I saw it in IMAX on the biggest screen in the country! (Lincoln Square NYC) That was quite the experience!
Watching Honnold (whether in this movie or on other videos) literally makes my palms sweat. I’ve never had that kind of physical reaction to anything else I’ve seen in recorded form.
If you like Honnold, here’s Ueli Steck speed climing the Eiger. Steck was probably an equally great talent, but more a high mountains guy. He was killed on Everest last year.
I find this more disturbing than watching Honnold. Honnold is in some scary exposed positions, but to my eye everything always look perfect, never in doubt. Even in this short video, you see Steck make some little slips as he's feeling out his holds when dry tooling.He’s either really stupid or really brave, actually I don’t think he’s either, he’s got an amazing sense of instinct and proprioception and executive planning when it comes to climbing, and he is also as emotionally controlled and calm as anyone could possibly be where literally a fraction of a microsecond of hesitation would mean death. I’m impressed, I give the guy props, but he’s proved himself many times over I hope he retires, lives a long time and conquers the world of miniature golf or something.
Pretty much all the expert free solo and speed climbers have died climbing. Very few leave the sport alive.
Makes me think Freud wasn’t too far off when he talked about a “death drive”.
Is it a coincidence that we’ve all been watching the same video this lately? Watching it gives me the willies but I can’t stop.
May not be all that hard to imagine. All he’d have to do is free solo the Nose route on El Cap.
The route he did is known as Freerider, and of those that run from the base to the top it’s basically the easiest (which is to say, hideously difficult). (If you haven’t done serious technical rock climbing, I think I can promise that what you’re imagining to be the actual difficulty is far, far below the reality.)
The route on which he and Tommy Caldwell set the speed record is known as the Nose (because of the way the rock flares out a bit at the base). They did it in 1:58:07, which has the same sort of feel as a 3-minute mile.
It has been climbed free (though definitely with ropes and protection) just a few times - first by a woman (Lynn Hill) in 1993, and by (I think) just 4 or 5 others since. The crux moves on this route are much tougher than on Freerider.
Alex has climbed this route many times, but so far as I know never free, and he has certainly never attempted the free solo. But it surely must have crossed his mind. To the general public, this wouldn’t look like much of a step; to climbers, it would be a inconceivable leap.
I certainly hope he doesn’t try this, and I don’t think he will. His “repeat all the hard moves until you have them wired” approach probably wouldn’t work here, and I don’t think he’s interested in rolling the dice.
Sure, but doesn’t that fit exactly what I described in the part of my post that you didn’t quote: the only way to surpass what he has done would be an attempt of such extreme difficulty that it would involve a risk of death perhaps more on the order of 30% to attempt it free solo. That comes closer most people’s definition of a suicide attempt than a climb.
I wonder whether any of them have done Mount Thor?
Honnold and Caldwell did the nose of El Cap in 1:58:07. No one else has done it in under 2 hours. To put this in perspective, there are only ~20 climbers in history that have joined the “Nose-in-a-Day” club for an under 24 hours climb to the top.
And speaking of getting people killed, keep in mind that Honnold and Caldwell set that record after two climbers, Jason Wells and Tim Klein, were killed attempting the feat only four days earlier.
I"ve known about Honnold for years and wondered if he is a sociopath. Just someone whose limbic system and frontal cortex do not communicate well. His fearlessness would be a major symptom of it.
There are lots of sociopaths who follow the law and even pro-social sociopaths. So being a sociopath doesn’t automatically mean you’re a serial killer or career criminal.
Looking into it, I did find this.
He also once mentioned not being affected by his father’s death.
Anyway, it would explain a lot about his fearlessness.
I wonder whether the people who made Free Solo have arranged for Alex Honnold to be in the audience at the Oscars so they can point him out if the film wins Best Documentary Feature.
Apparently Sylvester Stallone is going to climb it for the sequel.
Explanation of why he removed his shoes when he got to the top:
Serious climbers get climbing shoes which involve a degree of pain appropriate to the difficulty of climbing for which they will be used. One needs the sensitivity and control afforded by tight shoes.
In his Ted talks version I didn’t like his use of the headline “managing fear”. He already did it numpteen times with ropes so managing fear isn’t the managing fear that I am aware of. He is a good climber but has nothing to teach you about managing fear.
Climb it with ropes as many times as you want, but that one time without ropes is going to need a fuckton of fear management.
What did you learn?
About what?