Dean Potter, one of the generation’s top rock climbers and charismatic personalities, was one of two men killed in a BASE-jumping accident at Yosemite National Park in California on Saturday.

Potter, 43, and the other man, Graham Hunt, 29, leapt near dusk off Taft Point, a promontory about 3,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley, not far from the iconic granite masses of El Capitan and Half Dome. Flying in wingsuits, they tried to clear a notch in the granite cliffs but instead smashed into the rocks in quick succession.

Neither of the men pulled a parachute.

Rescue parties began searching late Saturday, and the bodies were spotted by helicopter Sunday morning and retrieved early in the afternoon, said Mike Gauthier, Yosemite’s chief of staff.

“It’s tremendously sad,” said Gauthier, an occasional climbing partner of Potter, who lived in Yosemite. “Dean was part of this community and had such an impact on climbing. He was a luminary and in the pantheon of climbing gods.”