re: Alex Honnold Completes the Most Dangerous Rope-Free Ascent Ever

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DeathValley85

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Stop being a pussy

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My boss's son is into rock climbing and converted a van just like that. I told my boss, you realize he's probably laying more women than climbing rocks out of that thing, right?

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Not sure I know many women that think hooking up in a van that is your house is attractive

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How do you get down?

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There is an easy way and a hard way. Choose wisely.

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“What Alex did on Moonlight Buttress defied everything that we are trained, and brought up and genetically engineered to think,” said Peter Mortimer, a climber who has made numerous films with Honnold. “It’s the most unnatural place for a human to be.”

But those pioneering climbs pale in comparison to El Capitan. It’s hard to overstate the physical and mental difficulties of a free solo ascent of the peak, which is considered by many to be the epicenter of the rock climbing world. It is a vertical expanse stretching more than a half mile up—higher than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. From the meadow at the foot of El Capitan, climbers on the peak’s upper reaches are practically invisible to the naked eye.

“This is the ‘moon landing’ of free soloing,” said Tommy Caldwell, who made his own history in 2015 with his ascent of the Dawn Wall, El Capitan’s most difficult climb, on which he and his partner Kevin Jorgeson used ropes and other equipment only for safety, not to aid their progress.

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The route Honnold chose to reach the top of El Capitan, known as Freerider, is one of the most prized big wall climbs in Yosemite. The route has 30 sections—or pitches—and is so difficult that even in the last few years, it was newsworthy when a climber was able to summit using ropes for safety.

It is a zigzagging odyssey that traces several spidery networks of cracks and fissures, some gaping, others barely a knuckle wide. Along the way, Honnold squeezed his body into narrow chimneys, tiptoed across ledges the width of matchboxes, and in some places, dangled in the open air by his fingertips.

Freerider tests nearly every aspect of a climber’s physical abilities—strength of fingers, forearms, toes, and abdomen, as well as flexibility and endurance. Environmental factors, like sun, wind, and the potential for sudden rainstorms, are also factors that Honnold had to carefully calculate.

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There are other climbers in Honnold’s league physically, but no one else has matched his mental ability to control fear. His tolerance for scary situations is so remarkable that neuroscientists have studied the parts of his brain related to fear to see how they might differ from the norm.

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Damn, imagine if his bag of chalk falls. Guaranteed death?

Dumbest. shite. Ever.

He would chalk it up to bad luck I guess.

Alex hannold makes my palm sweat like no other, guy is insane and will die eventually right? He was on Joe Rogan podcast and was talking about all the free climbers he looked up to.....all of them eventually died on a climb

A lighter moment came later, Honnold said, when he passed some climbers who had spent the night on a ledge. He did his best not to wake them.

"I woke up one guy and he sort of said, 'Oh, hey.' Then when I went by, I think he discreetly woke up his buddies because when I looked down they were all three standing there like 'What the f***?' "