The answer is that you do fall. Actually, you fall on the exact route you're going to free solo usually! The normal way of climbing (as opposed to "free soloing"), is with ropes. You have places on the rock where you can anchor ropes, you have someone belaying you, and at any point, if you fall, it's really not a big deal. Climbing ropes are dynamic (have a lot of stretch), so falling on them is really safe feeling. It doesn't hurt at all, it's fine to fall over and over again, and the equipment used is relatively safe. It makes it so you're able to get a really good feel for your own limits on routes, which obviously helps in figuring out if you can free solo it.
So, how do you build up enough confidence to free solo? You climb the route with ropes for months. You make sure you can go up the route without ever needing the ropes reliably. You steel yourself. And then you do it.
When is it safe to try for real? Depends on your risk tolerance and confidence. For most people, it's never safe enough to be worth the adrenaline.
> One wrong move and you die.
Not to be glib and dismissive, but one wrong move driving 70 on a highway and you die too.
There's a ton of ways to die, and we accept some as very normalized, and others as not. They mostly align with danger (free soloing is really dangerous, driving somewhat dangerous), but there's some things we do so much we forget they're actually dangerous. Driving doesn't seem dangerous to most people that drive. Climbing with ropes starts to not feel dangerous really quickly. Free soloing? If you do it enough, it starts to feel not that dangerous, especially on a route that feels "easy" for your current climbing level.
What impresses me most about Alex and other free soloists isn't so much their ability to keep their head together while climbing, but their ability to keep their head together while lying awake in bed at night, thinking about what they just did, and what they plan to do again tomorrow.
It's no surprise, of course. Free soloing is pretty much the most riveting thing you could watch on a screen, whereas every other form of climbing is frankly quite boring to watch if you don't know the sport intimately. Mostly, it's people pushing their own personal limits, without any risk whatsoever, on things they've aren't visually all that spectacular.
Here's an example of what most of us do:
I defy a non-climber to make it through 3 minutes of watching me fall off the same 15 foot tall rock. Climbers, however, will notice that there are harder moves on that stone than anything you'll find in Alex's big free solo videos. They'll also know, of course, that Alex would likely be able to send this thing on his first try, because this is well within his limit.
Those two facts, reconciled together with him having practiced the easy route in the solo video every bit as much as I did this little boulder problem, give you an idea of how unlikely it is that he would fall off it.
Sadly, that's all lost on non-climbers, who just see a spectacular thing happening way up in the sky, stripped of all context.
It's a cool sport, by the way, go give it a try some time and I bet you'll get hooked.
It’s not riveting to me at all. I can hardly watch. I can understand the allure of doing it, but watching it without the knowledge of knowing I can do it (like for existing routes I’ve already done) is hard, constantly feel like they’ll fall, even though you know the video wouldn’t be published if it were so :/
What was your success rate after the first time you completed it? Was it one of those things that after you've done it you can pretty much do it every time?
Sometimes you’ll come back to add a sit start to a problem that you’ve done in the past, and in that case I’ve surprised myself on occasion by being able to do the (previously) hard stand start over and over again on demand. Other times, such as this one, the upper part becomes the crux again, since now you need to do it after tiring yourself out on the new lower bit.
But yes, it’s not uncommon to dial in the occasional hard problem as a party piece. There are a few fun ones in the forest that I make a point of repeating every time I’m in the area.
Nice work by the way, Font is the best!
To a phenomenally accomplished climber like Honnold, a 5.11 route is like climbing a ladder. That's hard to imagine as a normal flightless human who hasn't spent his/her life training the relevant muscles. But if you think of a ladder as a 5.1 route, you're already on the path.
That said, "3rd classing it" is definitely not for me.
The routes that he free soloes are also considered relatively easy to intermediate in skill level, well within his skill level.
The really incredible part of his free soloes is just how long his body can last. It's Olympic levels of endurance.
Even fewer will get to a point where they might conceivably flash or onsight 5.12d (<0.5% of climbers if I had to guess)
I doubt there are more than 10,000 people alive who would consider free soloing 5.12d at all, and I don't think anyone else has free soloed a 5.12d big wall route.
Style matters too. Are you good at steep overhung routes, slabby vertical routes that require lots of balance, crack climbing, or even off widths. It is all kinda relative. I am a tall guy so powerful long moves are my preferred style. I have friends a foot shorter than me that can crack climb way better than I can. It is a great sport and there are accomplishments to be made at every grade and every step of your climbing journey. Try hard and people with respect you regardless of the grade.
“Requires considerable knowledge of ropework, knots, and protection to climb. Although "free-soloing", or climbing without a rope, is admired and even revered by some as the purest form of climbing, it is a rare sort of person that enjoys climbing significant class 5 pitches without a rope.”
Class 5 is subdivided in 5.1 through 5.15, with ¿some/each? having a further a through d rating.
The route he took is rated 5.12d, maybe 5.13a (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14500208), so that’s highly elite. Free-soloing is easier than soling with safety ropes in the sense that you won’t have to haul up gear :-) but of course a lot harder mentally.
I think ratings ignore length of the climb, and that matters, especially in this case, where there’s little to no time to rest.
You have to be confident that you’ll be physically and mentally fit enough for the entire thing (climbing down is more difficult, so you’re committing going all the way fairly soon). For Honnold, that meant almost four hours.
For a dedicated sport climber the route would be very difficult but doable.
This is the route: https://www.mountainproject.com/route/106261545/freerider
30 pitches at 5.13a.
That is very very difficult.
Keep in mind:
1. Very few climbers can even climb one pitch of 5.13 (maybe top 1%)
2. Even fewer could attempt 30 pitches of 5.13 over several days.
3. Like maybe only dozens in the world could attempt 30 pitches of 5.13 in single day
4. Only 1 person ever in history that has attempted that without a rope.
See the topo here: https://m.huberbuam.de/files/hb/content/topos/HB-Topo-Yosemi...
(Not to diminish the athletic achievement at all. As you say, sending even a single pitch of 5.13a puts you in the top tier of amateur climbers.)
Physically the feat is comparable to running an ultra marathon, but to maintain the necessary mental focus for the entire push is beyond my comprehension.
This film opens with a testimonial from Alex Honnold for Marc-André Leclerc - whom the film is about.
It's a fascinating character study.
He literally went back and did it all again after that one part when he felt like he was in danger. Almost anyone else would say "It happened once, it might be bad next time" but he wanted a run where he did everything perfect and didn't feel like luck saved him.
He is not like other people.
So to be statistical about it, the difficulty level for him was at the edge of 1 standard deviation of the mean of his capability. Maybe that's enough margin that he could detect when he's really in trouble.
"In 2016, he was subjected to functional magnetic resonance imaging scans that revealed that, unlike other high sensation seekers, his amygdala barely activates when watching disturbing images. He however confesses feeling fear occasionally. Through imagination and practice, he has desensitized himself to most fearful situations."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold
https://nautil.us/the-strange-brain-of-the-worlds-greatest-s...