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Comment by aeorgnoieang | Hacker News Reader

> ... the high rate of death for free-solo climbers.

Honnold made an interesting point in his latest (?) appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast: none of the top free solo climbers has died on a hard free solo climb (and many didn't die free solo climbing, or even climbing, at all).

And of course lots of people die climbing with ropes and protection too, even highly skilled and experience climbers.

Most people would probably consider any significant climb to be 'too risky'. As I disagree, I don't think I can reasonably fault anyone else for choosing some other higher level of risk as being 'too risky'.

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I would have to see some statistics before I would find that argument convincing that free solo climbing is just one of many risky activities.

Also I don’t find it very compelling if climbers tend to die on easier free solo climbs rather than harder ones. I don’t really care what the grade was on a climb if it kills me.

In that same podcast Alex said that he had more or less stopped soloing easy routes, reserving solos for rare big accomplishment climbs, which makes a lot of sense to me. As a long time climber, I can't think of a single climber who died on an extremely difficult solo, but can easily name a half dozen or more elite climbers who died on easy terrain.

I think this makes sense for an advanced free soloist like Alex - but does not invalidate soling easy climbs for everyone, part of the skill of free soloing is in training the mind, keeping control and conditioning yourself with the feeling of fear. You have to work up to that, and choosing lower grades helps you build those strengths - but continuing to climb them once they feel too easy (mentally), will leave you with relaxed focus, which is of course deadly.

this makes perfect sense to me...

there really aren't many that have died, maybe a couple dozen, so not much stat to draw info from. BUT they aren't always on the hardest routes, so the law of averages would dictate that they die on "average" difficulty routes.

I'm necromancing posts here but can't help it... Something else to keep in mind is what grade is viable to solo necessitates that on average they will be _very_ easy. No one solos at their hardest grade - to be clear, what Alex has soloed _is_ very hard and an incredible achievement, but in terms climbing with safety not super hard, and far under Alex's ability in absolute terms.

> I don’t really care what the grade was on a climb if it kills me.

You shouldn't climb at all then. People die just scrambling too. Even hiking can be dangerous.

Do you wear a helmet when you drive a car? That might actually be sensible. It's probably just too 'weird' for almost anyone to seriously consider.

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