zlacker

I know nothing about climbing. beyond the straight flex of "I could die if I make a mistake", is there a point to doing this without safety equipment?

>>prein+(OP)
He's spoken about it extensively in interviews. Watch his El Capitan movie or recent interviews before this climb.

He just finds it very peaceful and thrilling. "Just him and the climb" kind of language.

Also I suppose clout has to be involved: only person to free solo El Capitan, as far as I know the only person to climb Taipei 101 let alone free solo (did the spiderman guy ever make it or was he arrested?)

>>komali+y
I guess watching the film ('free solo' is the one you mention) is the lowest effort way of getting his perspective and I recommend the film.

For a deeper dive, the book "Alone on the wall" is a good read and I recommend it. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36531127-alone-on-the-wa..., although that said the book might be less appealing to someone who 'knows nothing about climbing' and is more of a time investment than the short documentary :)

>>komali+y
Second person to climb it (Spidey got there first), but only one to free solo it.

>>komali+y
I believe it's also documented that he has an underdeveloped amygdala, so he literally doesn't experience fear in the same way most people do.

>>tempes+j7
...which is easily misconstrued as "feeling less fear" which I don't believe for a second. If that was the case he'd be dead by now.

But it's certainly time we admit everyone feels feelings diferently. Even something basal like pain experience is hugely individual with large variation.

>>prein+(OP)
Money! He has a family to provide for and his unique skillset is "climbing below his grade but with no support", so that's the service he offers the world.

(I get that there are more motivations underneath free soloing in general, but I doubt Taipei 101 with a million cameras is the climb he'd choose if it were not for the money.)

>>kqr+Es
Is it known how much he made?

>>e40+8V
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/nation-world/how-much-alex-...

>>kqr+Es
I am not sold that this way of raising money qualifies as putting family first.

>>kqr+os
I certainly believe he feels less fear. Doesn't mean he wants to die. I'm sure at an intellectual level he enjoys life and doesn't want it to end. I just doubt he gets the innate "nope nope nope" of fear that 99% of people would get when contemplating an activity like this.

>>prein+(OP)
You spend a ton of time belaying you partner (with whom you need to coordinate free time, which is a major hassle if you're trying to climb on a weekday as an unemployed dirtbag) or just clipping the rope into protection while roped climbing. Free soloing you get to do nothing but climb. There's ways to toprope solo so you can just flow up a route without having to fiddle with any of your equipment while you're climbing, but even that will require you to spend a solid 25% of your time rigging (and that's assuming you're efficient, a lot of climbers don't rig very efficiently). A rope team will climb about 3-4 pitches of moderate difficulty in an hour if they're efficient. A free soloist can easily get this done in a quarter or a third of the time. You climb a whole lot more and you get to only climb instead of working with ropes.

Your average roped climbers at a crag might get 3 pitches of climbing in an hour (sometimes even less when they're on hard stuff where they flail). You can get that done in 15 minutes free soloing. After climbing for a while there's a lot of terrain where you know the odds of falling are minuscule, and you know exactly when you feel insecure and have the option of backing off by down climbing. It's a very common practice among alpinists, where moving fast is an enormous advantage and the terrain usually isn't difficult compared to current sport climbing standards.