Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
npr.org
npr.org
As a climber, there are very few people that I trust to have a more useful opinion on all this than Tommy Caldwell, a close friend and long time climbing partner of Honnold. It's so out there for most people that most jump to conclusions without proper knowledge of the subject.
Caldwell is in an interesting position of having to balance supporting his friend, and trying to get over the fact that he very well could die doing these attempts. His article does a great job expressing this.
Can someone help me understand this? How is doing something without safety equipment that you can do with with safety equipment climbing to live, but not about cheating death? What is the point of foregoing safety if not to somehow eke something out of the increased danger, whether it be adrenaline, or a period of increased focus, or fame?
If it's not about someone being addicted to adrenaline or looking for fame, then I just don't understand it. At all. As in it's so foreign to me that I can't even begin to understand it.
1. Alex Honnold's brain is atypical. His amygdala simply does not respond to stimuli the way that it does in most people. To learn more, read this (excellent) article:
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
2. While I am (at best) a mediocre climber, the section you quoted rings true to me, particularly this section - "Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them." There is something incredibly natural and sensual about climbing on rock that I can't describe without sounding like I'm talking about sex. And...that's traditionally where people tell me to give them my keys because I've had too much to drink. :)
3. Climbing is a deeply meditative activity, particularly when you get into a place where each movement flows into the next. When I am there, my mind shuts down and it is just a rock and me doing the most natural thing that I have ever found (see #2). That flow is deeply beautiful, but when you climb with ropes, you have to be in near constant contact with your belay partner. When I am with my regular belay partner, it interrupts that flow. When I am with a new belay partner, I never get close to it.
I suspect that if my amygdala worked like his, I would free solo simply to avoid having to communicate with a belay partner.
1. I wonder if amygdala responses in meditators would be similar. The Nautilus article mentions the control of his prefrontal cortex as a possible way he mediates the amygdala's response, and meditation often shows modulation in PFC activity. As a meditator, I also have a strange lack of fear response—for example, it's almost impossible to startle me.
2,3 I have only climbed a few times, and I too felt an unspeakable relationship with the rock itself that I have rarely felt while doing anything. The closest I can relate it to is indeed a deep meditative state, but one that comes with motion. Totally understand these points.
This is why I prefer bouldering these days.
“I am not a death-wish person,” he said to me. “I want to live very old. It is true that death is part of the frame—that it frames such activities as bullfighting and tightrope walking. My world is a dangerous world, sure, but I am very safe in knowing my limits. I am not playing with words when I say I don’t take risks. The danger becomes so narrow that it is a novel companion with whom you travel. It is not an enemy.”
I know this isn't an answer, but if you've never seen the documentary about Petit, "Man on Wire", perhaps it would help to understand the mindset.
However you can also imagine a justification along these lines: There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states. Some of these are familiar things like falling in love or having children. These are risks but usually perceived as having obvious upsides. There are also other behaviors like drug use or underground fight clubs which also give access to unique mental states but are usually perceived as too risky to encourage. It's easy to put judge free soloing climbing as something like drug use or bareknuckle boxing. But try to imagine that when done correctly and carefully that it could be something much like having a child or working on a math proof for years.
Sure. If cheating death is the path to that state for some people, that's understandable, and not really something new. I'm not judging him, this isn't some roundabout way to say people shouldn't free-solo. I'm literally trying to figure out if there's something else to it I'm missing, because the way it's stated makes it sound like there's something other than risk that's inherently different about free-soloing.
People are responding as if I said I don't understand why someone would do a risky behavior. I understand the high from cheating death. I don't understand doing something as risky as this if you aren't necessarily looking for that high, as the statement implied to me.
The alternative as I see it is that the author is reluctant to admit, or in denial about, some of the real reasons to free-solo. I didn't want to assume that without first checking my own assumptions.
– My old squad leader on NPR
Interviewer was aghast.
We're like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
An orgasm isn't called a little death (la petite mort) for nothing. I didnt know what it meant to live till I almost died. I'm definitely not a thrill seeker compared to free solo climbers. So call it what you will, I'm happier feeling life through the new senses I now have.
For the same reason why many would spent hours catching fish over a lazy weekend when much better fish is available for $5 in super-market.
For the same reason why someone would spend 5 hours trying to solve an interesting algorithms problem when one can easily find a solution on internet.
I am not a climber. I have fear of heights but I can understand it.
Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. Not stopping to place protection, not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag... It's just you on the wall. It takes most climber multiple days of painstaking climbing to summit Freerider. Alex did it in 4 hours.
Beyond all else it's just a unbelievable feat of human ability.
If you really want to understand just how impressive this was:
1: climb something (even if it's just 40 feet in a climbing gym) 2: Go to Yosemite and stand at the base of El Cap
I have no doubt it's impressive. I'm impressed. I'm not trying to diminish that in any way.
> you could say the same thing about top-roping vs lead climbing (placing protection from the ground up). Yes, top-roping is much safer, but the experience & sense of achievement is just not the same.
My question is why is the sense of achievement not the same. Is it because of the danger, or because it's inherently harder when you abstract danger from the situation?
> Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. ... not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag
That's the closest I've seen to a an actual differentiation. Here's the question: If you could Free-solo the same wall but with without (or greatly reduced) danger? That is, hypothetically assume there's tracks installed vertically in the wall, and a robot that you are attached to ascends with you, so if you fall the robot keeps you from falling far and getting hurt. Does that somehow dampen the feeling of achievement when completed? If the answer is yes, then I fail to see how it's not about cheating death in some part.
Which is fine! Just own that shit.
I'm not making a value judgement about people doing this, I'm just trying to understand that statement. Either it is about cheating death to some degree and the author is not being truthful to someone (us or himself) for whatever reason, or it isn't about cheating death and I don't understand it at all, so I'm asking for clarification. Either I understand it, even if I don't practice it, or I don't understand it, in which case I want to. It sounds like it's about cheating death (even if just to get to some desired state easier).
Free soloing versus geared climbing is almost comparable to free diving versus scuba. It's less safe, but removes so much overhead that it's a qualitatively different experience.
Honnold's free solos in Yosemite are frequently world speed records - often by a factor of 2 or more. He's climbing with a directness and lack of complication that's really hard to attain any other way.
There's the banal meaning, which is the opposite of dead.
Another meaning, which I think the article meant, is to explore the outer limits of your ability and ambition during your incredibly brief period of existence in the universe. That's living. :)
Edit: formatting.
Not too different from deciding to run a startup - small probability of success, certainty of exhaustion, possible alienation from family, etc. SV provides ropes for when you fail. Doesn't happen everywhere.
Climbers climb for the enjoyment of the experience, and to get to the top--not just to show that they can avoid falling. Alex is a rare elite climber, so he reaches for rare elite experiences and accomplishments.
"When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness... The thought left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear.
It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." [1]
[1] "The Spirit of St Louis", C. Lindberg, 1954. Quote was lightly edited for brevity.
Honnold's no thrill-seeker, he just prefers doing things alone.
Caldwell isn't just making a pretty-sounding claim, he's drawing a distinction between Honnold and other free soloists who were much more attuned to death, who seemed to be free soloing precisely for the adrenaline rush of survival. (Dean Potter is the classic example.)
So I think this is a claim that Honnold is soloing for the purity and experience of the thing, specifically as compared to some other soloists who are more focused on adrenaline and risk.
You say safety equipment. Others might say encumbrance, or unnatural performance enhancer, or laziness cheat. An apparatus that enables a lessening of difficulty, which eases the challenge.
When the goal is to engage a challenge, anything that renders the effort less challenging is a dilution of the very challenge as a whole.
Of course one must use safety equipment to examine the possibility of a raw attempt. But one builds on the experience, removing the unnecessary, wherever possible.
Of course it's easier to climb with a helmet and ropes, because those are the things that provide for obvious leverage to control the outcome. But who ever climbed a mountain because they wanted to do an easy thing?
The harder the task is, the better, in this context. The satisfaction of accomplishment is the goal, rather than the stress or all of the physiological byproducts or recognition that come as part of the package when completing the task.
Trying to do something, based on an intuition that an outcome is possible, when others lack the same intuition is the goal here.
This is not the same as fame. Fame is a derivative of the behavior of others, as outsiders to the activity.
To trust in one's intuition, and find that it is correct, is a fundamental aspect of human existence.
To divorce oneself of maximizing challenge, is to lie in bed all day as a shut in, and have your food delivered to you, in the most exaggerated sense of the comparison.
1. The sheer pleasure of doing something unaided - people enjoy doing crosswords without referring to computer screen that will tell them all 7 letter words ending in g-something-t.
2. The pleasure of feeling yourself as part of nature. The walk in the woods wearing shorts and a T-shirt, rather than racing through it on a motorcycle.
Basically different sports, rather than being about safety
With safety equipment, climbing El Cap takes 2-4 days, and you have to pull up several bags of equipment behind you with pulleys.
Without any safety equipment (i.e. free soloing) climbing El Cap takes a few hours and you just bring your body and some chalk.
Plus it's just a cool thing to do (at least IMO). It's like, the dude is so good at climbing he doesn't need ropes.
It takes hannold 4 hours. It will likely never be tried successfully by anyone else.
Most people don't, because we want to live life not be scared of it.
He's the same as the rest of us just on a different level.
I find it kinda easy to understand even if it's not my thing.
It really illustrates what a professional Alex is and how in-tune he is with his skills and his craft.
I'll offer a counter anecdote to yours: I was talking to a guy this weekend who had been a serious hang-glider for over a decade when he was younger. Every time a friend would have a problem, he analyzed it and saw that because of the way he operated he wouldn't make the same mistake and could therefore rationalize his continued participation in the sport. Eventually though, he had a problem, he made a mistake, it scared him, but it took fully two years of continuing to fly before he finally worked through it and decided that he could never eliminate enough risk and quit flying.
EDIT: I may have mischaracterized his response and removed "error-free" language and clarified with "eliminate enough risk".
Maybe he's right, but... self-assessments of skills are rarely useful. Survival bias and all that.
With climbs like El Cap, a tiny mistake could be something as simple as letting momentum carry you a few degrees too far, losing your focus for an instant, or even losing strength. Climbing is a cross between chess, long distance running and gymnastics and to free solo something like El Cap, you need to be world class at all of those...simultaneously.
Several years ago, when I had a total of three hours of climbing experience (one hour in a classroom and two hours on an indoor wall), I made a mistake ice climbing that could have been fatal if I had not been properly roped in. I was incredibly inexperienced, got incredibly scared and started gripping onto my tools for dear life. I was so scared that I put all of my strength into my grip. My forearms spasmed and I lost my grip. I was an ugly climber, so my belay partner had given me a little too much slack, so I fell about six or seven feet, thus leaving a very experienced climber's very expensive tools in an ice wall several feet above me. Rather than get lowered and try to recover his tools the proper way, I decided to use crampons and my gloved hands to climb the ice like I would climb a rock. It was an incredibly sunny day, so the waterfall was a little wet and that was likely the most miserable seven feet that I have ever climbed.
In retrospect, it's a funny story about a noob getting scared and I had to buy several rounds of beer when we got back to civilization. But, that's an example of losing focus and doing something incredibly foolish that could have had tragic consequences.
The particular route Honnold climbed (Freerider) is hardly "cutting edge" (at 5.13-, it is roughly eight or nine grade levels below the absolute hardest rock climbs in the world), but the most difficult section (the "crux" in climbing jargon) is notoriously insecure, meaning that even skilled climbers find the movement difficult. Honnold himself spent time on the route on a rope learning this sequence (and others).
I seem to recall him saying in it one of the big risks is suddenly being overcome with fear or vertigo from the height.
Granted, I'm a mediocre climber (can lead 10c/d), but falling every once and a while is pretty common for most of us.
The rock can break off ("chossy" climbs, Pinnacles is notorious for this), but that's a less common occurrence than Hollywood would lead one to believe.
If true, that would explain a lot.
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
[1]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mi...
People like Honnold are pretty rare.
Usually my eyes dry out and I end up with smeared vision and halos around light sources until the eyes regain their moisture.
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-6317-special-edi...
I'm way outside the bubble of climbing and stuff, so I was surprised to see people sleep up there. I don't know how I'd relax enough to fall asleep :)
Can't ever remember feeling this tense just looking at pix.
You can get a taste of it from a number of clips that are in the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86TpaSBcWw
https://www.amazon.com/Vertical-World-Yosemite-Collection-Ph...
It's a documentary about Carl Boenish and the history of BASE jumping, which is closely related to some of the events and places portrayed in Valley Uprising.
It would be one thing if he were just incredibly bold and daring and were getting away with it; instead, its clear that his method is a very slow, methodical process in which he manages to practically guarantee that he will have a safe and effortless climb. Even in the interviews after this, it is clear that he is committed to his routine and managed to set-up this climb in such a way that it simply represented a comfortable, natural step in his evolution as a climber. He talks about it almost matter-of-factly.
Truly awe-inspiring.
Except they weren't.
Honnold and his team very deliberately kept this thing quiet. Other than the crew and close friends, no one knew of the ascent until it was done and announced.
Which is brilliant for exactly the reasons you mention.
Fortunately I think the climbing media are a pretty sound bunch and did the decent thing by leaving him to get on with it in his own time.
2. A rescuer is slung onto the route near the incapacitated climber's location using a helicopter long-line. They prepare the climber for extraction and then they are both slung off by the helicopter at one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_Flight_Rescue_Syste...
It's relatively easier to quit a vanilla free climb.
Yea I have no idea actually.
Honnold is special in that regard[1].
[1]: http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
For example, in climbing where you have protection a much better lesson to extrapolate is that you will fail, and to be prepared for that at all times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_solo_climbing has a list of free solo climbers. A large number of them have died.
Listen... soloing is obviously very dangerous. Nobody who is out there soloing as a pastime is unaware of this. But comparing soloing to trying to jump gorges on rocket slides isn't doing justice to a complicated and nuanced subject.
Soloing is a personal decision. And it is usually carefully made. People who solo regularly are usually not adrenaline junkies. They're not thrill seekers. They're careful and methodical and prepared. They have probably solo down-climbed more total mileage than you can imagine.
Calling Alex a special person is fair and appropriate. But he's not a daredevil.
If free soloing is not usually thrilling, or adrenaline inducing, but something you approach with care, methods, and preparation... what's the point of the induced-risk? Why not take on a similar challenge that's more difficult, minus the non-trivial probability of dead, like most other climbers do?
Gamers find themselves introducing more and more arbitrary challenges to make their accomplishments more difficult to achieve. The difference between gamers and free soloers, is that when gamers fail, they don't destroy, to various extents, the lives of all the people that loved and supported them as a side-effect of their failure, all because they thought it was a good idea to introduce deadly activities into their lives.
How is this not daredevil behavior?
Question: do you still free solo? My impression is that there are plenty of ex-free soloists who are still alive (Peter Croft being one of the most notable). I suppose Croft still does some ropeless stuff high in the Sierras, but he seems to stick to a rope when doing more technical climbs. There are, however, fewer older free soloists who still solo at or close to their limits.
You are spot-on about the soloists attitude, however. The NPR article leaves out the fact that Honnold attempted the solo previously, but downclimbed because conditions were right.
Why solo, then?
> free solo climbing will kill you one day
> [...] [Wikipedia] has a list of free solo
> climbers.
Paul Preuss (October 3, 1913) died during an attempt to make the first ascent of the North Ridge of the Mandlkogel free solo, fell a thousand feet
John Gill, alive at 80
Peter Croft, alive at 60
Alain Robert, alive at 54
Catherine Destiville, alive at 53
Steph Davis, alive at 43
Alex Honnold, alive at 31
Dan Osmond, died at 45, not free soloing
Dean Potter, died at 43, not free soloing
Michael Reardon, died at 43, not free soloing
John Bachar died free soloing at 52
It's a very small field, not many people make a discipline of it.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bubendorfer there is no English page for him
He free solo'ed the south wall of the Aconcagua within a day in 1991.
But serious question : of the four top people alive, any data on when they stopped climbing ? I would guess that would correlate with longevity.
I also recall reading somewhere that a disproportionate number of elite scientists and researchers in the 1930's - 60's were mountain climbers.
Auer's free solo of Marmolada 'via Attraverso il Pesce' is something in the same league as Alex's Freeride.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/sports/clif-bar-drops-spo...
Personally, I do think that free soloists like Honnold to some extent damage the reputation of the sport by making it appear inaccessible and irresponsibly risky, while the reality for sport climbers is that the sport is really fairly safe with proper training and equipment.
Not trying to make this an attack either, I just see a lot of parallels elsewhere in other sports -- and it seems a little hypocritical to me that the climbing community would even be divided over this.
Furthermore, sticking with the BC skiing example, many people (resort skiers) would see it as irresponsibly risky. But we know that BC skiers take all the preparations they can, from monitoring avalanche reports and forecasts, taking training classes, learning how to probe and escape avalanches with partners. Similarly, Alex very much spends a lot of time preparing for his free-solos, in all aspects of planning -- which makes it much more calculated then "irresponsibly" risky to me.
Honnold's solo of El Cap is arguably the greatest outdoor sports feat ever. Of course it's going to be publicised.
Couldn't disagree more with this mindset.
How on earth do you practice it? You can practice bench pressing by pressing a small weight. You can practice boxing by sparring.
You can't just climb up to a deadly height - which isn't even very much, as people regularly die from falling out windows - and work your way up from there.
You can't just do a little batsuit jump, either. You have to be going fast for the suit to make a difference.
Most free solo climbers climb with a rope for the majority of their climbs, although exceptions like Paul Preuss exist. They often rehearse free solo projects many times on rope before going free solo, although there a notable cases of 'onsight' free solos like Hansjörg Auer's 'Weg durch den Fisch'. In the case discussed here, Alex Honnold apparently climbed Freerider around a dozen times on rope and rehearsed the crux pitch many more times. He did take several falls on the route, one of them spraining his ankle last summer.
My ratios may be wrong, adjust to taste.
When hiking King's Peak in Utah, my group was plodding along with backpacks for a week-long camp, with food, tents, sleeping gear, and various safety gear. We were passed by a guy in shorts with a water filter bottle who was running to the summit. We met him again many hours later on his way back, when we had not yet reached our day one base camp.
The freedom and purity of just being there with the mountain was compelling, but requires a whole different set of preparation than I have given it.
It's not just removing a helmet, or doing a daredevil risk, it's transforming the experience. Because he wasn't staying over night, he didn't need a tent or sleeping gear. He didn't need a lot of food. He didn't need a backpack to carry it all. Everything he could leave behind allowed him to move faster, improving his experience.
I don't know much about F1 races but I guess say a fairer comparison would be doing time trials alone on the track versus actual races where you risk the collision with other drivers. The former is safer but the latter is more interesting, not just because it's more dangerous.
Maybe this video gives you a feeling for why free solo is romanticized and worshiped so much in the climbing community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz5w7q5GHuc&t=3m25s
Sure he's skilled; sure he is strategic. What I want to know is could he do this over and over again without dying? My guess is not. His odds would probably be higher than most others' but still risky.
But in the end, if it's what he wants to do, so be it. To me it's interesting but not something I'd like to do, regardless of the risk. Spending my time climbing rock walls is just not appealing to me, even if it's out in the wilderness, which I love.
What an awesome story for a climber: "I was woken up on the wall by the first guy to free solo El Cap"
Check #6 here: http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-6317-special-edi...
So for those of us who know next to nothing about rock climbing, what's the difference here? Apparently Caldwell & Jorgeson were using ropes for safety although not for the climbing per se (hence why it was freeclimbing?) So this guy does it all alone, without any safety ropes, and in frickin 4 hours? Waaaat?
Or was it a different route? The Caldwell & Jorgeson stories mention "Dawn Wall", is that something else than Honnold climbed now?
They climbed different routes. The Dawn Wall route had not previously been free climbed, it had only been aid climbed before (meaning climbers pulled on gear to help get through the most difficult sections). Honnold climbed a route called Freerider which is easier than the Dawn Wall but still very very very difficult.
Honnold free-solo'ed a (different) route called Freerider (also on El Cap), which is still stupidly difficult and would be a career highlight for most people to climb at all, likely over the period of several days.
Comparing it to the Dawn Wall climb completely misses the point and illustrates how misunderstood the sport is. Freeing a previously seemingly impossible-to-climb route is not the same kind of achievement as solo'ing an established route that, in the case of Honnold, he'd already climbed a dozen times or more.
They're both astounding, but for different reasons. It's a shame the media is comparing the two, as it would seem to diminish Jorgeson and Caldwell's achievement.
This also explains why Alex can climb it so much faster. No ropes to worry about on the way up.
Check out the movie valley uprising on Netflix if you want to learn more.
Aid Climbing = using ropes to assist with going up
Free Climbing = only using yourself to climb up, but still using ropes to catch your fall
Free soloing = climbing with no protection or assistance
> Or was it a different route?
Different route on the same mountain. They did the 'Dawn Wall' (which Honnold has also done), and his recent record was on 'Freerider'.
Here's the dawn wall: http://www.rockandice.com/dawn-wall-el-cap-yosemite-topo. Don't see a good topo for Freerider yet.
Edit: Turns out I was mis-remembering on the dawn wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold#Selected_notable_... has a list of his notable climbs.
[edit: fixed Adam's name]
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athlete...
Free-climb - uses ropes for safety in the event of a fall, but does not use ropes for assistance climbing.
Free-solo - no ropes at all. Just hands, feet and chalk, basically. IOW, you fall, you die.
Honnold's free solo is amazing because he did not make a mistake and have to use the rope. Every move was executed perfectly.
before alex's climb this week, it would be totally reasonable to make the claim that el cap will never get free-soloed. it's too sustained, the only feasible routes are too insecure. no one, expert or not, would ever get shouted down for making that claim, even among a cohort of dreamers who all want to live the impossible. among that cohort, free solo climbing isn't all that common; maybe one in a hundred climbers have ever climbed a difficult route taller than 100 feet without a rope. which makes him alien even within his sport.
honnold just landed on the moon. what he did doesn't require any of the qwerks of convention that accompany most big-wall free climbs. everyone immediately understands the idea of scaling a cliff without a rope. everyone can even try it. el cap is a ten minute walk from the car. but in case the context of the climb is unclear, this is the kind of feat that only comes along every few generations.
maybe I'm overstating it. from one perspective, this climb was another incremental step on honnold's journey. all of his previous ascents were mind-bending as well: moonlight buttress in zion, the regular northwest face of half dome, el sendero luminoso in el potrero chico, mexico. besides, technical rock climbing as we understand it today is only two or three generations old at most, and it's already produced this monster of an achievement. we may see more in our lifetime. I just wouldn't bet on it.
"Considering a truly vertical drop, Mount Thor on Baffin Island in Arctic Canada is often considered the highest at 1370 m (4500 ft) high in total (the top 480 m (1600 ft) is overhanging), and is said to give it the longest vertical drop on Earth at 1,250 m (4,100 ft). However, other cliffs on Baffin Island, such as Polar Sun Spire in the Sam Ford Fjord, or others in remote areas of Greenland may be higher."
I would guess many of those are at heights or in climates that make climbing without gear a no-go because, even assuming you don't need gloves, you would need too much clothing to stay warm.
The difficulty is also important. Though several levels below Honnold's ability, 5.12d on the Yosemite Decimal System is very hard.
on the other hand, within the alpinism/rock climbing community, Everest isn't actually even seen as the Mt Everest of climbing. if you read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", he elaborates on this. the commercialism associated with the mountain, the way it is treated by guided parties, and the way it is seen as a bucket list item that anyone with the means to hire guides can haul themselves up, all serve to detract from the appeal of the mountain to the "true" adventure mountaineer. I say that a little toungue-in-cheek, though. if any alpinist had the opportunity to climb everest far from the crowds and without the $50k price tag, they would probably leap at it immediately. the point is, even Everest's stature has fallen in prominence among many alpinists, in favor of more technical peaks (though exceptions are readily available). it's been this way since the 60's and 70's.
the 60's and 70's were the time that yosemite climbing began to really take off. warren harding climbed the nose (the most prominent and popular route on el capitan) in 1958, royal robbins climbed the sheer northwest face of half dome in 1957. from then on, legends like chuck pratt, yvon chouinard, john long, jim bridwell, john bachar, peter croft, ron kauk, and lynn hill, all made their impact on the cliffs of yosemite. many of them went on to climb in the greater ranges of the world. yosemite for a time was a melting pot of the finest pratitioners of the sport--until you could no longer spend an entire summer in camp 4 because of overcrowding.
fast forward to modern day, it's still the proving ground for so many rock climbers and alpinists around the world. to climb the most prominent cliff in the most historically meaningful place still has power that captivates. some of it is its accessibility, some of it is the beauty of the mountain, and some of it is the difficulty, but much of it is simply legend.
and DEATH.
In all seriousness, Alex's mental and physical conditioning to achieve this goal should be lauded, examined, written about, and taught.
The guy is simply rad. I couldn't stop laughing at this:
A lighter moment came later, Honnold said, when he passed some climbers who had spent the night on a ledge. He did his best not to wake them.
"I woke up one guy and he sort of said, 'Oh, hey.' Then when I went by, I think he discreetly woke up his buddies because when I looked down they were all three standing there like 'What the f?'*
Imagine yourself and your buddies 3/4 up the mountain and you see a guy coming down solo. It must take a minute to process the thought that he must have climbed up. wtf did I just see? Oh shit!!
Anyone have any idea how often free climbers end up falling and needing their ropes? Could many good free climbers do what Honnold did, but just like the added bits of safety?
Honnold has climbed this route with ropes many times and no doubt fell while doing it. He was well aware that he was capable of completing the climb without a fall.
"Many" people climb that route with protection.
However, to better put this in perspective, it is plausible this feat will not be repeated for decades, if ever. I would qualify this as the greatest sports achievement of all time.
To be able to approach it as "four hours of light exercise" as Honnold did is an incredible feat in its own right, even before the whole certain-death-for-one-mistake bit gets factored in.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/us/california-today-alex-...
Honnold left chalk marks on key holds on freerider to ensure he grabbed the right pieces.
Should, or shouldn't, is all theory, though.
Last year, a friend of mine who introduced me to climbing fell to his death on a trad climb. I don't know what happened, but I assume his protection equipment slipped out of where he placed it.
That's wickedly funny :) but alas I'm guilty of that too.
I think he should just stop now
Worth a watch.
Yeah, I guess that just about describes the guys career.
Fun question: which people in other disciplines have had the same shattering effect in their field ? I can think of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov in Chess.
But an awesome achievement, nevertheless.
But when Dawn Wall was freed a couple of years ago it got a lot of coverage in the mainstream media [1]. I wonder whether that would be the case if, instead, it was done a year or so from now. Or would the fact that Caldwell and Jorgeson used ropes and protection mean that it was no longer extreme enough to be considered remarkable. Even though it was the outcome of a long-term project, would they have to solo it to get the same level of mainstream attention now?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/sports/el-capitans-dawn-w...
It makes me wonder how responsible it is to sit in a chair and program all day, distorting your body into a twisted fat shadow of itself.
I think our profession also comes with physical risks, and they sure aren't as rewarding as rock-climbing is.
Then I remember I have a fear of falling to my death. It's a vicious cycle.
There's an interesting progression with regard to fear in rock climbing. Bouldering is fairly limited, fear-wise (if you don't count highballs). It's a great way for anyone to get into climbing, and just have fun.
Top-roping a wall is pretty benign as well, since if you fall it's usually just a couple feet. But the height can will still cause beginners to pause, but you should get over it fairly quickly. You will be too focused on the next move to think about the height, most of the time.
Then you progress to lead climbing, where you pull the rope up with you (attached to your harness), and clip into quickdraws. Lead falls are much farther than top rope, in general, and you have the added physical challenge of finding a good position to do the clipping. This added physical challenge leads to mental drain as you have to gauge "can I make it to the next quickdraw and have enough energy to find a position to clip without falling?" The more you move up, the farther you're going to fall..
Then you have traditional (trad) climbing, where you place protection into the rock, in the form of cams and nuts and what not, and you clip into those. The physical challenge with finding a position to put protection is similar to lead, but now you have to hold the position longer, and after it's placed, you have the added mental strain of "will that piece of gear actually hold if I fall on it?"
And then, you have Honnold here, with free soloing. You fall you die (or get super messed up).
When I went from top roping to lead, it was like starting over again. The level I was climbing at plummeted (on lead), due to the mental game. Nowadays when I top rope, it's almost a joke (fear-wise). I can fly up a route on top rope, and then struggle up the same route on lead.
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One of the most interesting things about the sport, to me, is the whole mental challenge, and any climber will tell you the same. You are not just challenging yourself physically, but mentally. We all have to fight the fear, our weakness of mind.
It's not clear there is. Consider this part of the article:
Yet Honnold ended up scared, really scared, on Corrugation Corner. He clung to the big, friendly holds. “I overgripped the shit out of it,” he says. Obviously, though, he didn’t give up after that first experience. Instead, Honnold donned what he called “mental armor” and crossed the threshold of fear again and again. “For every hard pitch I’ve soloed I’ve probably soloed a hundred easy pitches,” he says.
One by one, acts that had seemed outrageous to him began to seem not so crazy: soloing moves in which he hangs only by his fingers, for example, with his feet swinging in the open air, or, as he did in June on a notorious route called The Complete Scream, climbing ropeless up a pitch that he had never ascended before. In 12 years of free solos, Honnold has broken holds, had his feet slip, gotten off-route into unknown terrain, been surprised by animals like birds and ants, or just suffered “that fraying at the edges, you know, where you’ve just been up in the void too long.” But because he managed to deal with these problems, he gradually dampened his anxieties about them.
So was he born this way, or through repeated exposure did he train himself to be this way?
Or, more likely, is it a bit of both?
The article certainly seems to suggest that we can all improve on our ability to manage fear... perhaps not to the degree Alex has, but enough so to allow us to tackle challenges that might otherwise seem insurmountable.
Go to a climbing gym and learn how climbing works. You'll see there's nothing much to worry about and you can focus on having fun. Climbing is the best thing there is, in my horribly biased opinion.
"One way to measure the greatness of any sporting achievement might be to consider the amount of time that passes before it’s achieved again. New world records are set in virtually every single Olympics. Every year brings new sports stars who stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. Look at someone like Usain Bolt, who has a dominant record in the 100-meter dash that might last for generations. The difference is, lots of people can run the 100 meters (albeit not quite as fast as Bolt).
Honnold, meanwhile, is performing in an event that no one else is even qualified, much less willing, to participate."
http://eveningsends.com/is-alex-honnolds-el-cap-free-solo-th...
These are great pictures indeed:
http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-6317-special-edi...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OusYaNWBy08
In a typical Rogan style, it's a pretty relaxed and "real" chat, about girls, shitting your pants etc. Gives a little more insight into how top athletes like Alex think and approach their craft.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2190306/why-alex-honnolds-free...
Alex has a such a unique set of skills, which he has not only identified but honed to their best level of execution. It is hard for me to now simultaneously feel awe and disbelief.
That same spirit that Caesar's men harnessed to build a bridge across the Rhine in 10 days, that led NASA to get to the moon in a decade, that led to the empire state building being erected in slightly over a year.
(Note: I'm assuming he'd have died if he ever made a mistake on this climb)
For example, in the National Geographic[1] story it mentions that he attempted the climb in November but "but backed off after less than an hour of climbing". I assume he hit some threshold of small mistakes, bad conditions, and negative vibes that added up to, "not today." But he got down and lived to climb another day.
The interview with Tommy Caldwell linked elsewhere in the comments mentions that he even fell once while practicing for this climb, "he had taken a fall on a practice lap of the Freerider and badly sprained his ankle."
So probably less that he makes NO mistakes, and more that none of his mistakes have meant a deadly fall yet.
[1]: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athlete...
https://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetvi...
http://eveningsends.com/is-alex-honnolds-el-cap-free-solo-th...
that is a completely different thing than just going up because he's in a good mood and thinks he can do it.
as far as the objective risks, they include loose rock, broken holds, wet rock, birds spooking you, base jumpers spooking you, hornets, climbers dropping things by accident on you.
What he did was impressive to be sure, but I wonder how many people inspired by it will attempt it themselves, only to fall to their deaths.
I imagine it's like the choice for slaves in ancient Rome between being a house slave or becoming a gladiator. Fame and riches maybe ... death maybe.
Why does society accept this behavior as normal?
The welfare state will bear the cost if he lands hard and is paralyzed. If he dies, his loved ones will bear the cost.
For all this, what do we get in concrete terms? The knowledge that a human has risked his life for something so meaningless? Some "sweet photos, dude".
Madness really. How does everyone accept this as normal?
People die all the time doing much more mundane things
> Is it for our amusement?
Awe and inspiration are the first ones that came to my mind actually. Nobody manipulated him to consider doing this since 2009. Rock climbing is clearly his life.
> You take someone, you give him sponsors, you make him think risking his life to make a living this way is his own choice? Between fame and money, and a life working as a clerk in some office ... what choice could there be.
I work with genius doctors every day at Google. Truly great people choose their lives, weather it's quietly solving problems in an office, or scaling massive cliffs without gear. People who aren't in control of their own lives tend to think other people's lives are out of control as well.
Just do what you love... Passing judgement at things we don't understand is such a waste of human potential
Eh, no one thinks this is normal. Hence all the publicity.
You have to distinguish between brave acts which have a moral purpose. And brave acts which are just displays of bravado.
Bravery to save a person from a fire ... that is worthy of celebration.
Bravery to jump between two tall buildings to impress your bozo friends below ... impressive ... but any society that makes a point celebrating this in its culture might see some problematic developments in how its youth view risk.
or you have to abseil.
Because "a person who is a hacker , only a hacker, and nothing but a hacker, cannot be much of a hacker."
What would happen if people would start posting here unrelated sports news, or pop music, or motivational quotes, in the name of the quote you mention? Or is it okay if it's only from time to time? What's the ratio?