this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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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.
Is it this picture or this ledge? I believe his half dome assent was scary because he wasn’t fully prepared. However this specific picture was taken afterwards.
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.
Iirc, he was doing that up until about the moment that this photo was taken. He started soloing because he was too awkward to make friends at the crag. He gets really good at it, doing it purely out of an enjoyment of doing it - before this photo, he was living out of a van, basically jobless, no social media, just dedicated to climbing.
Then the news of his solo ascent of half dome gets out, 60 Minutes does a piece on it, and gets this photo. Turns out a lot of people are captivated by the feat. Suddenly he has offers coming in from every direction to become a pro athlete, to endorse products, to do commercials, etc. So what does he do?
He figures that if he was going to do the climb anyway, then he might as well have a camera pointed at him to get paid. This allows him to not have to work part time jobs, and climb full time. He starts really raking it in, and what does he do? He buys a slightly nicer van, then donates what he doesn't spend on his still very modest lifestyle to efforts to alleviate global poverty.
Speaking about the potential influence he could have on others, he has noted that free solo rock climbing is typically a self-limiting experience. A random 14 year old might think they want to go free soloing - but every human has a natural self-preservation instinct that will kick in after you are about a dozen feet off the ground, and said 14 year old will quickly realize that what they are doing is a terrible idea. It takes years of practice and mental exposure to get to the point where free soloing even very easy routes isn't a completely paralyzing experience - at which point, we would say that such a person has sufficient experience to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to take on. His point has been borne out - I have yet to hear about any people who have died soloing right after they watched Free Solo.
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.
I think I get it. As a discipline, as an art. Its a test of nerves as much as skill. He deserves whatever happens to him, but i still respect the hell out of him
Nah, F1 has come a long way from back in the day, and really done a lot for driver safety over the years. I've been following it since shortly after Jules Bianchi died, and the only time I thought "Holy shit, I've just seen someone die on live TV!" was Romain Grosjean's crash, which he ultimately came away from with relatively minor injuries.
I think the motorsport equivalent would be something like the Isle of Man TT, or the motorcycle races at the Macau Grand Prix, where the approach to safety seems to mostly remain "Hey, don't hit any of those stone/concrete barriers while going as fast as humanly possible, but if you do, there's a doctor somewhere around, maybe they'll get to you in time."
Both of those events are, in all honesty, insane that they're allowed to continue as is. The Macau GP seems somewhat better in terms of sheer death count, but despite being interested in motorsport generally, I don't think I could ever make a holiday out of attending either one. I just don't want to go somewhere that has a very real possibility of someone dying an avoidable death because "Ah, fucking health and safety have taken all the excitement out of racing, but we're the real deal and hit stone walls at 200mph when we fuck up."
“Nah”?
“Nah” what?
I don’t think you understood what I wrote or the context it was written.
Nah, as in there's no reason for anyone to bring up F1 as a comparison, for the reasons you listed, and plenty of other safety improvements.
I understood what you said fine, but you sure needed me to spell it out for you that I was agreeing with your point regarding most forms of racing these days, so maybe cool it on these comments until you work on your own reading comprehension and grasp of context yourself, there.
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.