“Free Solo” Movie - Climbing El Kapitan with no Rope

I had the good fortune of riding in a car for a lap with Keith Amor. I know what you mean, because he'd say things like, "Off the throttle under the tree, light brakes, two big bumps, brake hard after the second one, careful with the cracks on the exit, accelerate out." I'm thinking, fuck me. That's too much data for one corner.

The difference is that there are a lot of people on this earth who can go a ton-thirty on the mountain course, and only one who can free solo Freerider.

One climb that got overshadowed by Alex was Pete Whittaker's rope Solo of the same route in like 20 hours. It's much slower but remember he's carrying all his own supplies. He has to lead climb the route, Tie off, rappel down and collect his gear, and jumar back to where he left off. Basically he covered nearly 9000' of slab in one day.

 

Watched it a couple nights ago... still think it's stupid, still don't understand it... Dude definitely is a little off and has a screw loose.. Definitely still impressive.

 

If you liked it watch Meru. Same guy did it but was on the climbing team as well. A lot more drama in it.

 

Dawn's Wall is a good documentary on climbing.

Stumbled upon it after finding out Free Solo costs money

 

Meru is incredible. It’s unreal what motivated people can do when they refuse to accept failure.

Cliche, yeah, but also impossibly inspiring.

 

It’s $4.00 bro. About 1/100th a set of race tires.

 

I guess "free" was not quite accurate

I watched it on the Discovery channel last night...no commercials either!!

 

My cheap ass cut the cable

 

I believe I streamed it for free from national geographic's on demand library

 

It was free for me on Hulu when I watched it..

 

It's only free if you watch it alone.

 

Helmet would make no difference. Guys got balls of steel.

 

Like Seinfeld says, the helmet would be wearing you for protection.

 

I watched Dawn Wall last night. There was absolutely no suspense to that after watching Free Solo.

 

I believe Free Solo is free tonight on Network TV. I saw an ad.

I watched it on Nat Geo and I thought it was incredible. Yeah, he's nuts, but the part I loved is his total dedication to what he's doing. Makes you wonder what you could accomplish if you were that dedicated to your craft.

 

Yeah kinda different. Dawn Wall is the epitome of technical climbing, and to free climb it is impossible. I’d say they cheated, but Caldwell and Jorgeson would rather die than cheat.

The evolution of climbing being what it is, it won’t be long before someone else goes for it and does it in half the time. It’s ridiculous. I couldn’t climb one pitch of that route if you gave me ten years.

 

Both are incredible and epic climbs. With the practice that Alex Honnald did on his climb applied to the dawn wall, the time it took to perform that climb with ropes could certainly be shortened. The ability to do the dawn wall climb without ropes would be akin to establishing a colony on Pluto.

 

Heard of Alex yrs ago and was amazed then. He blows my mind how talented he is now. Great movie for everyone. We could all learn from him and his determination. Best of luck to him in his future endeavors.

 

Saw it, admire his perseverance, but didn’t like it.

He is obviously mentally off in some way. Not just in that he views risk differently, he is a very troubled young man. I won’t say “disturbed”, but he definitely has bad wiring. If he had any type of social skills or self-awareness, he might have a friend who would step in and put a stop to this before he leaves a young widow and possibly young children behind.

Not my cup of tea.

 

Same could be said about anyone of us who’ve gridded up. He lives the YOLO, we talk about.