.

Top of tree missing.

There was, like, a single tree sticking up

that Graham probably wouldn't have been able to see

because of the way he was facing.

He had done this big turn back over the top of where Dean was.

And that's when he clipped the tree

and then hit the wall.

Then we went down further, and we could see,

like, little pieces of fabric.

And then we found the spot where Dean impacted

headfirst into the rock.

He made it through the notch.

But on the other side of the notch,

it's very low angle.

He was losing altitude so fast that he…

he went into the slab.

I felt a presence there.

It felt really weird, like…

not like anything I'd ever experienced.

Dean was there, you know, talking to me.

And the first thing that…

that came through was, like, dude, I fucked up so bad.

Tell Jen I'm so sorry.

Like…and it was…

it was, like, a super present thing,

like his voice clear as day, talking to me.

I was in Santa Cruz,

and I got the fucking phone call.

I didn't know what to do.

And so I just put my clothes on,

got in my car, aimed it toward Yosemite.

And I just cried.

And I got to the valley.

And as soon as I got into the valley,

as soon as I got there,

it started to rain.

It just started to pour, and it just fit.

I walked over to the cafeteria.

I wanted to see Dean.

And he wasn't there.

I really loved him.

Somebody texted me, did you hear?

That's like shorthand for "someone's dead."

And so I…

I was like, no, who is it?

And it was Dean.

And I remember talking with Jim and being like,

man, this…this one really hurts.

Like, this one's unusually painful

because all the other deaths, you died resolved,

or they died as your friend.

Oh, look. Here it is.

Oh, know what we should get? A big-ass box of Cheez-Its.

That's really healthy.

With Dean, I'm so disappointed

that we couldn't come back together.

His death made it then final

that there wouldn't be, like, a reintegration.

Swallow, dude.

When he died…

I'm going to put that in the film.

we hadn't spoken in years.

People do things in their life

that aren't always right.

And sometimes you wreck relationships.

Sometimes you don't make the right call.

But when you get older,

like, that's the time for you to make amends.

And I really thought, as much as I knew he could die,

I really hoped that he would get to that place

and he would make it right.

All he would have had to say was, I forgive you.

Can you forgive me?

Just something like that.

But I really, really…

I just miss him.

Jim, let me hear your voice.

Say anything.

That's pretty good.

What is that moment that you're looking for?

Like, how will you know you have it?

Like, how do you know you have it?

You know, transcending human limitations

is kind of what I'm obsessed with in life.

And I'm obsessed on it on kind of this flashy way,

where I fly.

But I see that if I could take that

and transcend the really… the main things that matter…

hate, jealousy, insecurities,

all the negative things that pull you down in life…

maybe right now, I'm thinking about flying,

but it's just a metaphor to bring me somewhere else.

♪ With the power of soul, anything is possible ♪

The bodies of two BASE jumpers

were found in Yosemite National Park

yesterday after an illegal jump that went horribly wrong.

World-renowned climber Dean Potter and his friend

Graham Hunt died during a wingsuit flight in Yosemite.

It's a very big loss in the world of extreme sports.

He lived life on the edge,

pushing the limits of human experience.

You know when Dean would finish a big project

and get up there and just do that, like, rah, roar?

Whoo! Whoo!

Now on the count of three. 1, 2, 3!

I don't think Dean realized how much people admired him…

how much people loved him.

That outpouring of love from the community,

I wish he had seen that.

Dean was a dancer on the edge of life and death.

They say that mortality is what gives life

its most exquisite line.

Dean took it there.

Dean's death was an end of an era.

Who's going to be the artistic, creative mind

that's going to give us the next wild thing?

His ideas were so far out.

It's like a sunrise.

It illuminates your way forward.

Something about Dean was fucking cosmic.

He was a fucking flawed genius.

That's how I want people to remember him,

as someone who gave everything he had to his art.

He painted something gorgeous

across the fucking sky.

He would not have wanted to just fade away, would he?

It was kind of fitting that Dean Potter, you know,

went out in a blaze of glory.

My brother would say the key to happiness

is following beauty and not the urge to be the best.

Was he able to always do that?

No.

Right up to the end, that was something he really battled.

But in his most centered moments,

he knew it was all about listening to your heart

and following that.

You know, we're all dealt our own weird hand of cards.

But through all of his struggles…

Whoo.

Dean made a magnificent and beautiful ride.

Thinking about stories I have

that could make people laugh, cry,

and make others not feel so freakish,

knowing that some whack job like myself

is out there going for it,

fighting with emotions the whole time,

but just being me.

When I eventually free soloed El Cap,

it was almost exactly two years after Dean died.

I think it would have been amazing to talk to Dean

about free soloing El Cap.

More than almost anybody else on Earth,

he can appreciate what went into it.

I mean, Dean was the first person

to think about it seriously,

and he showed the rest of us what's possible.

The climbing world is just not the same

without the Dark Wizard.

But every time I see a raven flying by, I think of Dean.

Wah!

Do you want to come out, Whisper?

Come on.

Whisper, come.

Come on, Whisper pig.

After Dean's death, I did a lot of, like,

therapy, trauma therapy.

And I think it genuinely helped.

A few months after the accident,

I remember the park investigator called me

and was like, OK, so we got the footage back, Jen.

I go into his office, and we're going to watch

this footage from Dean's phone.

Obviously, this is going to be really hard.

Ready?

You see them exit.

Graham flies out of the frame.

Dean holds his course.

As he goes into the notch,

walls on both side come into view.

This raven comes in behind him

right before he impacts.

Like, of course a raven followed him into his death.

Hi.

Come on, love.

I knew you would come.

Everybody misses you.