When you think of the best climbers in the world, Steph Davis is a name that often comes to mind. She has completed some of the hardest climbing routes in the world, is the only woman to free solo climb – no ropes and no support from a partner – a 5.11 grade route, was the first woman to free solo the Diamond on Longs Peak and has pushed the envelope constantly and consistently.
Davis also is an accomplished BASE jumper, specializing in two professions that have high consequences for mistakes.
In her memoir, “Learning to Fly,” Davis speaks on life after her divorce from her first husband, climber Dean Potter, following his climb of Delicate Arch in 2006. The climb was extremely controversial, the backlash causing irreparable strain on their marriage. After their divorce, Davis went to Colorado to learn to skydive and recover from the past several months. This decision had a profound impact on her life.
Over the next several years, she continued to push the sport of climbing while learning to BASE jump and fly a wingsuit.
Along the way, she recovered from her divorce and met her new husband, skydiving and BASE jumping professional Mario Richard, and found ways to stand on her feet again. Davis did all of this while examining the meaning of mortality and the questions of acceptable risks in sports that are often deemed as reckless by the general public.
The resulting memoir is beautiful. Well written and heartfelt, Davis candidly explains how she recovered from her divorce and how her life has changed significantly by climbing and BASE jumping. She mixes passages on her personal life with beautiful breakdowns of the climbs that she has made and the thought process and mental preparation that went into them.
She stresses that free soloing and BASE jumping are not reckless sports. Decisions are often extremely well thought out, consequences are constantly being taken into account during the decision making process, and risks are mitigated so that only the safest climbs and jumps are attempted.
She does this all while stressing that, as with all action sports, climbing and BASE jumping and inherently dangerous and the decisions to partake in these sports must be heavily considered by each individual.
Davis knows the consequences when things go wrong better than most. Her second husband, Richards, died in 2013 in a wingsuit accident while on a jump with Davis. She describes his death and the way that it affected her in a blunt and unapologetically compassionate way. In many ways, “Learning to Fly” is a love story, the story of her and her husband’s love and their love of skydiving and BASE jumping, and how she would like to share his passion for life with the world now that he is gone.
Davis was in Southwest Colorado to give presentations on her memoir through the Friends of the Library program. She spoke at the Pine River Library on March 8 and the Cortez Public Library on March 9 before speaking March 10 in Telluride.
