Five Big Mountains: A Regular Guy's Guide to Climbing Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Vinson, Elbrus, and Orizaba Book

Dan Osman was an enigma. A speed-climber without equal, a free-soloist maverick who climbed without ropes, and enjoyed a life on the impossible crags and cliffs of Yosemite.

His final months were spent developing the new sport of 'rope jumping': stringing a taut high-line across a ravine, and then hanging a swing from the centre of the high line, with a launch point hundreds of feet up, on a cliff. In Yosemite, the cliffs are so high you can build thousand foot free-fall swings, with the most extreme arc at the full stretch of the rope.

But Yosemite National Park has prohibited BASE jumping and other extreme sports including rope-jumping, and practitioners are today involved in a cat and mouse game, to stay away from rangers, while keeping possession of their expensive equipment from law-enforcement. This has unfortunate knock-on effects, and sometimes results in avoidable tragedies.

After setting up his final, record-breaking rope-jump, Osman was pulled over for an expired ticket, and spent a short while in jail. On release, Dan returned to the site of the rope-jump to take down the swing and collect his equipment. Deciding to take one last swing for luck, Dan put his harness on and clipped in. But his gear had been exposed to the elements during his incarceration, and was fatally damaged. That was Dan's final jump.

Todhunter's book gives the impression of Dan Osman as an innate outlaw. Dan comes across as a fugitive, from the law, from life, and sometimes from the author. Perhaps this is because of the criminalisation of climbers, slackliners and BASE jumpers, but maybe there's something more.
Maybe Dan was never an insider, so he had to live on the edge.