The ledge he’s standing on looks like its already detached and ready to fall
No. I’m not going there.
“Because it’s there” is not sufficiant reason for climbing a mountain.
Row, row, row your boat?
It’s a good enough reason for me.
The good thing about this is that you don’t have to do this
Thank God I’m not stupid enough to do this LOL.
On a scale of “1 to NOPE” I rate this an “absolutely the fuck not, what is wrong with you?”
nonononononono. nope. non. nein.
That’s a nope for me, dawg.
He’s got a harness on but it doesn’t look like it’s connected to anything.
I don’t think that’s a harness I think it’s a chalk bag. You can see the bag just behind his hand.
Isn’t the chalk bag connected to the harness?
To the contrary: You can sometimes recognise beginners by observing that they have their chalk bag attached to their harness with a carabiner. Usually, you attach the chalk bag with a strap around your waist. The harness is reserved for protection gear (nuts, cams, etc.)
This guy is Alex Honnold, famous for free soloing (climbing without a rope). He has a movie called “Free Solo” where he solos El Capitan, it’s a good movie if you’re interested :)
I always wear mine on my harness but I usually sport climb and rarely trad climb where I’d need nuts and cams.
I was maybe a bit rough when saying “beginner”, I’m probably should have said “people with little outdoor-climbing experience”, sorry about that.
But, if you care what others at the gym think (you shouldn’t, just let your climbing speak for itself), it’s definitely a thing that people with their chalk bag attached to their harness with a carabiner (even worse, a safety carabiner), are quickly assumed to be beginners. At least it looks like they’ve done little or no outdoor climbing. But again: Don’t give a shit what people think, just have fun climbing :)
I’m pretty sure there isn’t an indoor climbing gym in 100 miles of me.
Same.
Just a belt I think. That guy is a big-time freeclimber
He’s actually known for free soloing.
This is a well known picture of Alex Honnold free-soloing the route. Free-soloing means he is climbing without a rope. He has a chalk bag on a belt, but no harness or rope. There is a documentary that features this called “Free Solo”, if you could imagine. It’s worth a watch if you don’t have anything pressing going on.
Is this the guy with the brain defect who doesn’t know what fear is.
if you don’t have anything pressing going on
Gonna go out on a ledge here and say it’s worth a watch regardless. It won an Oscar for best doc as well as a bunch of other awards. IMO it’s easily one of the top 5 docs of the last decade.
Very stressful to watch for some though. My wife loved it, but her hands were dripping with sweat from stress throughout most of the movie
One fart and I’m dead
When I say I’m not afraid of heights; what I really mean is that I’m not abnormally afraid of heights.
*bonus edit: the legendary Dan Osmond. Died not long after, when a rope snapped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCByLWtM7y4
Misread:
The legendary Dan Osmond who died not long after his rope snapped.
Two meanings. Sharing a goal…
The fatal jump
Please mark this NSFL.
Is it really as steep as shown in the picture? The trees seem to lean a little bit to the left.
Either way. Hell no.
It’s the sheer face of half dome. It may not be exactly 90° upright but it basically is.
Oh you’re right. If I tilt my laptop so that the horizon is flat, it’s not as steep. (but still… too steep for me.)
See the pic somebody else linked. The horizon is not flat in that area :)
Just by looking at this I have a panic attack. Fuck this shit.
Same. Yikes.
Fun fact, Alex said in an interview that this is a picture of him having a panic attack. Just shaking and desperately trying to keep calm as adrenaline pours through his system.
Oh, this guy.
Dude needs to keep his death wish to himself and maybe use some safety gear when he’s on camera.
Like, he’s good; really good. But being good and being sensible are not exclusive.
Unpopular opinion, I get it. I never understood free climbers, especially when I was playing outside (I was raised gymbo with no wish to be mangled and no illusions about my normie skill, and one of those things makes me need to see a safety line on that kid). Downvote away because apparently that’s cool.
Iirc, he was doing that up until about the moment that this photo was taken. He started soloing because he was too awkward to make friends at the crag. He gets really good at it, doing it purely out of an enjoyment of doing it - before this photo, he was living out of a van, basically jobless, no social media, just dedicated to climbing.
Then the news of his solo ascent of half dome gets out, 60 Minutes does a piece on it, and gets this photo. Turns out a lot of people are captivated by the feat. Suddenly he has offers coming in from every direction to become a pro athlete, to endorse products, to do commercials, etc. So what does he do?
He figures that if he was going to do the climb anyway, then he might as well have a camera pointed at him to get paid. This allows him to not have to work part time jobs, and climb full time. He starts really raking it in, and what does he do? He buys a slightly nicer van, then donates what he doesn’t spend on his still very modest lifestyle to efforts to alleviate global poverty.
Speaking about the potential influence he could have on others, he has noted that free solo rock climbing is typically a self-limiting experience. A random 14 year old might think they want to go free soloing - but every human has a natural self-preservation instinct that will kick in after you are about a dozen feet off the ground, and said 14 year old will quickly realize that what they are doing is a terrible idea. It takes years of practice and mental exposure to get to the point where free soloing even very easy routes isn’t a completely paralyzing experience - at which point, we would say that such a person has sufficient experience to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to take on. His point has been borne out - I have yet to hear about any people who have died soloing right after they watched Free Solo.
I’ve got a hard time glorifying potentially deadly sports. Hang on, I know the next comment is gonna be about something like F1 racing or something, but even F1 goes to great lengths to protect the drivers as much as reasonably possible. It’d be like going back to car racing in open air, no crashworthiness, no helmet, no HALO, etc. to compare to free climbing like this. This guy dies and people will idolize someone playing with suicide. Don’t particularly care if he dies doing it for himself, but the attention he gets could be done without.
I think I get it. As a discipline, as an art. Its a test of nerves as much as skill. He deserves whatever happens to him, but i still respect the hell out of him
Nah, F1 has come a long way from back in the day, and really done a lot for driver safety over the years. I’ve been following it since shortly after Jules Bianchi died, and the only time I thought “Holy shit, I’ve just seen someone die on live TV!” was Romain Grosjean’s crash, which he ultimately came away from with relatively minor injuries.
I think the motorsport equivalent would be something like the Isle of Man TT, or the motorcycle races at the Macau Grand Prix, where the approach to safety seems to mostly remain “Hey, don’t hit any of those stone/concrete barriers while going as fast as humanly possible, but if you do, there’s a doctor somewhere around, maybe they’ll get to you in time.”
Both of those events are, in all honesty, insane that they’re allowed to continue as is. The Macau GP seems somewhat better in terms of sheer death count, but despite being interested in motorsport generally, I don’t think I could ever make a holiday out of attending either one. I just don’t want to go somewhere that has a very real possibility of someone dying an avoidable death because “Ah, fucking health and safety have taken all the excitement out of racing, but we’re the real deal and hit stone walls at 200mph when we fuck up.”
“Nah”?
“Nah” what?
I don’t think you understood what I wrote or the context it was written.
Nah, as in there’s no reason for anyone to bring up F1 as a comparison, for the reasons you listed, and plenty of other safety improvements.
I don’t think you understood what I wrote or the context it was written.
I understood what you said fine, but you sure needed me to spell it out for you that I was agreeing with your point regarding most forms of racing these days, so maybe cool it on these comments until you work on your own reading comprehension and grasp of context yourself, there.
Didn’t know that he was able to have panic attacks at all. Something to do with his amygdala or something. Good to know that he’s only human, I was deeply moved after watching him in Free Solo.
Is it this picture or this ledge? I believe his half dome assent was scary because he wasn’t fully prepared. However this specific picture was taken afterwards.
