I have a couple of things that might help you a bit:

1. Alex Honnold's brain is atypical. His amygdala simply does not respond to stimuli the way that it does in most people. To learn more, read this (excellent) article:

http://nautil.us/issue/39/sport/the-strange-brain-of-the-wor...

2. While I am (at best) a mediocre climber, the section you quoted rings true to me, particularly this section - "Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them." There is something incredibly natural and sensual about climbing on rock that I can't describe without sounding like I'm talking about sex. And...that's traditionally where people tell me to give them my keys because I've had too much to drink. :)

3. Climbing is a deeply meditative activity, particularly when you get into a place where each movement flows into the next. When I am there, my mind shuts down and it is just a rock and me doing the most natural thing that I have ever found (see #2). That flow is deeply beautiful, but when you climb with ropes, you have to be in near constant contact with your belay partner. When I am with my regular belay partner, it interrupts that flow. When I am with a new belay partner, I never get close to it.

I suspect that if my amygdala worked like his, I would free solo simply to avoid having to communicate with a belay partner.

Andy Kirkpatrick is another climber who solos (but aid climbs, not free solo) and mentions a few times in his books that he does so because he doesn't want to deal with the faff of other people.

In response...

1. I wonder if amygdala responses in meditators would be similar. The Nautilus article mentions the control of his prefrontal cortex as a possible way he mediates the amygdala's response, and meditation often shows modulation in PFC activity. As a meditator, I also have a strange lack of fear response—for example, it's almost impossible to startle me.

2,3 I have only climbed a few times, and I too felt an unspeakable relationship with the rock itself that I have rarely felt while doing anything. The closest I can relate it to is indeed a deep meditative state, but one that comes with motion. Totally understand these points.

I heard Alex speak once and he said that if he's in the position of having an adrenaline rush while climbing something has gone wrong. He needs to be calm and calculating to make every move right.

What is the personality test that this article about Alex mentions? The one that generated that bar graph. I'd like to take it myself.

Something like this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/sensatio...

Well thank you, but the test in that link doesn't work. Anyway, I searched for some high sensation seekers tests, but the graph in the article has far more detailed results than any test I could find. It measures several interesting personality traits.

link worked for me. https://i.imgur.com/I7RKlW5.png

The test doesn't

You're right. I found the full test and scoring table at http://wsm.wsu.edu/s/we.php?id=200

I think I understand you, its like having a sex with or w/o a condom ;)

I think more like with or without the neighbours knocking on the walls telling you to keep it down

It's like having sex without falling three thousand feet to your death.

It would have also been amazing if he free-claimed up with a chute on his back and as he reached the peak, based off it back to the bottom!

Had Dean Potter lived a little longer, I suspect that he would have tried that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Potter

https://www.outsideonline.com/1981591/dean-potter-killed-bas...

Edit -- Added a second, better link.

Dean Potter did do that, off a route of the Eiger. He called it, "freeBASE"

http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web08x/newswire-potter-eiger-fre...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtxGCSsnaI

I know, but I was replying to a comment about El Capitan. As far as I know, Dean Potter didn't freebase from El Cap.

With that kind of exposure, I'm pretty sure that the Yosemite rangers would have an easy time catching an El Cap freebaser and confiscate all the jumper's gear.

Thanks for the YouTube link! I hadn't seen that before, but holy shit, do I ever miss sharing a planet with someone like Dean Potter.

Yeah, Dean is missed. I don't believe he ever did it on El Cap. either - I sort of wished he did, as it would be an interesting argument/philosophical point FOR "basejumping" within the Park, as it would show an extra level of safety when climbing. His relationship with the rangers within the park must have been interesting, as they certainly knew what he was up to...

I wanted to know more about Potter's final jump and found this: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/sports/dean-potter-final-...

That is an amazing article - thanks for taking the time to find it and sharing the spoils!

Also a fucking shitload safer

I think the main thing you need to realize is that is climbing with ropes there is a lot of overhead involved to do it safely. I'd say about 1/8th of the time is climbing the other 7/8 is spent with the logistics of the rope management, partner management and placing protection in the rock. With free soloing you can focus entirely on the climbing and not on the logistics. I honestly think its more about this focus and flow and less about the cheating death.

I free solo'ed small stuff, mostly 5.6/5.7. It's a rush, the desire will always be there.

What's the rating of free solo El Capitan?

5.13a, as Honnold did it. There's a route without the dihedral that drops it down to 5.12d, but the rock isn't considered trustworthy anymore.

For anyone else who has no idea what these 5.x[a-d] numbers mean:

http://outdoorswithdave.com/climbing/climbing-ratings

ahh, 5.13 > 5.6. Thanks.

I agree.

This is why I prefer bouldering these days.

The closest analog I can think of is Phillipe Petit's tightrope walk across the twin towers. Petit has similarly said that:

“I am not a death-wish person,” he said to me. “I want to live very old. It is true that death is part of the frame—that it frames such activities as bullfighting and tightrope walking. My world is a dangerous world, sure, but I am very safe in knowing my limits. I am not playing with words when I say I don’t take risks. The danger becomes so narrow that it is a novel companion with whom you travel. It is not an enemy.”

I know this isn't an answer, but if you've never seen the documentary about Petit, "Man on Wire", perhaps it would help to understand the mindset.

You have to embrace the ambiguity in natural languages. Life and death can be simply considered opposites. In this mode of thinking any risky behavior is trading in death at the peril of life.

However you can also imagine a justification along these lines: There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states. Some of these are familiar things like falling in love or having children. These are risks but usually perceived as having obvious upsides. There are also other behaviors like drug use or underground fight clubs which also give access to unique mental states but are usually perceived as too risky to encourage. It's easy to put judge free soloing climbing as something like drug use or bareknuckle boxing. But try to imagine that when done correctly and carefully that it could be something much like having a child or working on a math proof for years.

> There are certain things we humans can do which give us access to unique highly desirable mental states.

Sure. If cheating death is the path to that state for some people, that's understandable, and not really something new. I'm not judging him, this isn't some roundabout way to say people shouldn't free-solo. I'm literally trying to figure out if there's something else to it I'm missing, because the way it's stated makes it sound like there's something other than risk that's inherently different about free-soloing.

People are responding as if I said I don't understand why someone would do a risky behavior. I understand the high from cheating death. I don't understand doing something as risky as this if you aren't necessarily looking for that high, as the statement implied to me.

The alternative as I see it is that the author is reluctant to admit, or in denial about, some of the real reasons to free-solo. I didn't want to assume that without first checking my own assumptions.

I think there's such a pushback on the term "cheating death" because it sounds like "I should have died, but I didn't", when in reality that's not what the thought process is. The thought process is "of course I'm not going to die because of x y and z".

For me, the best way to describe it is that I strive to feel in control in progressively more difficult environments. That's the mental state I'm looking for. The progression of the mental state goals are easy to follow:

Top Rope (rope already set up above you): "I feel in control despite me being 40' off the ground"

Lead climbing (bring the rope up and clip into the wall as you go): "I feel in control despite me having to take a big fall if I fail"

Outdoor climbing: "I feel control despite me climbing real cliffs outside"

And you can follow this all the way to free soloing, where you can feel in control despite having no safety net at all. I'm not going to pretend that I understand Honnold, and I don't free solo, but this line of thinking makes sense to me.

The other off topic reasons I climb are:

1. Getting better at a sport, just like any other sport/hobby.

2. I like the outdoors and adventure, climbing is a great way to see things from a perspective most can't.

3. Fitness

I'd add to that and say that there are non-death threatening things that are very enjoyable to control and master (a cello, a paintbrush, code). It just so happens that some of those things that are enjoyable to master also involves mastering not killing yourself.

I love driving (shifting with manual transmission, steering, car maintenance, safe driving, etc). Some of that is controlling metal and machine; some of that is controlling your environment and the safety of your life. Same with riding a motorcycle, except I spend a little more on the safety part of it. Some might think I do it for the thrill of cheating death. Yes, staying alive is a goal, but that's not the reason I ride!

It's possible he has a much different view of the world than you or I do. I once met a person who did similarly risky things but from his perspective living a normal life seemed like a nightmarish slow burn death. He was completely fine with the most brazen stunts but the idea of settling down somewhere or having a 9-to-5 desk job gave him cold sweats and in his own words "the feeling as if a hand were wildly grasping at my throat" (sounds better in the original language). No "quiet desperation" for him I guess.

Although I think the simple thrill of it has to factor in at least a little bit, the climber is perhaps mainly motivated by the idea that not living like this is actually a form of death in itself or a very risky behavior (in the sense of wasting your life). It's similar to the ancient idea that a life of servitude is not a life at all. I can't say I necessarily agree but it's not such an outlandish concept either.

I've free soloed easy routes (long 5.4-5.6 routes in tahquitz -- I regularly climb in the 5.12s). Soloing something that you are comfortable with is enjoyable precisely because you _dont_ feel like you are cheating death. It feels like a fun romp -- quickly up and down -- you move faster, you don't have to stop and deal with belays, and often you can downclimb the route and avoid a lengthy walk-off. To the extent that you feel like you accomplished something -- you only really have that feeling if the climbing felt easy and smooth. If it felt hard and scary -- it was probably a _not_ fun experience, and certainly its something you would feel less "proud" about because a "better" climber wouldn't have felt the need to experience the discomfort.

If you listen to Alex talk -- he climbs a huge amount of "easier" terrain and he often describes those experiences in similar terms. It's just for him "easy" is waaaaaaay harder. I can indeed imagine how cool it would be to run up 5.11 (or in honnolds case more like 5.12) with the same fun casualness that I have experienced when running up 5.4 -- and it really does sound like it feels that way for him often.

Pushing the difficulty of his soloing as he has is partially about the specific challenge of doing a harder route and partially about moving up his comfort zone so that he increases the range of "easy" terrain that he can go casually solo. His expanding comfort over time has given him access to a huge range of terrain that he could comfortably free solo - which is a huge part of the reason why Caldwell asserts that Honnold has probably climbed more technical rock mileage than anyone else ever.

I think one thing that's interesting (mystifying?) about the way Honnold treats risk -- he doesn't really acknowledge that the longer he solos the more likely he is to have an accident. Instead he focuses on how fear in some of the situations he pursues can only ever have a detrimental effect on performance -- and that setting aside that fear is actually a required part of the task of minimizing the risk involved for what he wants to pursue. I think this is probably true though the mathematician in me still struggles with the first part -- and actually if you look at Alex talk, it sounds like he's starting to change his tune a bit too. Free rider was one of his top life goals related to soloing -- and it sounds from his interview that his next goal at least is more focused on climbing harder routes than on pursuing harder soloing.

> Soloing something that you are comfortable with is enjoyable precisely because you _dont_ feel like you are cheating death. It feels like a fun romp..

Up until that slightly exposed bit where you suddenly get buffeted by some wind and spend 30 seconds panting slightly whilst re-organising your thoughts. It is, without question, the most pure/fun form of climbing. To my simple brain staying calm and on point for a 4 hour free solo is just inconceivable

Completely agree -- however if it wasnt inconceivable it would be very cool for reasons other than the grandparents postulated satisfaction of defying death.

I used to climb, but didn't really have a handle on the difficulty of this due to the American grades used, so I looked into it a little more. It's utterly mind-blowing. This article [0] was helpful for anyone more used to UK climbing. This conversion chart is also handy. [1]

To put it into perspective, if you went to a busy indoor climbing gym, there'd maybe be one or two guys climbing at that level. And they'd probably be "working" a route, falling off it repeatedly, resting on the rope and learning the moves.

The idea of climbing at that technical level, for that length of time, with that level of risk just defies belief. I can't wrap my head around it.

[0] http://danmcmanus.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/a-guide-to-freeride... [1] https://www.rockfax.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/trad_grad...

I know a lot of people who engage in dangerous sports, and I have done so myself. None of them do it because of some sense of cheating death - they do it because it is enormously fun and fulfilling. They walk away when the conditions are not right. If they wanted to cheat death, they would not.

The fact that it happens to be extremely dangerous means you take more care, but that is not the source of the pleasure. It's the cost of admission. Some won't pay it. Some will.

I really like that you are not judging him. I have seen people dismissed as stupid, as if they don't understand the risks. That's like calling a person stupid if they smoke. They aren't cheating death, they are enjoying cigarettes (and they are addicted, probably). But not stupid or ignorant.

I don't think smoking is a fair analogy. Free climbing is an awe inspiring sport, while smoking is a deadly and addictive habit with zero advantages whatsoever.

I first read about free climbing in an issue of National Geographic almost a decade ago. I never once recall thinking that it was "stupid": on the contrary, it quickly jumped up my list of interesting sports (below chess boxing).

Minor correction but a lot of people make the mistake, free climbing is what Ondra did on El Capitan's Dawn Wall last year. Where you climb with ropes but do not use it for any aid in climbing.

What Honnold has done is free soloing which is climbing without rope for protection.

They sound similar but are significantly different.

I don't think your analogy is on point here. This is more akin to playing football without a helmet, or driving a race car without a roll cage. Playing the sport is one thing, but I agree with the parent; what reason aside from tempting fate is there to climb without safety gear?

You are still racing cars, you are still playing football with the safety gear on (although football players in Australia do not wear helmets, and F1 cars don't have roll cages nor even roofs). Perhaps your analogies are off also ;)

However, you can climb mountains in different ways and people want to explore the possibilities. Some climbers think bolts are OK, some don't. It's their personal philosophy. They don't get the satisfaction they want if they use bolts, and think they desecrate the climb. So they don't use them. Not because they want to tempt fate, but because they would prefer not to climb things in that way.

The reason you ask for is: It's what they want to do. Reinhold Messner climbed mountains without oxygen, without seige tactics, because that's how he thought mountains should be climbed. Not because he wanted to tempt fate by eschewing "safety gear".

Wingsuit BASE is much more dangerous than regular BASE. Putting on a wingsuit is the opposite of safety gear - it's dangerous gear. However, it's not done to tempt fate, it's done to gain a different experience. That's what I think Honnold is doing here. He thinks it can be done, he thinks he can do it, and he turns out to be right. Same as Messner.

>You are still racing cars, you are still playing football with the safety gear on (although football players in Australia do not wear helmets, and F1 cars don't have roll cages nor even roofs). Perhaps your analogies are off also ;)

Sure... I wasn't implying that taking part in dangerous sports is something only adrenaline junkies do; I meant to say that doing so _without taking simple safety precautions_ puts you into that category.

I am trying to explain that there are different classes of climbing philosophically, not just one activity with or without certain safety related items.

"Motor racing without a helmet" = "stupid and pointless", we can probably agree on that.

"Climbing Everest without oxygen" != "Climbing Everest as an adrenaline junkie as I have deliberately foregone a safety related item".

"Free solo" != "Free climbing as an adrenaline junkie as I have deliberately foregone a safety related item".

My family have different risk tolerances and desires than me, but they know me and don't consider me an "adrenaline junkie".

I guess we just disagree :)

>"Free solo" != "Free climbing as an adrenaline junkie as I have deliberately foregone a safety related item".

That's the part I don't get though. That said, I'm not a climber and I'm trying to logic my way through it as an outsider with zero experience, so I fully admit I may be wrong.

Taking risks is not the same as cheating death.

Driving a motorcycle is not something you do to get an adrenaline high, yet from a strictly transportation perspective, it's a bigger risk than driving a car.

I think it has to do with priorities. Death is not the worst that can happen to me, hence I don't chose the safest option in every decision, because even though a long life is desirable, it's not the most important thing.

The sense of freedom is often worth more than the safest option.

> Driving a motorcycle is not something you do to get an adrenaline high

As a rider who's done a fair bit of social riding over the years, I have only met one rider for whom the thrill of it is not a factor.

Perhaps there's an athletic nuance as well - a roped-in climber can rest at any point during the climb by just hanging there, whereas a free-soloer can only rest at certain ledges along the way that naturally let him do that. It takes crazy stamina and self-discipline.

Overall I agree with you that most of the feat seems to be about the risk, but there may be more to it (I'm not a climber).

Isn't the type of resting already distinguished from non-supported resting in competitive or high-level climbing? I know that the term "free climbing" means that you use ropes and supports for safety, but not to aid you in any way.

From reading other comments, it sounds like the programming equivalent to coding a product without any tests, validation, exception handling. Risky and very likely to lead to a unrecoverable spaghetti mess, but we've all been in that state where the ideas are just free flowing unimpeded by caution.

Considering that Honnold completed the free solo in around 4 hours, I would suppose it is an experience of a similar nature, albeit with greater personal risk involved.

"War is the most dangerous fun you'll ever have"

– My old squad leader on NPR

Interviewer was aghast.

We're like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

An orgasm isn't called a little death (la petite mort) for nothing. I didnt know what it meant to live till I almost died. I'm definitely not a thrill seeker compared to free solo climbers. So call it what you will, I'm happier feeling life through the new senses I now have.

> Climbing is an intimate relationship with our world’s most dramatic landscapes, not a self-boasting fight against them.

For the same reason why many would spent hours catching fish over a lazy weekend when much better fish is available for $5 in super-market.

For the same reason why someone would spend 5 hours trying to solve an interesting algorithms problem when one can easily find a solution on internet.

I am not a climber. I have fear of heights but I can understand it.

Many climbers have a fear of hights. Climbing can be a way to get comfortable with it.

I climb and I'm afraid of heights, when I'm not climbing. I can't get near a ledge without an harness without feeling slightly dizy.

I'm a pilot and I'm terrified of heights. I get vertigo even thinking about looking over the edge of a cliff. I would also really like to try skydiving one of these years.

I think that a better way to express it for many people is we're not afraid of heights, we're afraid of falling and dying. Removing the falling aspect "cures" the phobia.

As a climber who is also scared of heights, I like to describe it as "a rational fear of heights". If I'm actually safe, I'm fine with it. It's the thought that a single slip, mental or physical = death. Even with a waist-high barrier, I'm still not going to look over the edge for fear of leaning too far. Give me a glass room hanging over the grand canyon that's stable and I'll be happy to go inside, lie face down on the floor, etc.

That is a rational fear. What you are describing is a normal fear. In my caseit would be more of a phobia where even when I am perfectly safe I would sweat, heartbeat would increase and I might get into a panic attack as suck.

you could say the same thing about top-roping vs lead climbing (placing protection from the ground up). Yes, top-roping is much safer, but the experience & sense of achievement is just not the same.

Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. Not stopping to place protection, not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag... It's just you on the wall. It takes most climber multiple days of painstaking climbing to summit Freerider. Alex did it in 4 hours.

Beyond all else it's just a unbelievable feat of human ability.

If you really want to understand just how impressive this was:

1: climb something (even if it's just 40 feet in a climbing gym) 2: Go to Yosemite and stand at the base of El Cap

> If you really want to understand just how impressive this was:

I have no doubt it's impressive. I'm impressed. I'm not trying to diminish that in any way.

> you could say the same thing about top-roping vs lead climbing (placing protection from the ground up). Yes, top-roping is much safer, but the experience & sense of achievement is just not the same.

My question is why is the sense of achievement not the same. Is it because of the danger, or because it's inherently harder when you abstract danger from the situation?

> Free-soloing (climbing without ropes) is the purest form of climbing. ... not having to bring up your partner, not having to haul a bag

That's the closest I've seen to a an actual differentiation. Here's the question: If you could Free-solo the same wall but with without (or greatly reduced) danger? That is, hypothetically assume there's tracks installed vertically in the wall, and a robot that you are attached to ascends with you, so if you fall the robot keeps you from falling far and getting hurt. Does that somehow dampen the feeling of achievement when completed? If the answer is yes, then I fail to see how it's not about cheating death in some part.

Which is fine! Just own that shit.

I'm not making a value judgement about people doing this, I'm just trying to understand that statement. Either it is about cheating death to some degree and the author is not being truthful to someone (us or himself) for whatever reason, or it isn't about cheating death and I don't understand it at all, so I'm asking for clarification. Either I understand it, even if I don't practice it, or I don't understand it, in which case I want to. It sounds like it's about cheating death (even if just to get to some desired state easier).

Free soloing is "inherently easier" in the physical sense when you abstract danger from situation, climbing with ropes slows a team down significantly. That is one of the reasons AH was able to climb the route in 4 hours as opposed to the usual 4 days.

In your hypothetical scenario the answer is yes, if there is no danger, the achievement of climbing without ropes is lessened.

The experience of free soloing is to small degree about cheating death, at least as much as watching a movie is about seeing moving colors and hearing sounds. What one really gets from free soloing (or risky rock climbing, which I have some experience with) is a unique clarity of mind, a change in ego, a confidence game, where you need to quash your own doubts about yourself to succeed. The consequences of falling are a necessary but insufficient condition for the resultant feeling of achievement. In my opinion, AH, and his ability to control his mind, is the closest living example we have to a Jedi.

Free soloing is actually a bit slower than the fastest free-climbers, which I found interesting: http://adventureblog.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/25/alex-...

The time spent being especially careful that you don't fall, adds a bit more time than racing up with ropes.

Fun fact, Alex Honnold holds the speed record on El Cap.

This is my own experience with the very miniscule free-solo experience I have and even with trad leading over sport, over top rope.

If it's within my abilities/condition, I get into a much more zen/like zone doing trad leads vs coming up second. Or even leads in a gym. I really don't like falling, so that focuses me up and the world just fades away. It's all managing foot position, burn, effort level, pace, etc.

On the other hand, if it's outside my ability/condition and I'm shaky with failing energy... It's the worst experience in the world(overcoming it feels nice though lol).

That last paragraph is brilliant and I'm going to borrow it to use in conversations with my friends and family who have been asking me about Alex's climb and about free soloing.

"unique clarity of mind, a change in ego, a confidence game" - as an climber with some mildly risky free solo experience, this is a very good description.

It seems to me with no consequences of falling, that ultimate level of focus and control is impossible (hard?) to achieve, although one can get close with varying levels of more risky but less deadly climbs (lead climbing with a super long run-out and so on).

"Does that somehow dampen the feeling of achievement when completed? If the answer is yes, then I fail to see how it's not about cheating death in some part."

It's a good question...but I think only Alex could answer that question for himself.

I can say that the feat would not be as impressive because fear management and mental control are a huge part of climbing. As you move from top roping to sport leading (clipping your rope to preplaced hangers) to trad leading (placing your protective gear into cracks or other features in the rocks and trusting it to hold you if you fall) the risk increases and the fear start to become more of a factor.

I've seen climbers that have been perfectly physically capable of making a move but have been so gripped with fear that they couldn't move (and I've been that climber). I've done multipitch climbs (where you climb multiple rope lengths) where at the end of the climb I'm completely exhausted. Not from the physical exertion, but rather from the mental exertion of keeping fear at bay and from the sheer focus that climbing takes.

And honestly, I can see the appeal of free soloing. Protective gear is a giant pain in the ass. It's heavy. It's noisy. On lead the weight of the rope can become a very present annoyance, especially if you're on a long pitch. I would love for there to be the magical robot of your hypothesis that allowed me to climb without all that shit. But such a thing doesn't exist and my personal risk envelope has not expanded to free soloing (nor will it).

> Here's the question: If you could Free-solo the same wall but with without (or greatly reduced) danger? That is, hypothetically assume there's tracks installed vertically in the wall, and a robot that you are attached to ascends with you, so if you fall the robot keeps you from falling far and getting hurt. Does that somehow dampen the feeling of achievement when completed? If the answer is yes, then I fail to see how it's not about cheating death in some part.

There are certainly climbers who COULD repeat the climb in the same style, if they were guaranteed they couldn't fall to their death (Tommy Caldwell being one of them). And yes, without the risk the achievement definitely doesn't seem as impressive (moon landing?).

But I don't think Alex see's it like he's "cheating death". Instead more of "confidence in mastery of ones skill and mind" to a point where the crazy & impossible seems realistic.

I think it has more to do with agency than thrills.. You could look at that as cheating death, but it's not quite the same as jumping 20 buses on a Triumph and just hoping you don't break all your bones cause, you know, it just seems to happen to you frequently and maybe this time it won't.

The game is just different. The mental state is different. The focus is different.

Look, ignore the utility differences between scooting around on your butt and walking, running, or cycling. The sense of agency involved is simply different. They are also, possibly, more risky than scooting around on your butt.

Bowling without bumpers has a different feel to it than with; even if you never touch them. It's not so much about cheating the gutter; the agency, the feel, the game is different.

It's hard to explain why free solo > trad > sport > top roping for some. But it has everything to do with risk while having nothing to do with risk.

I've only done a very small amount of climbing many years ago, however I have done a fair bit of overnight hiking.

I would suggest that the difference between protected and free climbing would be the same as the difference between hiking with a full backpack and hiking with a small day pack with only some food/water and maybe a warm pullover. Your plans are the same, to travel somewhere, your methods and the level of encumbrance is very different. Your enjoyment would also be different, with significantly less sweat and exhaustion but depending upon your environment maybe less enjoyable sleep and more restricted food. In my subtropical environment I know which I prefer, as long as it does not rain.

The term "cheating death" implies that the person should have died but didn't. You make it seem like a game of russian roulette. That's not the case here. The person used their skill to climb the wall -- there's no "should have died" part.

Falling from the wall and surviving through freak luck would be cheating death.

I think what you mean is "does the fear aspect make a difference?". Not "cheating death". Your repeated use of the term I think belittles climbing as some kind of crazy stunt.

I don't see why it has to be about cheating death. What about just the fact that you're accomplishing the climb yourself, with as little external help as possible? A free solo climb doesn't even use any tools, other than climbing shoes and presumably light clothing. Having a massive drone flying next to you or a safety elevator makes it much less about just you and nature.

Imagine you completely reproduced a famous climb indoors with a 3D printer. Surely you can understand the difference between climbing that and climbing the real thing, even if the physical difficulty is identical.

> If you could Free-solo the same wall but with without (or greatly reduced) danger? [...] Does that somehow dampen the feeling of achievement when completed?

I've pondered this.

For me personally, the answer is: yes.

I think part of the sense of achievement after success comes from knowing what you invested (effort, risk, ...). I'd like to say that for me the fun of climbing would be about "oneness with nature" or some such thing, and that's partly true, but in reality daring to take a calculated risk, and succeeding, gives it a big extra something.

Maybe compare it with heli skiing vs backcountry skiing. Let's say both are equally non-risky. The sense of achievement (and exhaustion) after making the summit is quite different, even though it's the same summit. And having come up by chopper you might be able to benefit from the fresh powder on the way down more (because you're not exhausted), but the feeling of elation is just not the same -- at least for me.

One fact that might help - setting safety gear generally consumes a significant portion of a climber's time and effort. It doesn't show in top-roped gym climbing, but going up El Cap means putting a great deal of work into hauling and placing safety gear.

Free soloing versus geared climbing is almost comparable to free diving versus scuba. It's less safe, but removes so much overhead that it's a qualitatively different experience.

Honnold's free solos in Yosemite are frequently world speed records - often by a factor of 2 or more. He's climbing with a directness and lack of complication that's really hard to attain any other way.

I think there's some nuance to to live here.

There's the banal meaning, which is the opposite of dead.

Another meaning, which I think the article meant, is to explore the outer limits of your ability and ambition during your incredibly brief period of existence in the universe. That's living. :)

Edit: formatting.

To "live" in this sense is, perhaps, to "flow" in the Mihaly sense. You can't flow if you're dead, but the flow you seek is not a panicked fleeing from death.

Not too different from deciding to run a startup - small probability of success, certainty of exhaustion, possible alienation from family, etc. SV provides ropes for when you fail. Doesn't happen everywhere.

Everyone lives their life in the face of impending death. Yet we usually judge the quality of our lives by what we accomplish, not the mere postponement of the inevitable.

Climbers climb for the enjoyment of the experience, and to get to the top--not just to show that they can avoid falling. Alex is a rare elite climber, so he reaches for rare elite experiences and accomplishments.

Looks like he's not the dead-at-25-buried-at-75 type!

I'll let Charles Lindberg's words about his first parachute jump attempt an answer. Having been both a skydiver and a rock climber, I can say his thoughts are spot on.

"When I decided that I too must pass through the experience of a parachute jump, life rose to a higher level, to a sort of exhilarated calmness... The thought left me a feeling of anticipation mixed with dread, of confidence restrained by caution, of courage salted through with fear.

It was that quality that led me into aviation in the first place — it was a love of the air and sky and flying, the lure of adventure, the appreciation of beauty. It lay beyond the descriptive words of man — where immortality is touched through danger, where life meets death on equal plane; where man is more than man, and existence both supreme and valueless at the same instant." [1]

[1] "The Spirit of St Louis", C. Lindberg, 1954. Quote was lightly edited for brevity.

It's about not being encumbered by all the extra material. People can feel more fulfilled by just experiencing themselves and the mountain, not themselves, the mountain, and a whole mess of carabiners and leveraged ropes.

Honnold's no thrill-seeker, he just prefers doing things alone.

Another thought - this is specifically about Honnold.

Caldwell isn't just making a pretty-sounding claim, he's drawing a distinction between Honnold and other free soloists who were much more attuned to death, who seemed to be free soloing precisely for the adrenaline rush of survival. (Dean Potter is the classic example.)

So I think this is a claim that Honnold is soloing for the purity and experience of the thing, specifically as compared to some other soloists who are more focused on adrenaline and risk.

It's about perspective. One definition or opinion does not necessarily invalidate the other. Each is an expression of a point of view.

You say safety equipment. Others might say encumbrance, or unnatural performance enhancer, or laziness cheat. An apparatus that enables a lessening of difficulty, which eases the challenge.

When the goal is to engage a challenge, anything that renders the effort less challenging is a dilution of the very challenge as a whole.

Of course one must use safety equipment to examine the possibility of a raw attempt. But one builds on the experience, removing the unnecessary, wherever possible.

Of course it's easier to climb with a helmet and ropes, because those are the things that provide for obvious leverage to control the outcome. But who ever climbed a mountain because they wanted to do an easy thing?

The harder the task is, the better, in this context. The satisfaction of accomplishment is the goal, rather than the stress or all of the physiological byproducts or recognition that come as part of the package when completing the task.

Trying to do something, based on an intuition that an outcome is possible, when others lack the same intuition is the goal here.

This is not the same as fame. Fame is a derivative of the behavior of others, as outsiders to the activity.

To trust in one's intuition, and find that it is correct, is a fundamental aspect of human existence.

To divorce oneself of maximizing challenge, is to lie in bed all day as a shut in, and have your food delivered to you, in the most exaggerated sense of the comparison.

I'm not a climber, but I imagine that there could be two things going on here:

1. The sheer pleasure of doing something unaided - people enjoy doing crosswords without referring to computer screen that will tell them all 7 letter words ending in g-something-t.

2. The pleasure of feeling yourself as part of nature. The walk in the woods wearing shorts and a T-shirt, rather than racing through it on a motorcycle.

Does free diving vs scuba diving make sense to you?

Basically different sports, rather than being about safety

When you're free soloing, you climb much faster and with much less equipment.

With safety equipment, climbing El Cap takes 2-4 days, and you have to pull up several bags of equipment behind you with pulleys.

Without any safety equipment (i.e. free soloing) climbing El Cap takes a few hours and you just bring your body and some chalk.

Plus it's just a cool thing to do (at least IMO). It's like, the dude is so good at climbing he doesn't need ropes.

I find it funny that you mention that climbing el cap free soloing, "just takes a few hours" as if it wasn't just recently free soloed for the very first time in known history by one of the most skilled climbers of all time.

It takes hannold 4 hours. It will likely never be tried successfully by anyone else.

I would like Alex to get tested for toxoplasmosis. It would explain a lot.

Is the link between risky behaviour and a toxoplasmosis infection that well established ?

Apparently so. I watch Joe Rogans interview with Robert Sapolsky which I might add was fascinating and he spoke about this at length and how people with toxo are more likely to take risks and or live dangerously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obmt_PkIfBE

For what it's worth, Joe Rogan interviewed Alex Honnold himself, a few years back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OusYaNWBy08

In a typical Rogan style, it's a pretty relaxed and "real" chat, about girls, shitting your pants, purpose etc. Gives a little more insight into how top athletes like Alex think and approach their craft.

By that logic, would you call doing a startup cheating poverty?

If you wore a helmet 24 hours a day you'd be living a safer life.

Most people don't, because we want to live life not be scared of it.

He's the same as the rest of us just on a different level.

I find it kinda easy to understand even if it's not my thing.

By cheating death, one becomes famous. The article and this thread is proof of that. Being famous supplies many advantages and privileges.