Why?
Accomplishing difficult challenges & goals feels rewarding, pretty sure it’s mostly dopamine and some adrenaline
I though this was the “Mildly terrifying” forum for a sec.
The wall after you finally got that mosquito
More pixels:
Rope and anchor much easier to see here.
I’m so pleased to discover he’s smart
“smart” being a relative term here…
Every single manner of objectively rating or quantifying intelligence has disappointed me
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 top roping 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 top 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.
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.
Ah, thank you
Thank Jebus he has a rope. Original picture made me feel bad and nervous.
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.
I still couldn’t see it, till I realised it’s underneath, not above, the climber!
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.
But still 😵💫
Rope or not this is terrifying! It’s a no from me
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.
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.
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.
Either way I still think he’s crazy, I couldn’t get 10 feet off the ground without having a panic attack.
Multi story buildings must be your kryptonite.
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.
I see no rope.
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.
Unwavering
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.
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.
Does anyone know of any active climbing community on Lemmy?
Not very active, but !climbing@lemmy.ml sees some posts every now and then. Only way to make it more active is to join :)
Aww, it’s on *.ml
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
“Good morning, Captain.”
Beat me to it by one minute, goddamnit!
Definitely more than mildly interesting
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
If that scares you, do not look up Alex Honnold freeclimbing yosemite several times now. And he’s taken some gnarly routes.
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?”
Fyi Adam is free climbing here but not free soloing; there’s a big difference. The rope in this photo has either been edited out or is hard to see. Free climbing means climbing without aid, like ladders or ascenders attached to the rope. If youve climed at your local gym, you have free climed.
Edit: it’s just hard to see but it’s there. It’s yellow and coming down beneath him.
Yeah what we see here is called “trad climbing” and specifically it seems like he’s lead climbing here (first one up and putting in the rope as he goes along).
Adam is a fucking beast btw for those that don’t know him he’s one of the best in the world.
Nah; it’s actually sport climbing, not trad. You can see in the higher definition photo that he’s got a quick draw attached to a bolt below him. Trad (traditional) climbing means climbing without prebolted routes where you place pro(tection) as you climb, like cams, nuts and hexes to name a few. If he were climbing trad, you would see a bunch of pro hanging off his belt because he’d need to place it as he climbs. Also pretty sure there’s not even enough going on on the dawn wall to climb trad which is why it’s generally looked down upon to bolt a wall if pro can be placed. Trad climbing the same wall would be much harder than sport climbing the same wall because placing pro is so more more involved than placing a quickdraw. Also you have to carry it up. Also if you place pro incorrectly and you fall you can die. Sport climbing in practice is much safer.
To clarify further, the quickdraws are already placed for him. This is likely because the dawn wall is just that hard that you really don’t have a chance if you have to spend the energy placing quickdraws as you climb.
Thanks for explaining it in a way that a noob like me could understand. So the wall has prebolted routes? Does that mean someone with a drill climbed the wall trad and attached them or how the heck is this done?
In Yosemite it is illegal to use power tools so all those bolts were drilled by hand by hitting a masonry drill bit with a hammer and twisting.
Usually when you bolt a route like this (routes that are impossible or near-impossible to trad-climb) you’ll go up some other route and rappel down while placing the bolts. Especially when the bolts are hand-drilled, because that requires both hands.
That makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up
But the route is The Dawn Wall which is a trad route with some bolts.
Oooooh right you’re right trad is placing the anchors etc yourself, I’m still learning. So is this still lead climbing (while being sport climbing) since he’s going up with the rope?
Yes, lead climbing applies to both trad and sport climbing, as long as you climb above the last bolt/piece of protection to clip the rope to the next one.
