Alex Honnold free climbing tower in Tapei

[lljkk]

Admirable Skilled Guy or Lunatic encouraging others to do stupid stuff?

I'm normally quite Libertarian about risk-taking but this stunt is bothering me. Just imagine he had fallen to his death microseconds after the crowds were cheering him on. Sudden gruesome public death is going to happen to him or some other brave person doing such stunts, eventually. Is that ok?

I don’t like the publicity around this stuff
the showing off

he will die doing it one day- they all do- and I don’t think he minds that idea

I don't disagree with anything you say- and yes went in with eyes open.
To some extent I'd hope becoming a parent would change you a bit though? If not a husband.
Very interesting from a human psychology point of view. Wouldn't have had kids with him myself 😊.

I had to fast forward through some of the worst bits, and had to tell myself he obviously survived because the programme wouldn't have been broadcast. Awful, just awful!

I think they live broadcast it so.... but yeah., I watched it on catch up

No, it was streamed with a delay, so him falling to his death was never going to be live on Netflix.

The money that will sustain a single dirtbag climber's lifestyle doesn't compare to a family man with a house & bills to pay for

Exactly

Well, no, neither would I, but in many ways, his wife sounds like an unusual character as well, from the occasional interview I've read with her, though in a different way to him. She certainly comes at life from a very different place to where I come at it from. But they were together for years before marrying, and had their first child a couple of years after that, so it wasn't a rushed decision, and she's talked about having come to terms with the possibility of his death, particularly when Ueli Steck died on Everest.

As someone who cannot climb a loft ladder without feeling jelly legged, watching this man on the news last night almost made me want to vomit with second hand fear.

But whilst I would never call what he did admirable, its his choice and his risks to take. So I guess I'll live and let live.

Then never watch Free Solo! It happened to be on TV while I was walking through the room, about to go to bed, and while I was picking up the remote to switch off the TV I just glanced at the screen. About half an hour later, I was still standing there with the remote in my hand, glazed with fear and suspense. DS also came into the room, and the two of us ended up giving in, sitting down and watching the rest of it.

Alex is someone who obviously takes incredibly high risks by climbing without ropes, however he doesn't leave anything to chance. Anyone who watched Free Solo will know everything is meticulously planned (routes/hand/foots holds etc are all planned in advance). He doesn't do what he does for attention, he doesn't know how to be any different as this is how he has always been (according to his Mum). He has such a strong belief in his abilities so failure isn't an option.

He is autistic and his amygdala doesn't work like a 'normal' person, so he has an incredibly high tolerance for things we would be terrified of. His wife met him when he was doing Free Solo, so this isn't new to her.

Oh and for those calling him an arsehole, look at the Alex Honnold foundation.

I don't have an issue. The climbing wasn't technically difficult but the exposure and risk is huge.

He did say that Netflix was a means to getting consent to climb it.

I liked him better from Taipei 101 than from reading his book.

From the interviews he did it wasn’t clear if he knew how much he was getting paid to do it! That seems very naive if so - his family should get the benefit of having to go through it all.

I watched Devils climb last week and he seemed a lot more mature than Free Solo. Didn't know he was doing this sort of thing, it must require a totally different focus in a huge city.
You cant stop this sort of person, its wired into him.

The number of high profile climbers who die young is really scary.

Andy Kirkpatrick (another climber) has commented more than once about how many of his friends are now dead. He also talks about how climbing is an addiction and how he struggled to be more sensible due to family. He freely admitted just how selfish the sport is at that level and how difficult it is to give up. To an extent he felt that his other half had known that when they got together and that was him but it was different with his kids. He's done hard core climbing trips with his daughter but not the level of shit he was doing when he was at his worst. He describes a cycle of massive lows and highs from climbing and the rush he got from it. Whilst climbing the rest of the world don't matter and that is the point. He's an interesting bloke and his books on the subject are worth reading.

It's really not like Cirque du Soleil, movie stunts or
F1 racing. The death rate is much higher amongst this certain group of climbers.

I remember talking about one such climber with DH a few years back about his latest stunt. I forget which. The conversation went that he was pushing his luck by breaking all the known rules on safety because he'd almost got a superhero complex where he thought he was too good to make those mistakes. We thought it was only a matter of time because the mentality is always to go one step harder on every success. Sure enough the next thing we saw hed been killed in an incident.

Honnold is following this pattern. It doesn't help that he's been paid to do this one - it glamourises idiocy. I know professional outdoor instructors who get so pissed off by advertisers, brands, social media and TV who are completely irresponsible in showing these type of sports without the safety gear. It just leads to deaths - not necessarily the person in question on that occasion - but it creates a culture of complacency and bad attitudes to safety protocols that they then have to confront and challenge. And it puts people like them at risk because they inevitably end up being the ones who have to rescue idiots.

Expeditions and stunts which are dangerous and exciting but emphasise this aspect of the sport I'm fine with. When It starts to get to this stage it's deeply problematic.

Love Andy Kirkpatrick. His books are brilliant.

I pestered my wife for ages to let me go heli-skiing. When she finally relented her parting words to me were "Come back healthy or come back dead, don't come back as a paraplegic, if you do you're going in a home, I'm not looking after you".

I pretty much think it's up to him (though I'm not sure I would feel the same way if I was the mother of his children!).

However, I don't agree that he's able to understand and assess the risks like a 'normal' person. Fear plays a big part in our assessment of risk and an MRI of his brain showed very little (if any) activation in his amygdala - the bit of the brain that assesses threats - even when being shown disturbing images.

As an athlete he’s absolutely amazing. It’s the doing it without a rope that bothers me, adding wholly unnecessary risk for the sake of the thrills and presumably views.

His body, his choice etc etc. But I feel a bit uncomfortable watching it. He seems like a decent guy to me.

I was wondering, what happens with the authorities in this situation

Do they just decide that the publicity and the money is worth the risk offset?

editing to add - I didn't know it was happening till after it happened and I didn't know about his previous climb. I wouldn't have watched it anyway. Just curious about how they manage all the PR.

I agree, we’re partly watching it because there’s no safety equipment?

I wondered how they streamed it

I recently watched The Alpinist. It’s about a 23 year old Canadian lad who at one point climbs a mountain covered in snow and ice which is three times the size of El Cap which Alex Honnold climbed. He also does it on his own, without a rope

Very uncomfortable to watch but absolutely fascinating at the same time. Alex does feature in it too. I highly recommend watching it

But he’s been doing this for years. It’s not new. His thing is climbing with no ropes. That’s what he’s famous for. He’s a free soloist, a style of rock climbing that doesn’t use any equipment but chalk and climbing shoes.

If he’d fallen doing El Capitan, it wouldn’t have been live-streamed, no, because people outside the climbing community didn’t know, but it wouldn’t have involved falling to his death inches from a film crew who’d been shadowing him for months and knew him well.

I don't see that big difference. I suppose there are thousands of climbers in the world who could do it with safety equipment.
We don't know what precautions they took here I'd expect that if he felt it wasn't going right, there were several spots where he could rest safely or even get to the building. Of course it wouldn't solve accidental slip, but having several exit points would help with some of the risks.

The other extreme stunts, when done on the top level, are often performed with limited safety equipment as well - motorcycle stunts without helmet, flying circus artists without harnesses