I though this was the “Mildly terrifying” forum for a sec.
I will never ever ever be impressed by this shit. All I see is a very stupid person taking an unnecessary risk for clout.
Rope or not this is terrifying! It’s a no from me
Why?
This is a lot less impressive when you rotate the image to the right.
I dunno, that background tho. Becomes something out of scifi.
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 :)
If that scares you, do not look up Alex Honnold freeclimbing yosemite several times now. And he’s taken some gnarly routes.
The wall after you finally got that mosquito
More pixels:
Rope and anchor much easier to see here.
I’m actually glad for that. I thought he was free climbing and it made me nervous.
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 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.
I still couldn’t see it, till I realised it’s underneath, not above, the climber!
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.
Thank Jebus he has a rope. Original picture made me feel bad and nervous.
But still 😵💫
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
Every single manner of objectively rating or quantifying intelligence has disappointed me
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.
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.
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.
Ah, thank you
Wait, it’s El Capitan a real mountain?? I tough it was invented by Jacob Wysocki for this
I watched a video about a person with a rare condition that makes him not have a fear response and now, everytime I see people doing stupid shit like this, I think “bet it’s not so fucking rare”
Don’t be do quick to judge: He’s secured by a rope that passes through a series of bolts that are drilled into solid granite. You could lift a car with the gear he’s using to secure himself.
You’re less in control of your fate when passing someone on the highway than he is here. The only way he dies in this situation is first slipping off (first layer of protection is your hands and feet), and then having several layers of ridiculously redundant protection fail.
Belaying a lead climber is much less straightforward than belaying a top roper, so that’s all true assuming he has an excellent belayer, which I’m sure Adam does. That being said mistakes still happen; just look at Sara Al Qunaibet’s recentish fall. Alex Honnold was also dropped by his (at the time) girlfriend and suffered injury. He was lucky to be on the first pitch of a multi pitch climb at the time.
It’s absolutely true that human error can occur, and it does happen sometimes. Of course, nobody is doing big-wall climbing with a grigri (although in Sara Al Qunaibets case there was even a grigri that the coach was able to misuse…). I still feel safer taking a fall with a belayer I trust than I do driving behind some stranger that’s driving erratically. The most dangerous part of any climb on pre-bolted route is likely the drive to the crag.
Totally agree. Feeding through a Grigri in order to lead belay necessitates disabling the autolockimg behavior of the device and creates an opportunity for a fall to the ground if the climber loses it unexpectedly. Belaying with an ATC still isn’t a replacement for vigilance, though. Catching a lead fall with minimal fall distance requires a combination of constant attention, deep understanding of the route, its cruxes, and your climber, anticipation of the fall based on your observation of the climber, and bulletproof mechanical memory of the process. Even still, runout is a thing on many routes. I would add on to your statement; the most dangerous part may be the drive to the crag (or perhaps, a scramble approach) but the second most dangerous part may well be the climb to the first draw.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
“Good morning, Captain.”
Beat me to it by one minute, goddamnit!
