Free solo ..

[TheAngryHank]

Anyone catch this on national geo?
It about a free climber ,2 hour show and its unbelievable.
My first question i thought is who does this guy look at and say... those guys are f***ing nuts..
This guy has the most massive set on earth.

Click to read more...

 

[sr edler]

People have done this stuff for quite a while. Not free soloing that particular rock formation in it's entirety, but free soloing big and difficult and if-you-fall-you-die stuff. Check out John Bachar Crack-a-go-go on YT for instance, from the 80s. Another pioneer Ron Kauk did body doubling for Cliffhanger and trained with Tom Cruise for the 2nd Mission: Impossible film.

Wolfgang Güllich a German climber also did work for Cliffhanger, before he fell asleep in his car on autobahn in Germany and died (a bit ironically perhaps). Cars are dangerous too but not a lot people are scared of cars. He was also the first to free solo Separate Reality, a famous twenty-foot horizontal crack with the sky visible in an overhanging roof in Yosemite National Park (shown below, with Alex Honnold free-soloing it).

Answering your question (who does this guy look at and say... those guys are ****ing nuts..) people are just different. A guy/gal doing this type of free-soloing thing could perhaps be crazy scared of spiders or snakes, for instance, or deep water. Or have an irrational phobia for bananas. Or massive social phobia. I dunno. People are just wired a bit differently. As for Honnold, he just lacks normal response in the amygdala.

 

[chicagoskycam]

I feel like there was an extensive thread on this already as well as the other climbing doc.

 

[NyQuil]

Meh, Captain Kirk did it in Star Trek 5.

 

[peate]

You're just hanging there, and a bee shows up.

 

[kingsholygrail]

Even the still image gives me the willies.

 

[Roo Returns]

Saw the movie. I liked the climbing parts, prep, history, etc.

The relationship part got on my nerves. I found his g/f very unlikable and annoying.

 

[Elvis P]

It's good for the population explosion.