Definitely more than mildly interesting
Ooh, energy of the gods, adrenaline surge
Won’t stop 'til I hit the ground, I’m on my way for sure
Up here in the air, this will never hurt
I’m on my way to impact, taste the high-speed dirt
How do you climb a MacBook?
Command + Climb. Be careful, AppleCare doesn’t cover vertical ascents.
What about rapid unplanned vertical descent?
If that scares you, do not look up Alex Honnold freeclimbing yosemite several times now. And he’s taken some gnarly routes.
More pixels:
Rope and anchor much easier to see here.
When I first looked at the OP I thought someone had photoshopped out the rope and quick draw and was mad at them. Then I looked more closely and saw that it was just shitty quality and they blended in really well.
Ah, thank you
I’m actually glad for that. I thought he was free climbing and it made me nervous.
I think the only climber that did it free solo is Alex Honnold. He took a less deadly route I believe. The documentation is fear inducing though.
As a long time climber, watching that documentary is really gripping/terrifying. The bit at the end when he says what it was like walking over the top; no one noticing what he had done, because he didn’t have ropes and a harness etc…wow.
I think I saw that one, it ends with him being like, “well, I should go practice climbing more!” and the other climbers just look at each other
He is free climbing. He’s not using things like a ladder to climb.
He’s not free soloing, which is done without a rope.
There’s also rope soloing where you use a rope but you don’t have a belayer and have to catch yourself on falls.
I still couldn’t see it, till I realised it’s underneath, not above, the climber!
Thank Jebus he has a rope. Original picture made me feel bad and nervous.
I’m so pleased to discover he’s smart
“smart” being a relative term here…
Yeah, one of the best climbers in the world is not ‘smart’ when climbing with the proper security setup.
one of the “best climbers” just means “hasn’t yet had a catastrophe”. even ‘with precautions’ one mistake and it’d hurt like hell getting smacked and scraped against the front of that rock face, while flailing and trying to control the situation, recover…
its kinda like jumping out of a plane with a parachute. yeah sure ‘precautions’ but you’re still deciding ‘yes I should leave a perfectly capable vehicle to plunge towards the earth with comparatively minimal control over the situation’. and in both situations, your safety gear isn’t guaranteed…
so yes, very “smart” indeed
parachuting is a good comparison as both these activities have a lower accident ratio than driving a car, so it is as smart as driving to work
also at his skill level falling from even this position is not going to result in bruises or scrapes, even people I climb with regularly fall from similar positions and just go back to climbing
Yeah. Rope and anchor mean that falling isn’t guaranteed death. I still wish he’d have a helmet, though.
Yeah, my thoughts go more towards a slip and fall and smashing into the side of the mountain rather than a slip and fall to the bottom.
I trust the rope and anchors to keep his body in the air.
He apparently trusts his body to do the rest.
Usually climbers who do lead climbing have a lot of experience indoors and on safer routes before moving onto ones like “El Capitan”, so their reflexes are properly trained.
Also a lot of the impact is absorbed by the belayer and by your feet. The way your center of mass is situated and the fact that you’re almost always facing the wall helps guide you feet first. There is a limited distance between the points where you clip in, so the distance isn’t too big.
The only injury I ever got while lead roping* is a strained finger, so its not as dangerous as it seems If you have proper training and user the proper equipment.
Top roping has almost no impact forces. For lead/sport climbing that he’s doing there are quite a bit more forces. But it’s still safe if you handle it correctly and don’t swing too far.
I believe the route might also be partly trad, where you have to place your own safety into the rock itself without the help of bolts.
lead roping*** misstyped :p
You never smash into the wall while climbing like this. The elasticity od the rope is enough for the fall to he easy to catch with your feet.
On less than vertical terrain like this, you don’t smash into the wall so much as skid down it. On easier routes, this can be more dangerous, since there can be more ledges to hit. But on this route, there are very few features on the wall at all, so the danger is small. Also, with pro so close, total fall distance would be minimal, further decreasing the odds of hitting something.
On steeper terrain, falls are even safer - assuming you are given a proper belay. With a good belay, you simply fall into empty space with nothing at all to hit. But with an inexperienced and nervous belayer, they might take in slack when you are falling, which is bad, since it turns the rope into a pendulum, resulting in you “spiking” the wall with significant force. Another danger is getting your foot tangled up in front of the lead line, causing the rope to flip you upside down when it comes taught, which has a significant chance of putting your head where you don’t want it to be.
Adam Ondra has been climbing since he was a kid and has likely taken many thousands of lead falls over the years. His belayer is someone with lots of experience who he knows and trusts. If he thinks the helmet is unnecessary, I’m inclined to trust him to make his own judgements about safety.
Every single manner of objectively rating or quantifying intelligence has disappointed me
But still 😵💫
This is a lot less impressive when you rotate the image to the right.
Rotated to the right, it resembles me on Saturday morning.
I dunno, that background tho. Becomes something out of scifi.
“Why are we walking like this?”
I will never ever ever be impressed by this shit. All I see is a very stupid person taking an unnecessary risk for clout.
There’s a rope. He’s not free-soloing.
Or is it just satisfying to put down other people’s accomplishments from our keyboards?
I see no rope.
EDIT: More pixels version below reveals the rope.
Still, I hope you can see why folks thought this person was being wreckless from the OP photo.
Has no sweat glands on his hands
One does not simply free solo El Capitan.
He doesn’t. There’s a rope below him.
The cameraman, though…
…is likely standing on the ground with a drone controller.
Here is a much better article written by a legitimate climbing publication that actually knows anything at all about climbing:
https://gripped.com/news/adam-ondra-makes-second-free-ascent-of-dawn-wall-in-yosemite/
The article says that he was the first person to free solo the Dawn Wall, which is false. He wasn’t the first to climb it, and he didn’t free solo it either.
Tommy Caldwell was the first person to climb it, and nobody has free soloed it, and the likelihood of anyone ever doing that is basically zero.
Does anyone know of any active climbing community on Lemmy?
Not very active, but [email protected] sees some posts every now and then. Only way to make it more active is to join :)
Aww, it’s on *.ml
I understand, hey go climb a big rock. cool.
i don’t understand doing it without a basic life line attached to you to …ya know, prevent … rapid inertia.
Is the rope hanging off him not a life line?
Honestly, I’m not sure. I actually didn’t even notice it until you said something. It blends in very well. Looks like it only goes below him but I don’t see an anchor point and you really don’t want them too far apart. The more distance between them, then more force it’s got to hold if you fall.
I’m not sure what else you’d use a rope for here. Just saying it’s also weird to not see an anchor point since it looks looks to be over 10ft of rope we can see.
There’s an anchor right below his feet but it’s hard to make out in this copy of the photo because of the lack of pixels.
I’m not sure what else you’d use a rope for here.
My guess is it’s a tow line for something. Notice how the rope is taught (would not be the case if it were an anchor, he’d have to ditch the anchor and use a new one if that were the case)
Though again it would be weird to have whatever you’re “towing” that far below you, considering the longer the rope, the stronger the pendulum when wind starts to blow your gear around…
Look up thread. Better pic posted shows it is clearly his lead line, and he has a bolt at his feet. The rope looks tight because it has friction from running through the pieces below, and because the rope has weight of its own pulling it down.
He’s barely above the last bolt in the picture. There’s a quickdraw sticking out by his lower heel.
Also the forces involved in a climbing fall are partly mitigated by the stretch of the rope, and the belayer will soften the catch by jumping as the climber falls. The length of a fall has little impact on the forces experienced by the climber or the gear in a typical climbing fall.
Either way I still think he’s crazy, I couldn’t get 10 feet off the ground without having a panic attack.
This is a normal human reaction.
But then you do it a few times and you get used to it.
Multi story buildings must be your kryptonite.
I see no rope.Better picture given in another post shows a fall rope plain as day.
Yellow line from his butt.
Someone else posted a better pic, definitely looks like a fall rope tied to something. The OP Pic is potatoes and you can only discern a line that could be natural crack.
I’d also have a yellow line coming from my butt in this scenario.
According to the article it was free solo.
This is wrong, he free climbed the dawn wall but definitely did not free solo it. Every photo from that article shows him climbing with ropes and google more into it he definitely didn’t free solo that face of El Cap.
The article is wrong. You can clearly see Adams lead line in the picture in the article.
Adam on The Dawn Wall was super impressive - iirc, he sent the route in a single ground-up push or something like that, when it took Tommy, like, 8 years to establish the route. But he def didn’t solo it.
Source: rock climber for 10 years, going to climb in The Valley later this week.
Unwavering
Why?
Accomplishing difficult challenges & goals feels rewarding, pretty sure it’s mostly dopamine and some adrenaline
Great pic.
Fuck that.
These freesolo guys are crazy impressive.
Is he wearing jeans?
Is that not a rope right under his butt?
Yep I missed that.
Yeah, it’s there, just hard to see
