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It's unfortunate that most people are first exposed to rock climbing by watching videos of free soloing. It really distorts your perception of the sport. It's
by jasonkester 5y ago
It's unfortunate that most people are first exposed to rock climbing by watching videos of free soloing. It really distorts your perception of the sport.
It's no surprise, of course. Free soloing is pretty much the most riveting thing you could watch on a screen, whereas every other form of climbing is frankly quite boring to watch if you don't know the sport intimately. Mostly, it's people pushing their own personal limits, without any risk whatsoever, on things they've aren't visually all that spectacular.
Here's an example of what most of us do:
https://youtu.be/dp8b45CdUAc https://youtu.be/dp8b45CdUAc
I defy a non-climber to make it through 3 minutes of watching me fall off the same 15 foot tall rock. Climbers, however, will notice that there are harder moves on that stone than anything you'll find in Alex's big free solo videos. They'll also know, of course, that Alex would likely be able to send this thing on his first try, because this is well within his limit.
Those two facts, reconciled together with him having practiced the easy route in the solo video every bit as much as I did this little boulder problem, give you an idea of how unlikely it is that he would fall off it.
Sadly, that's all lost on non-climbers, who just see a spectacular thing happening way up in the sky, stripped of all context.
It's a cool sport, by the way, go give it a try some time and I bet you'll get hooked.
- glandium 5y agoThe Free Solo movie gives enough context, IMO. (it was hard to watch for me though)
- thinkharderdev 5y agoI recently went down a rabbit hole of watching speed climbing on YouTube. It's really mesmerizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4n6xfu8VDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4n6xfu8VDU
- Fricken 5y agoWhen I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7, I saw this[1] television segment on John Bachar. It blew my mind, and was imagination fuel for the rest of my childhood. At 45 I still love climbing. I don't think it was unfortunate at all that my first exposure to climbing was via a free soloist. [1]https://youtu.be/sLivlvAkhs0 https://youtu.be/sLivlvAkhs0
- Aeolun 5y ago> Free soloing is pretty much the most riveting thing you could watch on a screen It’s not riveting to me at all. I can hardly watch. I can understand the allure of doing it, but watching it without the knowledge of knowing I can do it (like for existing routes I’ve already done) is hard, constantly feel like they’ll fall, even though you know the video wouldn’t be published if it were so :/
- bko 5y agoThat's a really cool video. What was your success rate after the first time you completed it? Was it one of those things that after you've done it you can pretty much do it every time?
- jasonkester 5y agoFor stuff at your limit, it’s pretty rare that you go back and try it again. Sometimes you’ll come back to add a sit start to a problem that you’ve done in the past, and in that case I’ve surprised myself on occasion by being able to do the (previously) hard stand start over and over again on demand. Other times, such as this one, the upper part becomes the crux again, since now you need to do it after tiring yourself out on the new lower bit. But yes, it’s not uncommon to dial in the occasional hard problem as a party piece. There are a few fun ones in the forest that I make a point of repeating every time I’m in the area.
- maloney 5y agoI would give yourself more credit, I highly doubt he would be able to flash a v11, I don't think he boulders much harder than v12. Nice work by the way, Font is the best!