How does one get back down from one of those climbs?
Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
411–420 of 527 posts
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#412How does one get back down from one of those climbs?
there is usually an easy way down the other side.
or you have to abseil.
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. 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 mul…
> If you really want to understand just how impressive this was: 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. I…
The term "cheating death" implies that the person should have died but didn't. You make it seem like a game of russian roulette. That's not the case here. The person used their skill to climb the wall -- there's no "should have died" part.
Falling from the wall and surviving through freak luck would be cheating death.
I think what you mean is "does the fear aspect make a difference?". Not "cheating death". Your repeated use of the term I think belittles climbing as some kind of crazy stunt.
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#414By far the best article I've seen to supplement this: https://www.outsideonline.com/2190306/why-alex-honnolds-free... 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 inter…
It’s all too easy for headlines about climbing to lean on clichés about the climbers themselves—that these people are daredevils, thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies. But to most climbers, nothing is quicker to trigger the gag reflex. Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of Alex’s mind, but…
Does free diving vs scuba diving make sense to you?
Basically different sports, rather than being about safety
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#415By far the best article I've seen to supplement this: https://www.outsideonline.com/2190306/why-alex-honnolds-free... 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 inter…
It’s all too easy for headlines about climbing to lean on clichés about the climbers themselves—that these people are daredevils, thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies. But to most climbers, nothing is quicker to trigger the gag reflex. Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of Alex’s mind, but…
Does free diving vs scuba diving make sense to you?
Basically different sports, rather than being about safety
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s all too easy for headlines about climbing to lean on clichés about the climbers themselves—that these people are daredevils, thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies. But to most climbers, nothing is quicker to trigger the gag reflex. Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of Alex’s mind, but…
> Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them. 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 no…
Many climbers have a fear of hights. Climbing can be a way to get comfortable with it.
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
A ban doesn't force anyone to do anything to break the ban. The correct response to the ban is to respect the parks wishes and stop BASE jumping. If you want to push the limits that's on you. You should know the risks and act accordingly.
This starts to resemble something like abstinence-only education in schools, though, where a hard-line stance of "just don't do the risky thing we've told you not to do and you'll be fine" leads to less successful real-world results than embracing the complex realities of human behavior.
No it doesn't. There are other places and countries where you can BASE jump. They chose to do it where it was banned and selected times where they would evade authorities.
This sort of entitled attitude doesn't help IMO. Breaking local laws just confirms that you can't trust these communities and you give everyone a bad name.
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#418Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a couple of things that might help you a bit: 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 intima…
I think I understand you, its like having a sex with or w/o a condom ;)
I think more like with or without the neighbours knocking on the walls telling you to keep it down
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have to embrace the ambiguity in natural languages. Life and death can be simply considered opposites. In this mode of thinking any risky behavior is trading in death at the peril of life. 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…
> There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states. 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 stat…
I've free soloed easy routes (long 5.4-5.6 routes in tahquitz -- I regularly climb in the 5.12s). Soloing something that you are comfortable with is enjoyable precisely because you _dont_ feel like you are cheating death. It feels like a fun romp -- quickly up and down -- you move faster, you don't have to stop and deal with belays, and often you can downclimb the route and avoid a lengthy walk-off. To the extent that you feel like you accomplished something -- you only really have that feeling if the climbing felt easy and smooth. If it felt hard and scary -- it was probably a _not_ fun experience, and certainly its something you would feel less "proud" about because a "better" climber wouldn't have felt the need to experience the discomfort.
If you listen to Alex talk -- he climbs a huge amount of "easier" terrain and he often describes those experiences in similar terms. It's just for him "easy" is waaaaaaay harder. I can indeed imagine how cool it would be to run up 5.11 (or in honnolds case more like 5.12) with the same fun casualness that I have experienced when running up 5.4 -- and it really does sound like it feels that way for him often.
Pushing the difficulty of his soloing as he has is partially about the specific challenge of doing a harder route and partially about moving up his comfort zone so that he increases the range of "easy" terrain that he can go casually solo. His expanding comfort over time has given him access to a huge range of terrain that he could comfortably free solo - which is a huge part of the reason why Caldwell asserts that Honnold has probably climbed more technical rock mileage than anyone else ever.
I think one thing that's interesting (mystifying?) about the way Honnold treats risk -- he doesn't really acknowledge that the longer he solos the more likely he is to have an accident. Instead he focuses on how fear in some of the situations he pursues can only ever have a detrimental effect on performance -- and that setting aside that fear is actually a required part of the task of minimizing the risk involved for what he wants to pursue. I think this is probably true though the mathematician in me still struggles with the first part -- and actually if you look at Alex talk, it sounds like he's starting to change his tune a bit too. Free rider was one of his top life goals related to soloing -- and it sounds from his interview that his next goal at least is more focused on climbing harder routes than on pursuing harder soloing.
Re: Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels
#420Earlier quoted context omitted.
This starts to resemble something like abstinence-only education in schools, though, where a hard-line stance of "just don't do the risky thing we've told you not to do and you'll be fine" leads to less successful real-world results than embracing the complex realities of human behavior.
No it doesn't. There are other places and countries where you can BASE jump. They chose to do it where it was banned and selected times where they would evade authorities. This sort of entitled attitude doesn't help IMO. Breaking local laws just confirms that you can't trust these communities and you give everyone a bad name.
Do you honestly think anyone who BASE jumps gives a fuck what you think? Why even waste your time saying it? They're obviously not here to obey the rules. Like, really obviously.