WHY
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.
Same.
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.
Just a belt I think. That guy is a big-time freeclimber
He’s actually known for free soloing.
the chalk bag’s connected to the, leg bone
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.
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
Is this the guy with the brain defect who doesn’t know what fear is.
“Thank God Ledge” is an iconic feature on the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. This narrow granite ledge, approximately 35 feet long, varies in width from about 5 to 12 inches and is situated roughly 1,800 feet above the valley floor.
Why? Why would you do this?
And to quote Gwen on Galaxy Quest:
Well fuck that!
Never give up, never surrender!
I have a fear of heights, so this is terrifying to me. I also wonder why people do this.
I’m very far from doing something like this, but I do have quite a bit of experience hiking/climbing in exposed terrain, so I can do my best: People usually start off enjoying relatively light hikes in the mountains, because it feels good to be hiking in cool terrain with awesome views. As you get more experience, what seemed scary a couple years ago doesn’t look scary anymore. You like hiking, so you go for the hike, without thinking much about the fact that you thought it looked scary and dangerous a couple years ago.
Keep repeating this cycle, and you might suddenly find yourself tied into a rope, with crampons, an ice pick, and skis on your back, on the top of some frozen mountain that looked insurmountable some years ago. It doesn’t even feel scary, just really awesome.
Add some brain damage (slight joke, but Alex Honnold does have a smaller “fear center” than most people), and you end up in situations like the one in the photo.
My point is that it isn’t really about adrenaline seeing like a lot of people think. It’s about going for awesome hikes, and your limits for what you feel safe doing shifting over time as you gain experience.
I have a fear of heights.
I broke my ankle in a life altering way falling down two stairs unto a sidewalk. That, to me, justified my already reasonable fear of heights.
I don’t understand why this is the “Thank God” ledge rather than the “Oh My God!” or similar ledge.
My guess would be “Thank God I can take a little break here, my hands and arms had started shaking with exhaustion… I wonder if a helicopter could come close enough to drop a rope to me?”
Apparently it’s 1800 feet up and “only” another 200 feet to get to the top of that climb.
Or so I’m reading from safe in my bed!
That’s a fair interpretation, I suppose.
Still, I think the only thing I would be thinking there would be some variation of “why the hell did I come up here and how soon can I be safely back aground!”
“Well
fuckscrew that!”Is my memory failing me and she actually did say “fuck that” and they dubbed it over with “screw that”?
They did. Apparently, it threatened the films PG rating. If they left it in, it would’ve been PG-13.
Yup! Your memory is correct!
Remember kids, it’s not the fall that kills you…it’s the sudden stop at the end.
Just completely miss the ground and you’ll be fine, duh
True, good luck breathing
Today I fell off a ledge into orbit.
That and all the bouncing off the rock face on the way down.
/c/majorlyterrifying
It’s Alex Honhold. He’s wired differently than most people. Definitely not tethered.
Wired very differently. Free-climbing El Capitan is certified bonkers.
It’s amazing to me that he’s still alive, and lives in Las Vegas with a wife and kids. Like somehow he has a “normal” life on top of his climbing insanity.
Seriously. Doing that shit when you have a kid is nuts to me.
I think there’s some credit where credit is due for all the effort he puts in to minimising risk. There’s plenty of people that do various hiking/climbing that is at least as dangerous as what he does.
When you consider the climbing level this guy is at, him soloing a 6a route is probably comparable to someone “ordinary” going for a 20 km hike in exposed terrain: It has risk (rockfall, possibility of slipping, etc.) that could kill you, but it’s not generally considered an excessively foolish thing to do.
“Minimizing risk”, if you’re not psychic, involves safety gear.
I agree, I just meant to point out that there is a fuzzy limit between when you need protection and when you don’t. Consider the story (unsure if true) about when someone scolded Tony Hawk for carrying his child while skating down the street: For most people, that would be foolishly risky, but Tony Hawk is about as likely to fall while skating down the street as an ordinary person is while walking.
Likewise, Alex Honnold does a bunch of climbing with protection, but also does climbs that no one else would consider without it. However, climbing a 6c for him is probably comparable to someone ordinary climbing a 4 (or even less). Even I’ve climbed some short 4-routes without gear as parts of a hike (never more than maybe 5-10m), and wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t feel safe doing it.
Of course, I think he probably pushes the limit a bit beyond what’s reasonable, my point is just that it’s probably not as foolishly risky as a lot of people think.
i minimize risk by never coming closer to a ledge than my own height above the ground, unless there’s a fence. FFFFFFFFFFuck that shit.
i’ll peer just my eyes over a ledge while crawling. maybe.
If you wanna compare it to hiking, it’s like hiking a long distance in the wilderness alone without bringing any water or food or map or compass or a phone or anything besides some shorts and flip flops.
Even for people who are experienced in the wilderness, there’s a reason why you are supposed to take basic emergency supplies with you (and really the most important emergency supply being a buddy).
See: that guy who famously had to cut his own arm off. Also he’s “one of the lucky ones”. Experienced people die in the wilderness every year, just like experienced free climbers die.
Irresponsible with an inevitable conclusion.
This picture makes my feet tingle, and not in a good way. You can keep that, good sir. AAll yours.
I can feel my perineum clench when I look at this
Yeah, thank god I’m nowhere near that damned thing, and never will be.
It’s not as bad as it looks, the photo is at an angle. Look at the horizon or the trees. The actual ledge leans back
For a minute I thought it would be a false perspective thing.
But nope.
Imagine standing there and then suddenly that slab under your feet shifts.
What a nice place to relax and have a cool refreshing glass of NOPE.
