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And: Luck (because shit happens). I don't mean for this to in any way diminish his amazing accomplishments, but no matter how well he trains and how discipline
by georgemcbay 9y ago
And: Luck (because shit happens). I don't mean for this to in any way diminish his amazing accomplishments, but no matter how well he trains and how disciplined he is, he is always one unexpected external event (failing hold, rock falling from above, just enough loose dirt) from complete failure.
- piptastic 9y agoI guess, but I am one external event away from dying on my drive to work too.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoSure. Just a lot less probable.
- arcticfox 9y agoAlex only does dangerous free solos on rare occasions. He's certainly vastly more likely to die on one than the average person on the average day, but the fact that he only does it rarely is how he's still alive at all. Nobody really knows exactly what type of risk he's taking, but my rough guess is that he's probably on the order of ~10x an average mortality rate (which is 1.5% / yr among males his age). Whether that's insane or not is up to an individual. For me, it's a rare combination of crazy and rational, which I find fascinating.
- ghshephard 9y agoYour average mortality rate is off by 10x. Mortality rate for a 31 year old in the United States is 104/100,000 or 0.104%/year. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/mortfinal2007_worktable23r.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/mortfinal2007_worktable23r...
- arcticfox 9y agoAh, so that would make my estimate ~100x. Thanks
- hluska 9y agoThat reminds me of a very dark joke that I heard in a bar in Canmore once. - How do you become the greatest climber in the world? - You become the second greatest climber and wait for #1 to die.