Climbing at the Speed of Soul article on Dean Potter | Outside Online Dean Potter punches a button on a plastic wristwatch looped around his climbing harness. His partner, Tim O'Neill, leaps at the rock before him, jamming freshly taped fingers into a slender crack. Above them soars the great granite parabola of the most famous big-wall route in Yosemite Valley—or, for that matter, the world: The Nose of El Capitan. At just under 3,000 vertical feet, with 36 pitches, The Nose requires three harrowing pendulum swings and the negotiation of a hair-raising crux section known as the Great Roof—an overhanging shelf 2,000 feet off the deck, with a crack at the back so narrow that neither the towering Potter nor the diminutive O'Neill can wedge his fingers into it. in Fitness > Climbingwith big-wallclimbclimbingcrackdandeanfamousfitnessgranitejellylifestyleosmanpotterreligionrock Note: A fascinating profile of one of the world's greatest speed climbers Dean Potter. Interesting to read about his spiritual aspirations, Dan Osman, frost, and another guy I forget the name of. An article about Osman is: http://outside.away.com/magazine/0499/9904terminal.html