re: The Alpinist climbing doc (Netflix)

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I had never heard or read anything about this guy, and I knew very little about the climbing community. He was amazing at what he did.

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While not nearly as much of the climbing community as I was 20 years ago I still keep up with it and I barely knew who he was. Hell, Alex Honnold couldn't even pronounce his last name correctly and Alex is an insider.

Leclerc was a modern-day dirtbag (not a pejorative in the climbing community). He climbed with an extraordinarily pure ethic. His ethics that dictated a solo is only a solo if he is truly alone on the mountain without even an electronic lifeline is as pure as it gets.

What he did and how he did it makes Honnold's free solo of Freerider on El Cap look like child's play and he did those types of climbs over and over and over.

I can't emphasize enough how god-level Leclerc's climbing was and how next level it was to Honnold. Honnold's free solo of Freerider was a "redpoint". He had worked out every single move of the entire climb and practiced them over and over. Leclerc's free solo's were often "onsight" meaning he had never climbed the route before and had basically no information (beta) about them. I also can't emphasize how precarious mixed climbing is even roped. Climbing the rock sections with crampons on is a major disadvantage. Ice has its own group of difficulties like the fact that it is filled with hidden structural anomalies that can cause it to shear off at any time.

I get how non-climbers can see Leclerc as nuts, hell I think he was nuts. Some people are only alive when they are cheating death but I am not sure they are initially wired differently than anyone else. The really bold climbers usually started at a young age and worked through the fear of heights and develop the skills to be able to calculate risk on a different level. Lots of people do this in their everyday jobs, ever watch roofers on a 12/12 pitch roof moving around like they are on flat ground?

At the end of the day, there are old climbers, bold climbers very few old bold climbers. Leclerc was an accomplished climber who was not an attention whore and died in the relative equivalent to the average person crossing the street downtown.

I thought the movie was good and better than I expected given Leclerc's reputation of doing things quietly under the radar. There was lots of heart-palpitating footage. The parts that gripped me most were when he would hang one of his ice axes on his shoulder. Yeah, it ain't going anywhere but one of my biggest fears climbing is the loss of a critical piece of equipment.