One of the great privileges of my job is having the opportunity to watch world class athletes like Dean Potter redefine the limits of the human body. For years, Dean has pushed the envelope in rock climbing and BASE jumping. What he has done now with a wingsuit is, in a word, radical. He has proven that humans can indeed fly.
Last month, while on assignment in Zurich, I made a quick side trip to the Eiger to reconnect with Dean and document a new world record. Regarded as one of the planet’s premiere jump sites, the Eiger was the perfect location for Dean’s record setting flight. Taking to the sky from a rock outcropping just below the Eiger’s 13,025 ft. peak, equipped with only a nylon wingsuit and a lightweight parachute, Potter flew over 9,000 vertical feet and nearly 3.5 miles forward in horizontal distance. While Dean stepped into thin air, I was behind a camera within the relative “safety” of a helicopter (which the pilot sent into a spin in effort to follow the action).
The story of Dean’s new record, as well as details of my work with the brand new Nikon D300s have become the subject of a the new ad featured above, running exclusively in PDN.
