As a climber, there are very few people that I trust to have a more useful opinion on all this than Tommy Caldwell, a close friend and long time climbing partner of Honnold. It's so out there for most people that most jump to conclusions without proper knowledge of the subject.
Caldwell is in an interesting position of having to balance supporting his friend, and trying to get over the fact that he very well could die doing these attempts. His article does a great job expressing this.
It’s all too easy for headlines about climbing to lean on clichés about the climbers themselves—that these people are daredevils, thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies. But to most climbers, nothing is quicker to trigger the gag reflex. Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of Alex’s mind, but I know one thing for certain: Alex climbs to live, not to cheat death.
Can someone help me understand this? How is doing something without safety equipment that you can do with with safety equipment climbing to live, but not about cheating death? What is the point of foregoing safety if not to somehow eke something out of the increased danger, whether it be adrenaline, or a period of increased focus, or fame?
If it's not about someone being addicted to adrenaline or looking for fame, then I just don't understand it. At all. As in it's so foreign to me that I can't even begin to understand it.
I have a couple of things that might help you a bit:
1. Alex Honnold's brain is atypical. His amygdala simply does not respond to stimuli the way that it does in most people. To learn more, read this (excellent) article:
2. While I am (at best) a mediocre climber, the section you quoted rings true to me, particularly this section - "Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them." There is something incredibly natural and sensual about climbing on rock that I can't describe without sounding like I'm talking about sex. And...that's traditionally where people tell me to give them my keys because I've had too much to drink. :)
3. Climbing is a deeply meditative activity, particularly when you get into a place where each movement flows into the next. When I am there, my mind shuts down and it is just a rock and me doing the most natural thing that I have ever found (see #2). That flow is deeply beautiful, but when you climb with ropes, you have to be in near constant contact with your belay partner. When I am with my regular belay partner, it interrupts that flow. When I am with a new belay partner, I never get close to it.
I suspect that if my amygdala worked like his, I would free solo simply to avoid having to communicate with a belay partner.
I think the main thing you need to realize is that is climbing with ropes there is a lot of overhead involved to do it safely. I'd say about 1/8th of the time is climbing the other 7/8 is spent with the logistics of the rope management, partner management and placing protection in the rock. With free soloing you can focus entirely on the climbing and not on the logistics. I honestly think its more about this focus and flow and less about the cheating death.
The closest analog I can think of is Phillipe Petit's tightrope walk across the twin towers. Petit has similarly said that:
“I am not a death-wish person,” he said to me. “I want to live very old. It is true that death is part of the frame—that it frames such activities as bullfighting and tightrope walking. My world is a dangerous world, sure, but I am very safe in knowing my limits. I am not playing with words when I say I don’t take risks. The danger becomes so narrow that it is a novel companion with whom you travel. It is not an enemy.”
I know this isn't an answer, but if you've never seen the documentary about Petit, "Man on Wire", perhaps it would help to understand the mindset.
You have to embrace the ambiguity in natural languages. Life and death can be simply considered opposites. In this mode of thinking any risky behavior is trading in death at the peril of life.
However you can also imagine a justification along these lines: There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states. Some of these are familiar things like falling in love or having children. These are risks but usually perceived as having obvious upsides. There are also other behaviors like drug use or underground fight clubs which also give access to unique mental states but are usually perceived as too risky to encourage. It's easy to put judge free soloing climbing as something like drug use or bareknuckle boxing. But try to imagine that when done correctly and carefully that it could be something much like having a child or working on a math proof for years.
you could say the same thing about top-roping vs lead climbing (placing protection from the ground up). Yes, top-roping is much safer, but the experience & sense of achievement is just not the same.
Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. Not stopping to place protection, not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag... It's just you on the wall. It takes most climber multiple days of painstaking climbing to summit Freerider. Alex did it in 4 hours.
Beyond all else it's just a unbelievable feat of human ability.
If you really want to understand just how impressive this was:
1: climb something (even if it's just 40 feet in a climbing gym)
2: Go to Yosemite and stand at the base of El Cap
One fact that might help - setting safety gear generally consumes a significant portion of a climber's time and effort. It doesn't show in top-roped gym climbing, but going up El Cap means putting a great deal of work into hauling and placing safety gear.
Free soloing versus geared climbing is almost comparable to free diving versus scuba. It's less safe, but removes so much overhead that it's a qualitatively different experience.
Honnold's free solos in Yosemite are frequently world speed records - often by a factor of 2 or more. He's climbing with a directness and lack of complication that's really hard to attain any other way.
There's the banal meaning, which is the opposite of dead.
Another meaning, which I think the article meant, is to explore the outer limits of your ability and ambition during your incredibly brief period of existence in the universe. That's living. :)
To "live" in this sense is, perhaps, to "flow" in the Mihaly sense. You can't flow if you're dead, but the flow you seek is not a panicked fleeing from death.
Not too different from deciding to run a startup - small probability of success, certainty of exhaustion, possible alienation from family, etc. SV provides ropes for when you fail. Doesn't happen everywhere.
Everyone lives their life in the face of impending death. Yet we usually judge the quality of our lives by what we accomplish, not the mere postponement of the inevitable.
Climbers climb for the enjoyment of the experience, and to get to the top--not just to show that they can avoid falling. Alex is a rare elite climber, so he reaches for rare elite experiences and accomplishments.
I'll let Charles Lindberg's words about his first parachute jump attempt an answer. Having been both a skydiver and a rock climber, I can say his thoughts are spot on.
"When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness... The thought left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear.
It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." [1]
[1] "The Spirit of St Louis", C. Lindberg, 1954. Quote was lightly edited for brevity.
It's about not being encumbered by all the extra material. People can feel more fulfilled by just experiencing themselves and the mountain, not themselves, the mountain, and a whole mess of carabiners and leveraged ropes.
Honnold's no thrill-seeker, he just prefers doing things alone.
Another thought - this is specifically about Honnold.
Caldwell isn't just making a pretty-sounding claim, he's drawing a distinction between Honnold and other free soloists who were much more attuned to death, who seemed to be free soloing precisely for the adrenaline rush of survival. (Dean Potter is the classic example.)
So I think this is a claim that Honnold is soloing for the purity and experience of the thing, specifically as compared to some other soloists who are more focused on adrenaline and risk.
It's about perspective. One definition or opinion does not necessarily invalidate the other. Each is an expression of a point of view.
You say safety equipment. Others might say encumbrance, or unnatural performance enhancer, or laziness cheat. An apparatus that enables a lessening of difficulty, which eases the challenge.
When the goal is to engage a challenge, anything that renders the effort less challenging is a dilution of the very challenge as a whole.
Of course one must use safety equipment to examine the possibility of a raw attempt. But one builds on the experience, removing the unnecessary, wherever possible.
Of course it's easier to climb with a helmet and ropes, because those are the things that provide for obvious leverage to control the outcome. But who ever climbed a mountain because they wanted to do an easy thing?
The harder the task is, the better, in this context. The satisfaction of accomplishment is the goal, rather than the stress or all of the physiological byproducts or recognition that come as part of the package when completing the task.
Trying to do something, based on an intuition that an outcome is possible, when others lack the same intuition is the goal here.
This is not the same as fame. Fame is a derivative of the behavior of others, as outsiders to the activity.
To trust in one's intuition, and find that it is correct, is a fundamental aspect of human existence.
To divorce oneself of maximizing challenge, is to lie in bed all day as a shut in, and have your food delivered to you, in the most exaggerated sense of the comparison.
I'm not a climber, but I imagine that there could be two things going on here:
1. The sheer pleasure of doing something unaided - people enjoy doing crosswords without referring to computer screen that will tell them all 7 letter words ending in g-something-t.
2. The pleasure of feeling yourself as part of nature. The walk in the woods wearing shorts and a T-shirt, rather than racing through it on a motorcycle.
One of the most striking quotes for me was: "Alex once told me that he had never fallen completely unexpectedly—meaning without at least some prior inclination that it could happen. When I told him that I had unexpectedly fallen at least ten times, he looked confused, like somehow that didn’t compute."
It really illustrates what a professional Alex is and how in-tune he is with his skills and his craft.
I take the same thing from that quote. I have a good friend who has become one of the top competition paraglider pilots in the world. A lot of paragliders see him as doing terrifying, reckless things. He's told me that he considers himself a conservative pilot, and that he doesn't take risks. I agree with his self-assessment. I've known him a long time, and saw him ascend through a long, well-ordered series of incremental challenges.
Having never tried rock climbing, I'm curious what the potential causes of catastrophic events would be on this kind of a climb (that would necessitate safety gear for most climbers in the first place)...pieces of rock that give out under a hand/foot, appendage slipping out of place, etc.?
Alex may be the standout that never makes a mistake. But a notable free soloist dies while climbing about once a year. And I'm sure they all claim to know their limits and understand their abilities as well.
This quote is telling. After listening to a lecture given by someone who is a master of their craft (even if I watch online), I can feel a sense of clarity whenever I'm doing the task they talk about. A master of his/her craft knows the craft so deeply that it's as easy as breathing. This is how climbing must be for Alex... though, sometimes everyone skips a breath. I guess his atypical Amygdala helps him get over that.
I've read an article recently - someone actually scanned Honnold's brain and it turns out his amygdala does not respond in the usual way to inputs that in most people would elicit fear. In colloquial terms, he's "fearless".
Apparently, meditation can reduce the size of your amygdala [1], and this reduces your fear response, so yea. I'm not saying you can become like him, but you can make some headway in that direction.
Honnold needs the following to do what he did: Absolute fearlessness, talent (most couldn't ever do what he did even with years of practice), and discipline (to train like crazy).
Someone did the same with top downhill skier Aksel Lund Svindal last year, with the same conclusion. They also attached a pinhole camera inside his goggles to study eye movements, and found that he never blinks for the full 2 1/2 minutes of a race.
Damasio reviews evidence that people that lose the ability to feel certain emotions make worse decisions. It seemingly simply doesn't occur to them to not do dangerous things and there are cases where it leads to systematically bad decisions
I'd love to see a picture of the entire wall, with rectangles showing which tiny part of it we're looking at for each photo, just to get a better feeling for how high the climb is.
Yeah, the route he climbed is very popular and there's a lot of 'fixed' ropes that teams climbing it will normally leave in place on a short term basis.
If you are interested in this or the history of climbing in Yosemite and and El Capitan I highly recommend the documentary "Valley Uprising." Even if you aren't necessarily interested in climbing its a beautiful documentary. It's available on Netflix.
I'll just second this as someone not previously interested in climbing who was really drawn into Valley Uprising. From a purely technical point of view, it does some fascinating stuff bringing decades-old photographs and video clips to life on the rock face.
I became interested in climbing in the early 90s, like the day before the climbing gym revolution swept the world, and there were two compendiums of hair raising tales I read that indoctrinated me into the spirit of climbing, and the experience of being in absolutely atrocious situations at the edge of the unknown: Mirrors in the Cliffs, and The Games Climbers Play. Recommended reading for anyone who might be into such a thing.
If you enjoy this, then I also highly recommend the book "The Vertical World of Yosemite". It's shame it's out of print, practically every story in there is a gem.
It's a documentary about Carl Boenish and the history of BASE jumping, which is closely related to some of the events and places portrayed in Valley Uprising.
It is very good. I watched it by chance because it happened to be on at a friend's house, and I got hooked almost immediately. The blend of personalities, history, and beautiful shots of Yosemite is wonderful.
The thing that I've most loved while following Alex's exploits over the past few year is how he talks about his mental preparation. He always seems very well prepared for whatever route that he is climbing. To me, the biggest evidence of that is the fact that he quit doing this exact climb a few weeks ago because he felt conditions weren't right. That's really hard to do with media, etc. on your tail, even IF your life is literally at stake.
It would be one thing if he were just incredibly bold and daring and were getting away with it; instead, its clear that his method is a very slow, methodical process in which he manages to practically guarantee that he will have a safe and effortless climb. Even in the interviews after this, it is clear that he is committed to his routine and managed to set-up this climb in such a way that it simply represented a comfortable, natural step in his evolution as a climber. He talks about it almost matter-of-factly.
That's really hard to do with media, etc. on your tail, even IF your life is literally at stake.
Except they weren't.
Honnold and his team very deliberately kept this thing quiet. Other than the crew and close friends, no one knew of the ascent until it was done and announced.
Which is brilliant for exactly the reasons you mention.
If it was filmed/shot by NatGeo, isn't that media on his tail in some sense? It's still pressure he would have to resist. Bailing on an attempt would inconvenience a support team.
To be honest it wasn't really kept that quiet. Plenty of climbers knew he was working on it, and I'm sure plenty of people in the climbing media knew he was working towards it.
Fortunately I think the climbing media are a pretty sound bunch and did the decent thing by leaving him to get on with it in his own time.
I had in mind just the support people around and the assumption that sponsors/etc prob. were aware of it, but I absolutely take your point. Agreed that the fact that it was kept this hush is another sign of the quality of his process
1. Someone climbs to your location from the ground, or descends from the top of the route, hauling a sufficient amount of gear for you to rappel or be lowered to the ground. Obviously impractical on massive routes like El Cap.
2. A rescuer is slung onto the route near the incapacitated climber's location using a helicopter long-line. They prepare the climber for extraction and then they are both slung off by the helicopter at one time.
That's a great lesson to extrapolate, but only as long as you are applying it to a domain where failure != death.
For example, in climbing where you have protection a much better lesson to extrapolate is that you will fail, and to be prepared for that at all times.
As a climber, I wish this were less widely publicized. Free soloing is extremely dangerous, and dozens of climbers - including experienced ones die doing it every year.
I am a big Alex Honnold fan, but no matter how much your skill, free solo climbing will kill you one day. Alex Honnold is not the first free soloist, and won't be the last. He is great climber, and has no fear of heights it appears. Your average person or climber is not going to try to replicate what he is doing due to their desire to preserve their life. We do not see many people jumping gorges in rocket sleds like Evel Kneviel although he was massively famous. Of course some will try to replicate but they are also special people that are daredevils as well.
Speaking as a former sponsored, professional climber who happens to have been one of the first Americans to solo 5.13... sorry but I'm still alive and kicking.
Listen... soloing is obviously very dangerous. Nobody who is out there soloing as a pastime is unaware of this. But comparing soloing to trying to jump gorges on rocket slides isn't doing justice to a complicated and nuanced subject.
Soloing is a personal decision. And it is usually carefully made. People who solo regularly are usually not adrenaline junkies. They're not thrill seekers. They're careful and methodical and prepared. They have probably solo down-climbed more total mileage than you can imagine.
Calling Alex a special person is fair and appropriate. But he's not a daredevil.
> free solo climbing will kill you one day
> [...] [Wikipedia] has a list of free solo
> climbers.
The Wikipedia article you're linking to does list a bunch of people who've died doing it, but also famous free solo climbers in their 60s and even 80s.
You can also add the legendary Patrick Edlinger, who died after falling down his stairs at the age of 52. Who can forget the epic "Life By the Fingertips": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj1-58EfWpo
I'll add Derek Hersey to that list. He's not as big of a name as those on this list, but there is a movie called Front Range Freaks which has a great segment about him and soloing. He died at 36.
To all those people attacking this guy, I think it's important to point out that free soloing is absolutely controversial in the climbing community, for exactly this reason. Heck, Clif dropped some climber sponsorships, including Honnold's, for just this reason:
Personally, I do think that free soloists like Honnold to some extent damage the reputation of the sport by making it appear inaccessible and irresponsibly risky, while the reality for sport climbers is that the sport is really fairly safe with proper training and equipment.
I don't see how it is any different then something like back country skiers, or base jumping. There are is a wide spectrum of risk in a lot of "extreme" sports.
Not trying to make this an attack either, I just see a lot of parallels elsewhere in other sports -- and it seems a little hypocritical to me that the climbing community would even be divided over this.
Furthermore, sticking with the BC skiing example, many people (resort skiers) would see it as irresponsibly risky. But we know that BC skiers take all the preparations they can, from monitoring avalanche reports and forecasts, taking training classes, learning how to probe and escape avalanches with partners. Similarly, Alex very much spends a lot of time preparing for his free-solos, in all aspects of planning -- which makes it much more calculated then "irresponsibly" risky to me.
No, he should not get wide publicity of this amazing accomplishment because HE is an idiot. The fact that he succeeded (survived) just means that he is still an idiot.
Of course it is, but that is also why it IS widely publicized. It is an incredible feat. I get the perspective of not wanting to encourage others to do X or Y, but everyone ultimately is responsible for their own safety with these types of things.
I understand your position but I disagree. Honnold is well aware of the risks and has prepared as necessary to accomplish this feat. The media needs to better report on that aspect.
There will be people trying to imitate this who don't know what they are getting into. In my view he could have shown the same level of accomplishment in a safer way and set an example.
While I agree, I think it's a self-limiting problem: those of us who are completely outside of the sport would look at this and think "wow, what an amazing feat" but never fathom doing it. Those on the inside will know how hard and risky this is.
That's pretty much true of every profession. People on the outside are horrible at understanding the risk, amount of time needed, and how amazing something is. This is one of the examples where the risk and amazement are so extreme that and observer gets in the ballpark on the estimate.
I'm ignorant of climbing, anyone can see this is amazing but I'm glad you said this. No matter how amazing the feat it is reckless behavior. One mistake next time by him and he's dead, same for anyone else attempting it. Is climbing so different to any other activity that makes it so far fetched from making this equivalency: 'I'm so sure this code is solid, if it doesn't compile I should have an instant death'.
I have the same question for this as I do for batsuit flyers.
How on earth do you practice it? You can practice bench pressing by pressing a small weight. You can practice boxing by sparring.
You can't just climb up to a deadly height - which isn't even very much, as people regularly die from falling out windows - and work your way up from there.
You can't just do a little batsuit jump, either. You have to be going fast for the suit to make a difference.
For BASE jumping, many start with sky diving or jumping from relatively easy exits like bridges.
Most free solo climbers climb with a rope for the majority of their climbs, although exceptions like Paul Preuss exist. They often rehearse free solo projects many times on rope before going free solo, although there a notable cases of 'onsight' free solos like Hansjörg Auer's 'Weg durch den Fisch'. In the case discussed here, Alex Honnold apparently climbed Freerider around a dozen times on rope and rehearsed the crux pitch many more times. He did take several falls on the route, one of them spraining his ankle last summer.
As someone whose best day climbing was a 5.6 route on Yosemite's Cathedral Peak with a guide, I will add that one purpose of chalk might well be for guides to mark where the holds are for their clients.
I won't be doing anything like this, but I can still respect it.
When hiking King's Peak in Utah, my group was plodding along with backpacks for a week-long camp, with food, tents, sleeping gear, and various safety gear. We were passed by a guy in shorts with a water filter bottle who was running to the summit. We met him again many hours later on his way back, when we had not yet reached our day one base camp.
The freedom and purity of just being there with the mountain was compelling, but requires a whole different set of preparation than I have given it.
It's not just removing a helmet, or doing a daredevil risk, it's transforming the experience. Because he wasn't staying over night, he didn't need a tent or sleeping gear. He didn't need a lot of food. He didn't need a backpack to carry it all. Everything he could leave behind allowed him to move faster, improving his experience.
No, climbing without a rope is the purest form of the sport and has been around for longer than nylon ropes and harnesses.
I don't know much about F1 races but I guess say a fairer comparison would be doing time trials alone on the track versus actual races where you risk the collision with other drivers. The former is safer but the latter is more interesting, not just because it's more dangerous.
I had a similar reaction. The headlines might as well been "extremely skilled climber makes wildly risky bet and lives to tell the tale."
Sure he's skilled; sure he is strategic. What I want to know is could he do this over and over again without dying? My guess is not. His odds would probably be higher than most others' but still risky.
But in the end, if it's what he wants to do, so be it. To me it's interesting but not something I'd like to do, regardless of the risk. Spending my time climbing rock walls is just not appealing to me, even if it's out in the wilderness, which I love.
Especially so soon after Ueli Steck's death. I first heard about Alex's feat from FB, when I opened it up and saw "Alex Honnold" in the trending stories thing. I said out loud "oh god, no"...and then saw the headline about El Cap.
This article is like celebrating a car accident where the stunt-driver did not wear a seat belt, somewhat reckless and irresponsible like this http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/31/us/skydiver-no-parachute-succe.... It is an extreme sports trend like kiteboarding where getting "better" is equivalent to getting as close as possible to personal harm. :(
Well, thats how he makes a living. If it wasn't for his free solos, Alex Honnold would most likely not be able to be a professional climber.
For those who pay him (sponsors, magazines) its an ethical dilemma for sure. Cliff Bar for instance, recently dropped several athletes including Honold when they decided to no longer support sports that they deemed too dangerous.
> "I woke up one guy and he sort of said, 'Oh, hey.' Then when I went by, I think he discreetly woke up his buddies because when I looked down they were all three standing there like 'What the f*?' "
What an awesome story for a climber: "I was woken up on the wall by the first guy to free solo El Cap"
This needs to be higher up. A great read. I was going to post it up top in reply to the person who posted the NatGeo link saying it was the best description of it, until I found it mentioned all the way down here :)
A couple of years ago it was in the news that a couple a blokes (Caldwell & Jorgeson) had freeclimbed El Capitan.
So for those of us who know next to nothing about rock climbing, what's the difference here? Apparently Caldwell & Jorgeson were using ropes for safety although not for the climbing per se (hence why it was freeclimbing?) So this guy does it all alone, without any safety ropes, and in frickin 4 hours? Waaaat?
Or was it a different route? The Caldwell & Jorgeson stories mention "Dawn Wall", is that something else than Honnold climbed now?
You are correct about the difference between freeclimbing and free soloing. Honnold had nothing to save him if he fell. Caldwell and Jorgeson had a rope and gear and a belayer to catch them if they fell, but they climbed their whole route without pulling on gear to help them climb.
They climbed different routes. The Dawn Wall route had not previously been free climbed, it had only been aid climbed before (meaning climbers pulled on gear to help get through the most difficult sections). Honnold climbed a route called Freerider which is easier than the Dawn Wall but still very very very difficult.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Dawn Wall distinction was also that they climbed each pitch in order, and each pitch consecutively without a fall. They fell many times, and just had to start from the bottom of the pitch each time they did. I remember hearing slight controversy about them being able to decide where the pitches start and end, effectively choosing the respawn points conveniently. The other distinction was that they couldn't leave the wall before they finished all pitches.
The Dawn Wall is the hardest rated route on El Cap in Yosemite, and additionally the most difficult big wall route ever done (when considered on the basis of the moves alone).
Honnold free-solo'ed a (different) route called Freerider (also on El Cap), which is still stupidly difficult and would be a career highlight for most people to climb at all, likely over the period of several days.
The BBC buggered this up in an article when they covered it.
Comparing it to the Dawn Wall climb completely misses the point and illustrates how misunderstood the sport is. Freeing a previously seemingly impossible-to-climb route is not the same kind of achievement as solo'ing an established route that, in the case of Honnold, he'd already climbed a dozen times or more.
They're both astounding, but for different reasons. It's a shame the media is comparing the two, as it would seem to diminish Jorgeson and Caldwell's achievement.
You are right - what Alex did is called "free soloing" which means climbing with nothing attached to the wall. Freeclimbing means you climb while harnessed in so if you fall you (hopefully) don't die. Originally people "aid climbed" the wall where you drill bolts into the wall and hoist yourself up.
This also explains why Alex can climb it so much faster. No ropes to worry about on the way up.
Check out the movie valley uprising on Netflix if you want to learn more.
> So for those of us who know next to nothing about rock climbing, what's the difference here? Apparently Caldwell & Jorgeson were using ropes for safety although not for the climbing per se (hence why it was freeclimbing?)
Aid Climbing = using ropes to assist with going up
Free Climbing = only using yourself to climb up, but still using ropes to catch your fall
Free soloing = climbing with no protection or assistance
> Or was it a different route?
Different route on the same mountain. They did the 'Dawn Wall' (which Honnold has also done), and his recent record was on 'Freerider'.
The original nat geo story of which this seems to be a summary covers more of the details (I know next to nothing about climbing as well it just seemed to answer some of these questions)
Another difference - The free climbing on the Dawn Wall allowed for mistakes because of the ropes. Jorgesen (and maybe Caldwell, I can't recall) both took falls while attempting to climb the wall. The spirit of free climbing is that you do each pitch (basically one rope's length) without falling at least once. If you fall, you go back to the beginning of the pitch. That way, you have essentially climbed the whole route without assistance from pulling on ropes, since you only rest in 'natural' rest areas.
Honnold's free solo is amazing because he did not make a mistake and have to use the rope. Every move was executed perfectly.
achievements in climbing can be kind of difficult for non-climbers to see the relevancy of, since the conventions of success seem a little arbitrary until you put some time into it. it was interesting to see the news cycle pick up tommy caldwell and kevin jorgeson's ascent of the dawn wall in yosemite in january 2015. it was certainly the biggest thing to happen in yosemite at the time, but no bigger in terms of its relevancy to climbing than a handful of other ascents that happened in the few years surrounding. it was a huge climb, and worthy of all the attention it got, but it was a little peculiar to see it get more airtime than any climb since maybe the original dawn wall ascent by warren harding in 1970.
before alex's climb this week, it would be totally reasonable to make the claim that el cap will never get free-soloed. it's too sustained, the only feasible routes are too insecure. no one, expert or not, would ever get shouted down for making that claim, even among a cohort of dreamers who all want to live the impossible. among that cohort, free solo climbing isn't all that common; maybe one in a hundred climbers have ever climbed a difficult route taller than 100 feet without a rope. which makes him alien even within his sport.
honnold just landed on the moon. what he did doesn't require any of the qwerks of convention that accompany most big-wall free climbs. everyone immediately understands the idea of scaling a cliff without a rope. everyone can even try it. el cap is a ten minute walk from the car. but in case the context of the climb is unclear, this is the kind of feat that only comes along every few generations.
maybe I'm overstating it. from one perspective, this climb was another incremental step on honnold's journey. all of his previous ascents were mind-bending as well: moonlight buttress in zion, the regular northwest face of half dome, el sendero luminoso in el potrero chico, mexico. besides, technical rock climbing as we understand it today is only two or three generations old at most, and it's already produced this monster of an achievement. we may see more in our lifetime. I just wouldn't bet on it.
Looking at the pictures El Capitan seems really tall and flat/sheer. Are there other cliffs in the world that are even taller or more sheer? I'm just wondering since I've seen comments from people saying something to the affect that they can't imagine what could top this. There are thousands of mountains around the world. Surely El Capitan isn't the Mt Everest of climbing.
"Considering a truly vertical drop, Mount Thor on Baffin Island in Arctic Canada is often considered the highest at 1370 m (4500 ft) high in total (the top 480 m (1600 ft) is overhanging), and is said to give it the longest vertical drop on Earth at 1,250 m (4,100 ft). However, other cliffs on Baffin Island, such as Polar Sun Spire in the Sam Ford Fjord, or others in remote areas of Greenland may be higher."
I would guess many of those are at heights or in climates that make climbing without gear a no-go because, even assuming you don't need gloves, you would need too much clothing to stay warm.
The importance of this climb goes beyond vertical distance. There are big walls taller than 3300 feet, but Yosemite has an important place in the history of mountaineering and a new era was just opened there.
The difficulty is also important. Though several levels below Honnold's ability, 5.12d on the Yosemite Decimal System is very hard.
there are more sheer cliffs, there are taller mountains, and there are harder routes, for sure. but what makes a cliff, a mountain, or a specific route inspiring is harder to define than its physical countours. there's a mountain in Argentina called Cerro Torre that is seen my many alpinists as the holy grail of mountaineering. it's about 11,000 feet tall, and has a neighbor to the north called Fitz Roy that is even taller and has more terrain on it. but Cerro Torre is steeped in history of climbers making their own attempts on it, and has features peculiar to it that make it seem impossible.
on the other hand, within the alpinism/rock climbing community, Everest isn't actually even seen as the Mt Everest of climbing. if you read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", he elaborates on this. the commercialism associated with the mountain, the way it is treated by guided parties, and the way it is seen as a bucket list item that anyone with the means to hire guides can haul themselves up, all serve to detract from the appeal of the mountain to the "true" adventure mountaineer. I say that a little toungue-in-cheek, though. if any alpinist had the opportunity to climb everest far from the crowds and without the $50k price tag, they would probably leap at it immediately. the point is, even Everest's stature has fallen in prominence among many alpinists, in favor of more technical peaks (though exceptions are readily available). it's been this way since the 60's and 70's.
the 60's and 70's were the time that yosemite climbing began to really take off. warren harding climbed the nose (the most prominent and popular route on el capitan) in 1958, royal robbins climbed the sheer northwest face of half dome in 1957. from then on, legends like chuck pratt, yvon chouinard, john long, jim bridwell, john bachar, peter croft, ron kauk, and lynn hill, all made their impact on the cliffs of yosemite. many of them went on to climb in the greater ranges of the world. yosemite for a time was a melting pot of the finest pratitioners of the sport--until you could no longer spend an entire summer in camp 4 because of overcrowding.
fast forward to modern day, it's still the proving ground for so many rock climbers and alpinists around the world. to climb the most prominent cliff in the most historically meaningful place still has power that captivates. some of it is its accessibility, some of it is the beauty of the mountain, and some of it is the difficulty, but much of it is simply legend.
I know precisely nothing about climbing but simply looking at the pictures of El Capitan made me immediately understand he just did something that by all accounts should have been impossible.
Readit News
As a climber, there are very few people that I trust to have a more useful opinion on all this than Tommy Caldwell, a close friend and long time climbing partner of Honnold. It's so out there for most people that most jump to conclusions without proper knowledge of the subject.
Caldwell is in an interesting position of having to balance supporting his friend, and trying to get over the fact that he very well could die doing these attempts. His article does a great job expressing this.
Can someone help me understand this? How is doing something without safety equipment that you can do with with safety equipment climbing to live, but not about cheating death? What is the point of foregoing safety if not to somehow eke something out of the increased danger, whether it be adrenaline, or a period of increased focus, or fame?
If it's not about someone being addicted to adrenaline or looking for fame, then I just don't understand it. At all. As in it's so foreign to me that I can't even begin to understand it.
1. Alex Honnold's brain is atypical. His amygdala simply does not respond to stimuli the way that it does in most people. To learn more, read this (excellent) article:
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
2. While I am (at best) a mediocre climber, the section you quoted rings true to me, particularly this section - "Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them." There is something incredibly natural and sensual about climbing on rock that I can't describe without sounding like I'm talking about sex. And...that's traditionally where people tell me to give them my keys because I've had too much to drink. :)
3. Climbing is a deeply meditative activity, particularly when you get into a place where each movement flows into the next. When I am there, my mind shuts down and it is just a rock and me doing the most natural thing that I have ever found (see #2). That flow is deeply beautiful, but when you climb with ropes, you have to be in near constant contact with your belay partner. When I am with my regular belay partner, it interrupts that flow. When I am with a new belay partner, I never get close to it.
I suspect that if my amygdala worked like his, I would free solo simply to avoid having to communicate with a belay partner.
“I am not a death-wish person,” he said to me. “I want to live very old. It is true that death is part of the frame—that it frames such activities as bullfighting and tightrope walking. My world is a dangerous world, sure, but I am very safe in knowing my limits. I am not playing with words when I say I don’t take risks. The danger becomes so narrow that it is a novel companion with whom you travel. It is not an enemy.”
I know this isn't an answer, but if you've never seen the documentary about Petit, "Man on Wire", perhaps it would help to understand the mindset.
However you can also imagine a justification along these lines: There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states. Some of these are familiar things like falling in love or having children. These are risks but usually perceived as having obvious upsides. There are also other behaviors like drug use or underground fight clubs which also give access to unique mental states but are usually perceived as too risky to encourage. It's easy to put judge free soloing climbing as something like drug use or bareknuckle boxing. But try to imagine that when done correctly and carefully that it could be something much like having a child or working on a math proof for years.
For the same reason why many would spent hours catching fish over a lazy weekend when much better fish is available for $5 in super-market.
For the same reason why someone would spend 5 hours trying to solve an interesting algorithms problem when one can easily find a solution on internet.
I am not a climber. I have fear of heights but I can understand it.
Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. Not stopping to place protection, not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag... It's just you on the wall. It takes most climber multiple days of painstaking climbing to summit Freerider. Alex did it in 4 hours.
Beyond all else it's just a unbelievable feat of human ability.
If you really want to understand just how impressive this was:
1: climb something (even if it's just 40 feet in a climbing gym) 2: Go to Yosemite and stand at the base of El Cap
Free soloing versus geared climbing is almost comparable to free diving versus scuba. It's less safe, but removes so much overhead that it's a qualitatively different experience.
Honnold's free solos in Yosemite are frequently world speed records - often by a factor of 2 or more. He's climbing with a directness and lack of complication that's really hard to attain any other way.
There's the banal meaning, which is the opposite of dead.
Another meaning, which I think the article meant, is to explore the outer limits of your ability and ambition during your incredibly brief period of existence in the universe. That's living. :)
Edit: formatting.
Not too different from deciding to run a startup - small probability of success, certainty of exhaustion, possible alienation from family, etc. SV provides ropes for when you fail. Doesn't happen everywhere.
Climbers climb for the enjoyment of the experience, and to get to the top--not just to show that they can avoid falling. Alex is a rare elite climber, so he reaches for rare elite experiences and accomplishments.
"When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness... The thought left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear.
It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." [1]
[1] "The Spirit of St Louis", C. Lindberg, 1954. Quote was lightly edited for brevity.
Honnold's no thrill-seeker, he just prefers doing things alone.
Caldwell isn't just making a pretty-sounding claim, he's drawing a distinction between Honnold and other free soloists who were much more attuned to death, who seemed to be free soloing precisely for the adrenaline rush of survival. (Dean Potter is the classic example.)
So I think this is a claim that Honnold is soloing for the purity and experience of the thing, specifically as compared to some other soloists who are more focused on adrenaline and risk.
You say safety equipment. Others might say encumbrance, or unnatural performance enhancer, or laziness cheat. An apparatus that enables a lessening of difficulty, which eases the challenge.
When the goal is to engage a challenge, anything that renders the effort less challenging is a dilution of the very challenge as a whole.
Of course one must use safety equipment to examine the possibility of a raw attempt. But one builds on the experience, removing the unnecessary, wherever possible.
Of course it's easier to climb with a helmet and ropes, because those are the things that provide for obvious leverage to control the outcome. But who ever climbed a mountain because they wanted to do an easy thing?
The harder the task is, the better, in this context. The satisfaction of accomplishment is the goal, rather than the stress or all of the physiological byproducts or recognition that come as part of the package when completing the task.
Trying to do something, based on an intuition that an outcome is possible, when others lack the same intuition is the goal here.
This is not the same as fame. Fame is a derivative of the behavior of others, as outsiders to the activity.
To trust in one's intuition, and find that it is correct, is a fundamental aspect of human existence.
To divorce oneself of maximizing challenge, is to lie in bed all day as a shut in, and have your food delivered to you, in the most exaggerated sense of the comparison.
1. The sheer pleasure of doing something unaided - people enjoy doing crosswords without referring to computer screen that will tell them all 7 letter words ending in g-something-t.
2. The pleasure of feeling yourself as part of nature. The walk in the woods wearing shorts and a T-shirt, rather than racing through it on a motorcycle.
Basically different sports, rather than being about safety
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With safety equipment, climbing El Cap takes 2-4 days, and you have to pull up several bags of equipment behind you with pulleys.
Without any safety equipment (i.e. free soloing) climbing El Cap takes a few hours and you just bring your body and some chalk.
Plus it's just a cool thing to do (at least IMO). It's like, the dude is so good at climbing he doesn't need ropes.
Most people don't, because we want to live life not be scared of it.
He's the same as the rest of us just on a different level.
I find it kinda easy to understand even if it's not my thing.
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It really illustrates what a professional Alex is and how in-tune he is with his skills and his craft.
If true, that would explain a lot.
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
[1]: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mi...
People like Honnold are pretty rare.
http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis
http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-6317-special-edi...
http://tim.blog/2016/05/17/alex-honnold/
I'm way outside the bubble of climbing and stuff, so I was surprised to see people sleep up there. I don't know how I'd relax enough to fall asleep :)
Can't ever remember feeling this tense just looking at pix.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3784160/
You can get a taste of it from a number of clips that are in the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o86TpaSBcWw
https://www.amazon.com/Vertical-World-Yosemite-Collection-Ph...
It's a documentary about Carl Boenish and the history of BASE jumping, which is closely related to some of the events and places portrayed in Valley Uprising.
It would be one thing if he were just incredibly bold and daring and were getting away with it; instead, its clear that his method is a very slow, methodical process in which he manages to practically guarantee that he will have a safe and effortless climb. Even in the interviews after this, it is clear that he is committed to his routine and managed to set-up this climb in such a way that it simply represented a comfortable, natural step in his evolution as a climber. He talks about it almost matter-of-factly.
Truly awe-inspiring.
Except they weren't.
Honnold and his team very deliberately kept this thing quiet. Other than the crew and close friends, no one knew of the ascent until it was done and announced.
Which is brilliant for exactly the reasons you mention.
Fortunately I think the climbing media are a pretty sound bunch and did the decent thing by leaving him to get on with it in his own time.
2. A rescuer is slung onto the route near the incapacitated climber's location using a helicopter long-line. They prepare the climber for extraction and then they are both slung off by the helicopter at one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_Flight_Rescue_Syste...
It's relatively easier to quit a vanilla free climb.
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Yea I have no idea actually.
Honnold is special in that regard[1].
[1]: http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...
For example, in climbing where you have protection a much better lesson to extrapolate is that you will fail, and to be prepared for that at all times.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_solo_climbing has a list of free solo climbers. A large number of them have died.
Listen... soloing is obviously very dangerous. Nobody who is out there soloing as a pastime is unaware of this. But comparing soloing to trying to jump gorges on rocket slides isn't doing justice to a complicated and nuanced subject.
Soloing is a personal decision. And it is usually carefully made. People who solo regularly are usually not adrenaline junkies. They're not thrill seekers. They're careful and methodical and prepared. They have probably solo down-climbed more total mileage than you can imagine.
Calling Alex a special person is fair and appropriate. But he's not a daredevil.
Paul Preuss (October 3, 1913) died during an attempt to make the first ascent of the North Ridge of the Mandlkogel free solo, fell a thousand feet
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John Gill, alive at 80
Peter Croft, alive at 60
Alain Robert, alive at 54
Catherine Destiville, alive at 53
Steph Davis, alive at 43
Alex Honnold, alive at 31
Dan Osmond, died at 45, not free soloing
Dean Potter, died at 43, not free soloing
Michael Reardon, died at 43, not free soloing
John Bachar died free soloing at 52
It's a very small field, not many people make a discipline of it.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bubendorfer there is no English page for him
He free solo'ed the south wall of the Aconcagua within a day in 1991.
But serious question : of the four top people alive, any data on when they stopped climbing ? I would guess that would correlate with longevity.
I also recall reading somewhere that a disproportionate number of elite scientists and researchers in the 1930's - 60's were mountain climbers.
Auer's free solo of Marmolada 'via Attraverso il Pesce' is something in the same league as Alex's Freeride.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/sports/clif-bar-drops-spo...
Personally, I do think that free soloists like Honnold to some extent damage the reputation of the sport by making it appear inaccessible and irresponsibly risky, while the reality for sport climbers is that the sport is really fairly safe with proper training and equipment.
Not trying to make this an attack either, I just see a lot of parallels elsewhere in other sports -- and it seems a little hypocritical to me that the climbing community would even be divided over this.
Furthermore, sticking with the BC skiing example, many people (resort skiers) would see it as irresponsibly risky. But we know that BC skiers take all the preparations they can, from monitoring avalanche reports and forecasts, taking training classes, learning how to probe and escape avalanches with partners. Similarly, Alex very much spends a lot of time preparing for his free-solos, in all aspects of planning -- which makes it much more calculated then "irresponsibly" risky to me.
Honnold's solo of El Cap is arguably the greatest outdoor sports feat ever. Of course it's going to be publicised.
Couldn't disagree more with this mindset.
How on earth do you practice it? You can practice bench pressing by pressing a small weight. You can practice boxing by sparring.
You can't just climb up to a deadly height - which isn't even very much, as people regularly die from falling out windows - and work your way up from there.
You can't just do a little batsuit jump, either. You have to be going fast for the suit to make a difference.
Most free solo climbers climb with a rope for the majority of their climbs, although exceptions like Paul Preuss exist. They often rehearse free solo projects many times on rope before going free solo, although there a notable cases of 'onsight' free solos like Hansjörg Auer's 'Weg durch den Fisch'. In the case discussed here, Alex Honnold apparently climbed Freerider around a dozen times on rope and rehearsed the crux pitch many more times. He did take several falls on the route, one of them spraining his ankle last summer.
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My ratios may be wrong, adjust to taste.
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When hiking King's Peak in Utah, my group was plodding along with backpacks for a week-long camp, with food, tents, sleeping gear, and various safety gear. We were passed by a guy in shorts with a water filter bottle who was running to the summit. We met him again many hours later on his way back, when we had not yet reached our day one base camp.
The freedom and purity of just being there with the mountain was compelling, but requires a whole different set of preparation than I have given it.
It's not just removing a helmet, or doing a daredevil risk, it's transforming the experience. Because he wasn't staying over night, he didn't need a tent or sleeping gear. He didn't need a lot of food. He didn't need a backpack to carry it all. Everything he could leave behind allowed him to move faster, improving his experience.
I don't know much about F1 races but I guess say a fairer comparison would be doing time trials alone on the track versus actual races where you risk the collision with other drivers. The former is safer but the latter is more interesting, not just because it's more dangerous.
Maybe this video gives you a feeling for why free solo is romanticized and worshiped so much in the climbing community. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz5w7q5GHuc&t=3m25s
Sure he's skilled; sure he is strategic. What I want to know is could he do this over and over again without dying? My guess is not. His odds would probably be higher than most others' but still risky.
But in the end, if it's what he wants to do, so be it. To me it's interesting but not something I'd like to do, regardless of the risk. Spending my time climbing rock walls is just not appealing to me, even if it's out in the wilderness, which I love.
What an awesome story for a climber: "I was woken up on the wall by the first guy to free solo El Cap"
Check #6 here: http://elcapreport.com/content/elcap-report-6317-special-edi...
So for those of us who know next to nothing about rock climbing, what's the difference here? Apparently Caldwell & Jorgeson were using ropes for safety although not for the climbing per se (hence why it was freeclimbing?) So this guy does it all alone, without any safety ropes, and in frickin 4 hours? Waaaat?
Or was it a different route? The Caldwell & Jorgeson stories mention "Dawn Wall", is that something else than Honnold climbed now?
They climbed different routes. The Dawn Wall route had not previously been free climbed, it had only been aid climbed before (meaning climbers pulled on gear to help get through the most difficult sections). Honnold climbed a route called Freerider which is easier than the Dawn Wall but still very very very difficult.
Honnold free-solo'ed a (different) route called Freerider (also on El Cap), which is still stupidly difficult and would be a career highlight for most people to climb at all, likely over the period of several days.
Comparing it to the Dawn Wall climb completely misses the point and illustrates how misunderstood the sport is. Freeing a previously seemingly impossible-to-climb route is not the same kind of achievement as solo'ing an established route that, in the case of Honnold, he'd already climbed a dozen times or more.
They're both astounding, but for different reasons. It's a shame the media is comparing the two, as it would seem to diminish Jorgeson and Caldwell's achievement.
This also explains why Alex can climb it so much faster. No ropes to worry about on the way up.
Check out the movie valley uprising on Netflix if you want to learn more.
Aid Climbing = using ropes to assist with going up
Free Climbing = only using yourself to climb up, but still using ropes to catch your fall
Free soloing = climbing with no protection or assistance
> Or was it a different route?
Different route on the same mountain. They did the 'Dawn Wall' (which Honnold has also done), and his recent record was on 'Freerider'.
Here's the dawn wall: http://www.rockandice.com/dawn-wall-el-cap-yosemite-topo. Don't see a good topo for Freerider yet.
Edit: Turns out I was mis-remembering on the dawn wall. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold#Selected_notable_... has a list of his notable climbs.
[edit: fixed Adam's name]
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/features/athlete...
Free-climb - uses ropes for safety in the event of a fall, but does not use ropes for assistance climbing.
Free-solo - no ropes at all. Just hands, feet and chalk, basically. IOW, you fall, you die.
Honnold's free solo is amazing because he did not make a mistake and have to use the rope. Every move was executed perfectly.
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before alex's climb this week, it would be totally reasonable to make the claim that el cap will never get free-soloed. it's too sustained, the only feasible routes are too insecure. no one, expert or not, would ever get shouted down for making that claim, even among a cohort of dreamers who all want to live the impossible. among that cohort, free solo climbing isn't all that common; maybe one in a hundred climbers have ever climbed a difficult route taller than 100 feet without a rope. which makes him alien even within his sport.
honnold just landed on the moon. what he did doesn't require any of the qwerks of convention that accompany most big-wall free climbs. everyone immediately understands the idea of scaling a cliff without a rope. everyone can even try it. el cap is a ten minute walk from the car. but in case the context of the climb is unclear, this is the kind of feat that only comes along every few generations.
maybe I'm overstating it. from one perspective, this climb was another incremental step on honnold's journey. all of his previous ascents were mind-bending as well: moonlight buttress in zion, the regular northwest face of half dome, el sendero luminoso in el potrero chico, mexico. besides, technical rock climbing as we understand it today is only two or three generations old at most, and it's already produced this monster of an achievement. we may see more in our lifetime. I just wouldn't bet on it.
"Considering a truly vertical drop, Mount Thor on Baffin Island in Arctic Canada is often considered the highest at 1370 m (4500 ft) high in total (the top 480 m (1600 ft) is overhanging), and is said to give it the longest vertical drop on Earth at 1,250 m (4,100 ft). However, other cliffs on Baffin Island, such as Polar Sun Spire in the Sam Ford Fjord, or others in remote areas of Greenland may be higher."
I would guess many of those are at heights or in climates that make climbing without gear a no-go because, even assuming you don't need gloves, you would need too much clothing to stay warm.
The difficulty is also important. Though several levels below Honnold's ability, 5.12d on the Yosemite Decimal System is very hard.
on the other hand, within the alpinism/rock climbing community, Everest isn't actually even seen as the Mt Everest of climbing. if you read Jon Krakauer's "Into Thin Air", he elaborates on this. the commercialism associated with the mountain, the way it is treated by guided parties, and the way it is seen as a bucket list item that anyone with the means to hire guides can haul themselves up, all serve to detract from the appeal of the mountain to the "true" adventure mountaineer. I say that a little toungue-in-cheek, though. if any alpinist had the opportunity to climb everest far from the crowds and without the $50k price tag, they would probably leap at it immediately. the point is, even Everest's stature has fallen in prominence among many alpinists, in favor of more technical peaks (though exceptions are readily available). it's been this way since the 60's and 70's.
the 60's and 70's were the time that yosemite climbing began to really take off. warren harding climbed the nose (the most prominent and popular route on el capitan) in 1958, royal robbins climbed the sheer northwest face of half dome in 1957. from then on, legends like chuck pratt, yvon chouinard, john long, jim bridwell, john bachar, peter croft, ron kauk, and lynn hill, all made their impact on the cliffs of yosemite. many of them went on to climb in the greater ranges of the world. yosemite for a time was a melting pot of the finest pratitioners of the sport--until you could no longer spend an entire summer in camp 4 because of overcrowding.
fast forward to modern day, it's still the proving ground for so many rock climbers and alpinists around the world. to climb the most prominent cliff in the most historically meaningful place still has power that captivates. some of it is its accessibility, some of it is the beauty of the mountain, and some of it is the difficulty, but much of it is simply legend.