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Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by lordnacho on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:25PM (#14500972)
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.

Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by FrojoS on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:43PM (#14501140)
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.

Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by donapieppo on Wednesday June 07, 2017 @02:04PM (#14508526)
Auer did not onsight 'Weg durch den Fisch'. He did the route some years before and rappelled down the day before to try the hardest moves.

http://www.planetmountain.com/it/notizie/arrampicata/hansjor...

Re:Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, and the Cli... by mtreis86 on Tuesday June 06, 2017 @04:58PM (#14501274)
You can practice the climb with ropes and gear on. You can practice batsuit flying by jumping from an airplane and using a parachute.