When watching Alex Honnold in Free Solo, I understood there was a exceptional aspect to him, but it took me seeing him climb with other people to really grasp the magnitude.
Of course, no question El Cap was technically far more challenging.
It would be insanely reckless to free solo without practicing first.
One should be free to do whatever they want with their own life, provided they don’t hurt anyone else.
I imagine Threads and Instagram just got hit with like ten thousand vertical video clips of the climb if you're interested in seeing for yourself.
For me it was almost scary how abruptly he started and made it up the first ledge. Dude just fuckin went for it. Made me realize, for the first time, how truly incredible the feat was to be.
The observation deck level is often so windy I worry about losing my phone if I take it out. I can't comprehend how he managed that wind while hanging on by his fingertips. Then he stood at the tippy top for quite some time, which must be unbelievably windy. At some point he was tethered in for the rapelle down though so maybe he clipped in right as he got to the top.
I wonder what he was thinking about up there.
He just finds it very peaceful and thrilling. "Just him and the climb" kind of language.
Also I suppose clout has to be involved: only person to free solo El Capitan, as far as I know the only person to climb Taipei 101 let alone free solo (did the spiderman guy ever make it or was he arrested?)
For a deeper dive, the book "Alone on the wall" is a good read and I recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36531127-alone-on-the-wa..., although that said the book might be less appealing to someone who 'knows nothing about climbing' and is more of a time investment than the short documentary :)
The 1988 ascent of the Sydney Centrepoint was a technical climb with custom jumars for both the cables and the window tracks and a fun challenge for all, both the scouting, the climb, and the filming.
Originally titled The Only Building I Ever Wanted To Climb, later released as A Spire, there's a documentary film that follows a climb at night of "only" 1,000 feet.
... with a massive overhang.
A YouTube search pulls up a stream filmed from the ground (a nearby building?) using a zoom lens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzthkg2ti2Q
For people like Alex, it's much more about the thrill, the experience, and 'proving' themselves than it is about money.
I'm with the OP - watching people so willfully put their lives in danger isn't my cup of tea. I'm just glad he didn't die.
While I don't have statistics on free solo death rate per climb compared to death per car trip, this is most likely very, very wrong. You should really stop throwing such strange wild claims..
Free solo climbing is incredibly dangerous, but the people who do it (usually) prepare extensively and train their whole lives.
https://gitnux.org/rock-climbing-death-statistics/
This is in contradiction to the experience of driving, where any number of people on the road with you are untrained, undertrained, drunk, or suffering diseases that affect their ability to drive. Or just doing crimes like speeding or dangerous driving. So when climbing, your fate is entirely in your hands and that of nature's. When driving, it's in the hands of many strangers.
"Come to Taiwan; you may or may not watch someone plummet to their death while here" doesn't appeal to me, personally anyway. Anyway that guy that did it with safety equipment a few years back made the rounds in the news too, so not sure this was necessary in that regard.
Injury and death happens in rock climbing even when tethered. Not often but it does happen, that's the nature of the sport and it's the same as BMX, skateboarding, motocross, any kind of racing.
It's also the same as just living - go look up Taiwan traffic deaths. There's so much more dangerous things happening here and wherever you live, it just seems silly to criticize someone for doing an extreme sport publicly.
There's like one injury per NFL game ffs...
It's an extreme sport and a thrilling thing to watch. The danger is exciting and makes his accomplishment all the more stunning. I think it's really cool that there are humans willing to push the limits of the human experience like this.
The travel to/from Taiwan was statistically riskier than the climb.
Selfish? Not even close.
That doesn't seem plausible. What's the number of free soloists who have died in climbing accidents vs in commercial aviation accidents?
Yes but I'd also say Alex is a bit of a different beast. He's clearly not a thrill seeker who attempts climbs he isn't sure about. And as he has once said, there's a very real risk of dying when you get in your car, play football, are a boxer, and so on.
People have a stark reaction to the visual of a guy being 200 meters above the ground but the reality is if you're a circus acrobat and you're 10 meters up the air you're also likely dead or maimed if something goes wrong. It doesn't get more dead than dead and in many ways he's probably more calculated and less reckless than people in other sports or performances.
No, it's the large number of free soloists that have died. And the small number of circus performers who have died. People's intuitions about the relative risks are actually very accurate here.
That is not even close to being true, haha. Probably not as risky as it looks but come on.
Selfish is too harsh, but don’t go making up stats for this.
You just made this up.