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Comment by bruthafez | Hacker News Reader

The idea that honnold is the world's greatest climber is patently absurd and false, he's just the only dude willing to do the crazy solos without a harness -- aka the world's most risk taking climber. But "greatest climber?" Lol give me a break lolololol

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In your haste to be derisive you missed the adjective "solo" in the title. While I would agree Alex is probably not in the running for greatest climber, I think one could make the case that he is the greatest solo climber, and or at least the greatest living solo climber.

I did not miss the word "solo." Honnold is not the worlds greatest solo climber by a Longshot. He's the greatest "free solo" climber. A ton of solo climbers are way better than him, they just use ropes

You're getting caught up in technical terminology whereas this article is written for non-climbers. Those of us that have done the activity know the difference between solo and free solo, but in the same way that you can't expect articles for non-climbers to get the distinction between sport and trad right (climbing is a sport, so it's all sport climbing, right?), You can't expect them to get the solo/free-solo thing right either.

To be fair, my first guess from the title was Reinhold Messner. Different kind of solo. (And perhaps a better candidate for having strange biology?)

Would you please not post snarky dismissals to Hacker News? Even if you're right, you damage the community by doing this—and it's fragile, so we all need to take care of it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's fair. Sorry dude ! :)

Both the article and the hyperlink on HN are titled greatest solo climber.

He's not the greatest solo climber g, he's the greatest solo climber who doesn't use ropes.

You're making it sound like the ropes are some minor incidental detail. Usain Bolt wasn't the fastest sprinter who didn't use a motorcycle.

The rope doesn't make the climb easier — it just makes mistakes less costly.

The rope makes it much easier. If you've never climbed you can't understand the psychological factor of "being protected" while climbing. If you climb "roped" at a certain grade, you might be capable of free soloing several levels below that, if at all.

Similar to your mental state due to other things. If you're having a bad day or distracted, your climbing will be greatly affected, sometimes severely.

Yeah, sorry, I wasn't clear — that was meant as "this is probably what GP is getting at". Of course, even if the rope doesn't make the climb technically easier, the psychological aspect of knowing you can't afford to fail makes it a very different kind of hard.

Walking in a straight line on the sidewalk is very easy. Walking on a narrow ledge somewhere very high up isn't.

I’m no climber, but I have to imagine that the weight of knowing a mistake won’t in any way be mitigated by safety devices might actually make the activity harder. It seems like it would require another degree of concentration to shut out the fear of grievous injury or death, to keep the fear under wraps.

Reading comprehension is a thing.

"Greatest Solo Climber"

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