I kept swearing the same, but it's half dome in Yosemite he free'd before. That's the one the last nat geo doc was shot on, when he's standing on 16 inch ledge 2000 feet up, just a couple hundred from completion.
Yeah I definitely knew he did Half Dome, but I swear he did El Capitain as well. Those two are the most recognizable faces in Yosemite.
He was in the news for climbing El Cap in 2015 when those two slowpokes were stuck for +2 weeks free climbing it (using ropes only to catch falls). He was yodeling up and down like a Sherpa holding their hands when things got tough and bringing them supplies or they wouldn't have been able to finish. At the time the try-hards wouldn't shut up about how the dynamic duo were attempting such a more impressive climb than anything Alex had done.
He also free-soloed a big portion of El Cap when he solo'd El Cap, Half Dome, and Mt Watkins (the Yosemite "triple crown") a couple years ago. I don't believe he used a rope and belay at all during that, but he had a couple pieces of gear on him that he could use to tie-on during some of the more difficult sections. Sidenote here but TMB should be ashamed of itself for letting this update fall to page 2 in less than 24 hrs. This is a Ruth-Jordan-Ali-Nicklaus-type career acheivement for the sports world.
Pictures like this make me wonder how he can ever reconcile the fact eventually he will fall if he keeps climbing.
Does he have to climb down too or does a helicopter swoop in and pick him up once he's reached the top?
Looking at that picture made my hands and feet tingle, and now my hands are sweating. God I'm a pussy.
Basejump. I believe most just have trails down?? I mean, just because he went up that way doesn't mean he has to go down that way too. I don't see how you'd have the strength to belay down some of that stuff after climbing it.
To unpack this a little, he climbs with a rope and partners 90-95% of the time. He's most famous for his free soloing, but he only does it maybe a handful of times a year. He's very humble and self deprecating, and he downplays the difficulty of what he's doing, but he claims he picks "easy" or "moderate" routes for that type of climbing. He climbs them w/ ropes and gear first to make sure he can do it, then he waits for ideal weather and conditions and specifically trains for them. He's also backed off projects like this during the middle of his attempts if he doesn't feel right about it. He's also said in interviews that he doesn't plan on doing it indefinitely and views that type of climbing as having a shelf-life. While no one has done anything close to this, there have been notable free-soloists that are still alive today who no longer practice it (there's a picture of him talking to one in the Nat Geo article). Admittedly, people have died doing it too, but as Honnold likes to point out, a lot of them put themselves in situations they never should have been in the first place. One of the most famous was a dude doing it in his 50s with nerve damage after he was in a bad car accident, one was an English guy trying to take a shortcut home from a pub late one night, etc... A lot of them die on very short climbs just kind of practicing or messing around, which Honnold says he tries to limit to lessen his risk exposure. He also says, and I don't know how accurate this is, that they rarely if ever die on the actual, record-setting big climbs.
It depends on the rock formation. Some spire in the middle of Zion or Monument Valley? He has to climb back down. Yosemite has access roads and trails all over the place. You can just walk down the back of El Capitan--there were probably tons of climbers, hikers, mountain bikers, picnic-ers, etc...up there that met him when he broke the summit.
It's crazy to see him doing this stuff. We went to the same elementary school and he lived next door to my childhood best friend growing up. No cool stories to share or anything like that. He was just kinda a nerdy kid into Star Wars and Magic the Gathering. Glad to see this bumped and not for bad news.
It is illegal to basejump in Yosemite. There are trails back down. I saw a story on him he was climbing a big wall and he forgot his chalk bag. He ended up borrowing some guys who was in a group on there way up the wall camping on a ledge.
The standard descent from the top of el cap is called the East Ledges descent. It's a trail on the top to east end of el cap where there are two (or three, cannot recall) fixed rappel lines that take you down a cliff face to another trail. It's not a big deal
First video clip is up: Also here's an interview he did right after the climb with Mark Synnott, a climber and freelance writer who is part of the North Face's team w/ Alex. There are some extended videos of their expeditions on YouTube if you want to get a little bit of a feel for their relationship: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/a...iew-rope-free-solo-climb-yosemite-el-capitan/
presumably not Alex, but http://abc7news.com/3553258/ 2 climbers dead after fall from El Capitan in Yosemite Saturday, June 02, 2018 01:40PM YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK (KGO) -- Officials say two people fell to their death while climbing the Freeblast Route on El Capitan inside Yosemite National Park. RELATED: Climbers react to hiker death at Half Dome in Yosemite Park rangers say they received multiple 911 calls reporting the incident on Saturday around 8:15 a.m. Yosemite Park Rangers and Search and Rescue staff responded to El Capitan. The identity of the deceased climbers will be released pending family notification. RELATED: Record-setting rock climber rescued from Yosemite's El Capitan yearns to be home in Bay Area Officials say the investigation is ongoing and no further information will be released on Saturday. This fall comes after another death inside the park on May 21, when a hiker fell from the Half Dome cables while hiking with another person during a thunderstorm.
I feel like it’s more likely that he climbs the air and space to the moon before he dies from climbing. I know what I said.
I’ve got the Jeff Goldblum/Jurassic Park “well there it is” gif ready to go when the inevitable happens.
https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news...ntifies-climbers-who-fell-from-el-capitan.htm Yosemite National Park Identifies Climbers Who Fell from El Capitan Date: June 2, 2018 Yosemite National Park identifies the two climbers who fell from the Free Blast route on El Capitan as Jason Wells, age 46, of Boulder, Colorado and Tim Klien, age 42, from Palmdale, California. Yosemite National Park Rangers received multiple 911 calls at approximately 8:15 am reporting that two climbers had fallen. Yosemite Park Rangers and Search and Rescue staff responded to El Capitan. The two climbers did not survive the fall. This investigation is ongoing and no further details are available at this time.
Honnold and a partner just climbed the nose of El Cap in under 2 hours. It takes most parties about 3 days.
DON'T WORRY HE'S NOT DEAD! I'd recommend opening this in Youtube, you can see it in full and move the camera yourself. Shit is wild.
There's a still shot of about 5:08 in a climbing magazine in my gym. I can't even begin to express the fright in just thinking about him locking off on a single hand jam and his toe stuck in the crack at 1000+ feet.
This thread getting bumped is like in hot tub time machine trying to guess when the bellhop is gonna lose his arm
This thread being bumped scares the shit out of me. Watched it before a comp a month or so ago to get siked lol. Even knowing the ending it was so fucking nerve wracking. Really enjoyed it, Adam Ondra posted video on his YouTube channel of the boulder problem and he did not exactly make it look like some cakewalk 7a.
Like with movie theater like seating? Or just folding chairs setup? Is there a room for this projector? Or they have it playing on a wall that you can watch while doing tricep extensions?
It's a climbing gym. They set the projector on a high stool and we all sat/laid around on the floor eating pizza and drinking beer.