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Reminds me of the Via Ferrata in Switzerland. It really gets the blood pumping and gives you a massive adrenaline rush, as your feet are walking on tiny metal bolts driven into a sheer cliff. You can see all the way down to the valley floor from between your toes :3
When I say I'm not afraid of heights; what I really mean is that I'm not abnormally afraid of heights.
*bonus edit: the legendary Dan Osmond. Died not long after, when a rope snapped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCByLWtM7y4
Misread:
The legendary Dan Osmond who died not long after his rope snapped.
Two meanings. Sharing a goal...
I can imagine myself on that ledge and being the one person where after thousands of years of being perfectly fine, the ledge finally decided to give way and separate from the cliff.
Imagine sneezing
Just looking at this picture makes my hands sweaty
It makes my feet tingly.
Fun fact, Alex said in an interview that this is a picture of him having a panic attack. Just shaking and desperately trying to keep calm as adrenaline pours through his system.
Oh, this guy.
Dude needs to keep his death wish to himself and maybe use some safety gear when he's on camera.
Like, he's good; really good. But being good and being sensible are not exclusive.
Unpopular opinion, I get it. I never understood free climbers, especially when I was playing outside (I was raised gymbo with no wish to be mangled and no illusions about my normie skill, and one of those things makes me need to see a safety line on that kid). Downvote away because apparently that's cool.
I’ve got a hard time glorifying potentially deadly sports. Hang on, I know the next comment is gonna be about something like F1 racing or something, but even F1 goes to great lengths to protect the drivers as much as reasonably possible. It’d be like going back to car racing in open air, no crashworthiness, no helmet, no HALO, etc. to compare to free climbing like this. This guy dies and people will idolize someone playing with suicide. Don’t particularly care if he dies doing it for himself, but the attention he gets could be done without.
Didn't know that he was able to have panic attacks at all. Something to do with his amygdala or something. Good to know that he's only human, I was deeply moved after watching him in Free Solo.
Yeah, no.
Never, never, never... Never
What a nice place to relax and have a cool refreshing glass of NOPE.
Imagine standing there and then suddenly that slab under your feet shifts.
For a minute I thought it would be a false perspective thing.
But nope.
It's not as bad as it looks, the photo is at an angle. Look at the horizon or the trees. The actual ledge leans back
Nope!
I can feel my perineum clench when I look at this
This picture makes my feet tingle, and not in a good way. You can keep that, good sir. AAll yours.
It’s Alex Honhold. He’s wired differently than most people. Definitely not tethered.
Wired very differently. Free-climbing El Capitan is certified bonkers.
It’s amazing to me that he’s still alive, and lives in Las Vegas with a wife and kids. Like somehow he has a “normal” life on top of his climbing insanity.
Seriously. Doing that shit when you have a kid is nuts to me.
Irresponsible with an inevitable conclusion.
I think there's some credit where credit is due for all the effort he puts in to minimising risk. There's plenty of people that do various hiking/climbing that is at least as dangerous as what he does.
When you consider the climbing level this guy is at, him soloing a 6a route is probably comparable to someone "ordinary" going for a 20 km hike in exposed terrain: It has risk (rockfall, possibility of slipping, etc.) that could kill you, but it's not generally considered an excessively foolish thing to do.
Why? Why would you do this?
And to quote Gwen on Galaxy Quest:
Well fuck that!
Never give up, never surrender!
"Well ~~fuck~~ screw that!"
Is my memory failing me and she actually did say "fuck that" and they dubbed it over with "screw that"?
They did. Apparently, it threatened the films PG rating. If they left it in, it would’ve been PG-13.
Yup! Your memory is correct!
I have a fear of heights, so this is terrifying to me. I also wonder why people do this.
I have a fear of heights.
I broke my ankle in a life altering way falling down two stairs unto a sidewalk. That, to me, justified my already reasonable fear of heights.
I don't understand why this is the "Thank God" ledge rather than the "Oh My God!" or similar ledge.
I'm very far from doing something like this, but I do have quite a bit of experience hiking/climbing in exposed terrain, so I can do my best: People usually start off enjoying relatively light hikes in the mountains, because it feels good to be hiking in cool terrain with awesome views. As you get more experience, what seemed scary a couple years ago doesn't look scary anymore. You like hiking, so you go for the hike, without thinking much about the fact that you thought it looked scary and dangerous a couple years ago.
Keep repeating this cycle, and you might suddenly find yourself tied into a rope, with crampons, an ice pick, and skis on your back, on the top of some frozen mountain that looked insurmountable some years ago. It doesn't even feel scary, just really awesome.
Add some brain damage (slight joke, but Alex Honnold does have a smaller "fear center" than most people), and you end up in situations like the one in the photo.
My point is that it isn't really about adrenaline seeing like a lot of people think. It's about going for awesome hikes, and your limits for what you feel safe doing shifting over time as you gain experience.