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A comment on Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Climbing World Reels. Parent comment

Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by ejvincent on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:06PM (#14500823)
> 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'.

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.

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Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by takk309 on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:10PM (#14500850)
Honnold has not free climbed the Dawn Wall. Adam Ondra did last year for the second free accent.

[edit: fixed Adam's name]

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Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by FrojoS on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:33PM (#14501034)
Correct. The hardest pitch on the Dawn Wall is rated 9a and in addition the climbing is of a very particular style (slabs) that does not suite most 9a climbers. It is quite possible that the Dawn Wall won't be repeated for a long time. Alex Honnold has never free climbed any 9a but recently stated that this is one of his next goals.
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Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by Snackchez on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:24PM (#14500961)
*Adam Ondra
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Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by patrickbeeson on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:11PM (#14500864)
Honnold has not climbed the Dawn Wall. There has been only one other ascent by Adam Ondra: https://www.climbing.com/news/adam-ondra-completes-dawn-wall...
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