Last week, Dean Fidelman stopped by, as he often does when he’s getting out of Yosemite Valley to stock up on groceries or when he needs to take a break from “The Ditch” and head to the nearest town. When Dean comes over, I know the deal: give him all the sugary snacks—honey-dipped nuts, flavored yogurt, fruit gummies—and let him get his head straight. That means stepping out for a rolled smoke mixed his certain way, then diving into storytelling. As one story leads to the next, he twists a plume, goes out on the porch, comes in and devours snacks, and continues the tales.

Dean is a link to Yosemite climbers going back 50 years. He hung with Bridwell, a father figure to him, climbed with Bachar, chilled with Sharma, knew the Hubers, and traveled with Dean Potter. He’s authored six books, put out 20 Stone Nude calendars, and, for generations, photographed the in-crowd in Yosemite, whether they’re on the rock, chilling in the boulders, or slacklining.

Today, he’s the caretaker at Hans Florine’s cabin in Yosemite West. Dean lives in his way and keeps his list of interests short. He views photography as his contribution to Yosemite and captures un-staged shots in the wild with his crew. Yes, they’re pro climbers, but they’re also his friends, from the Stone Masters to Chris Sharma to Stone Monkeys and beyond. He’s the Yosemite resident photographer who connects the generations back to the free climbing revolution.

Regarding the importance of capturing the climbing scene, “You need writing, filming, photography, things that challenge you,” he says. “You also need the aspect of art.”

For years, I’ve penned stories on Dean, whose moniker is “Winky,” short for Bullwinkle from The Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon. In the 70s, his hair was wild like Bullwinkle’s antlers. He calls me Chris instead of Spaz, and I call him Dean instead of Winky. Maybe it’s mutual respect.

Dean moved to Yosemite in 1971 and has lived there intermittently. He left during the late ‘80s and returned in the mid-’90s. During his time away, he worked in fashion, residing in places like New York and Madrid. However, he didn’t find the subjects as exceptional as those in California and felt like a decent photographer among the international fashion crowd. Missing his old home and photographing the world’s best climbers, with the new skills he picked up during his travels, he returned to Yosemite. Once back in The Ditch, he was living in a tent, then a van, before eventually settling at Hans’ Basecamp in Yosemite West.

Though Dean now shoots with a DSLR, he prefers black-and-white film, using a medium-format camera that captures fewer than a dozen shots per roll. He views this style as an extraction of the subject, with color as expression.

I met Dean in the mid-90s during the rise of the Stone Monkeys, a modern take on the Stone Masters. It was a time when Dean Potter arrived, and climbers like Cedar Wright, Ammon McNeely, Warren Hollinger, and the Huber brothers were making waves with speed records, free solos, hard first ascents, and big wall linkups. It was during this period that Dean also began creating Stone Nudes.

Of Stone Nudes, Dean says, “I put a lot of planning into my mind and camera in the moment. It had less to do with the naked body and more with the contours, tones of the rock, holds, and texture. Then, there’s a beautiful naked body in there, climbing. These moments transcend climbing, and that’s what I love about them. It’s original art, and it will always be a primary part of what I do creatively.”

Today the words “Stone” and “Nudes” are tattooed on the back of his hands.

While making Stone Nudes, Dean also captured the Stone Monkeys, often shooting portraits of leading figures behind the SAR site in Camp 4 (with clothes). The Stone Monkeys were a homeless-by-choice crew that became pro athletes and award-winning visual storytellers like Dean. James Lucas, a Stone Monkey, contributed writing to Dean’s books.

During our last few hangouts, Dean discussed favorite unpublished images of Lisa Rands and Wills Young climbing in the UK, as well as Chris Sharma and Josh Lowell while making the impressionable bouldering film Rampage. He also shared scenes captured behind Camp 4 and memories of traveling with his late friend Sean Leary (headline image). I requested all these images.

Coming Up

Dean also discussed his upcoming projects, including a deep-water soloing nude shoot in Spain with Chris Sharma and European photography in places like the Czech Republic.

“Sandstone is beautiful, and the people are beautiful… Dresden has always interested me because of the history and the beauty of stone… some of the alpine boulders and landscapes in Germany, Austria, and Italy,” he shared.

He also mentioned his European gallery show, the reprinting of his Stone Masters book, and finishing the Stone Monkeys book. “I’ll make prints here and bring them over or ship them for the gallery wall. Hopefully, I can sell a few things. This lets me showcase what I do and connect with people, showing how we’re all part of this whole thing, bringing our own art to the passion of climbing.”

“We’ll have a Q&A and discuss climbing and my career. I’m currently working on the Stone Monkeys book but looking for the right publisher. The Stone Masters book is being reprinted and coming out this fall.”

Midnight Lightning

“Recently, I did a great photograph of a guy nude on Midnight Lightning. He had the problem on lockdown. It’s one of my favorite photographs of that problem. He’s climbing, but he’s also nude, and the photograph itself—the tones, his muscles, and his body—you got to say it’s art.”

Though he’d heard of Skip Guerin doing it barefoot back in the day, he’d never seen of anyone doing it sans clothes. “And the beauty of that whole thing is we’re making this photo. I had him do it maybe two or three times.”

He continues, “Then this guy comes running up. He goes, ‘I saw from a distance on Midnight Lightning, the climber has really long hair… I thought it was a woman. Then I thought, ‘this is the best day of my life.’ So, I started running to get a closer look… and I realized it was a guy.”

Dean says, “The look of disappointment on his face was palpable. It was beautiful.”

In addition to highballing, Dean has captured a ton of free solo climbing, including Bachar’s 5.11 circuit in Joshua Tree in the 70s, and Dean Potter’s first time soloing Heaven 5.12d in Yosemite.

Capturing the First Solo Ascent of Heaven

He described that day with Potter as a cool morning; the climb was shaded, and the background was blown out with sunshine. The image wasn’t perfect, with the blazing sunlight contrasting harshly with the dark foreground. Though the solo was captured again by another photographer, Mikey Schaefer, and later done by Alex Honnold and captured flawlessly by Jimmy Chin, it still made the cover. This selection was due to the backstory—it was the real deal, the first time the climb was soloed, and it was captured in real-time.

To Dean, perfection isn’t what you get when capturing the first of anything on a cutting-edge route. This isn’t a dress rehearsal; it’s real life. It’s imperfect. But he’s there, camera in hand, watching his friends risk it all while he makes his art.

He says of Potter on Heaven, “I was there, and in my position… I couldn’t be very close to him. He didn’t want anybody close to him.”

“I’ve worked with soloists since I began making photographs with Bachar. You just kind of do it a certain way. You understand where they’re at. The idea of recreating a solo, to me, is not as awesome as getting there and taking photographs of that first solo. But there’s a certain compromise when you’re there in the moment—you have to be where that climber wants you to be, not necessarily where you feel you need to be for the best image. So, there’s a trade-off.”

“And there’s also that point of keeping your energy to yourself, not affecting that climber, never asking for anything, and just ‘not being there’—being a fly on the wall. That often requires more work than actually being there behind the camera and trying to direct what’s in front of you.”
He was also there when Dean Potter fired Separate Reality and a host of other routes, where Dean was in control but definitely putting it out there.

He says, “Dean [Potter] told me one time that whatever it was he wanted to solo, it felt impossible when he first attempted it, you know, with a rope or whatever that was, and that he would just keep coming back, continue coming back… eventually, you would be doing what you considered impossible.”

Putting it All Together

Now 68, Fidelman’s relationships with climbers extend from the Stone Masters of the 70s—people he met during his high school days—to today’s cutting-edge climbers. He’s observed the growing diversity in the climbing community and how the sport’s expansion into different cultures and demographics enriches it. “All those disciplines within climbing are awesome. Every genre of photography and art has its precepts and disciplines within that subset that allow you to produce art. My entire life has been within the canvas of climbing.”

His images, including the ones he sent over, are about organic connections in photography, where the subjects are in their natural environments.

“If I didn’t live for just a moment—the moments that make up a life—I would consider myself an ultimate failure. But as it is, I make good art, and I’ve made a lot of it, and I’m still making it. I’m happy. I’m somewhat content—not fully, being fully content doesn’t allow me to push forward. But it’s been a really good life, and it’s not over yet.”

Lisa Rands and Wills Young Headpointing on the Gritstone

“There was a really good group connection between Wills Young, Lisa Rands, and myself when we made that trip. She was working toward headpointing a hard line and I was going to photograph it. So I shot the process of her getting to that point.

“I also photographed a lot of my other friends who were there at the time over the month-long trip. I completely enjoyed how I was shooting it—black and white film, medium format, and 35 millimeter. Perfect.

“And it was supposed to be a feature, and I was going to get the cover, but it didn’t end up having much of a run.”

Zack Milligan

Dean also sent over a shot of Zack Milligan for his final image, without context. Like Dean, I knew Zack—we were longtime climbing partners before he died soloing ice in Canada. I recognized the surroundings. Captured in a vignette in the Lodge Cafeteria, with Zack sitting in front of an eaten grapefruit, he’s in his typical synthetic puffy with tape covering the holes, looking like he just crawled out of a cave (which he likely did). He’s giving his typical look—not quite a smile, more of a “What do you want?” His blue eyes had a thousand-yard stare that both Dean and I knew well.

Zack spent thirteen years in a cave in Yosemite, soloing hard rock and ice, skiing Half Dome to the Valley floor, and doing everything from dishwashing to carpet cleaning to make ends meet.

He was a tremendously strong free soloist (though he was known to shake), including on routes like New Dimensions. This multi-pitch 5.11 down-valley from El Cap has stopper final moves that must be done in exact sequence.

Shortly before his death, as we talked at the final anchors of New Dimensions, he told me he chose to stop soloing it after a few times due to the real risk of botching the final moves. Those last moves are single-digit jams with smears for your right foot. That day he told me he’d soloed a ton of 5.11 at Arch Rock, including burly finger-to-offwidth cracks I could barely thrash up on top rope, like Leanie Meanie.

From long routes to short, from Sentinel Rock to the Northwest Face of Half Dome, Zack did it all, and when he wasn’t free soloing, he was doing free soloing mixed with aid to go uber fast.
But he wasn’t the best boulderer. I remember once in Camp 4 when I showed him a line in the Wine Boulders with a final move that was a dyno.

Zack couldn’t dyno—he had all points of contact ingrained in him from years of free soloing. But when I showed him the problem with that final toss at the top, he asked me to pull the pad. When he wasn’t looking, I quietly rejected his request and kept it in place. I spotted him for that Hail Mary final move, which he missed.

But instead of careening ankle-first into the rock, he hit the crash pad foam.

He fell back, and I caught him like any spotter would, protecting the shoulders and head. He looked at me and said something about “saving his life,” which was a bit far-fetched, and told me he’d climb with me forever. And we did.

Then, one day, he was gone.

I know Dean misses him, which is why he sent that image. I miss Zack, too—no one insulted and complimented me in the same sentence quite like he did.

He was a blast to run in the mountains with (he even wore running shorts, which he said grown men should never be seen in; “those are for boys,” he’d say), climb long, scary AF routes with, and simply hang out and listen to (and laugh uncontrollably) for hours.