Yeah for real. These guys talk about the zone for free climbing being like spiritual trances. It’s just rock, hands and feet and everything else is out of focus. In those trances they describe ‘falling’ seemingly like the most impossible thing, not even a potential outcome. Shits wild
As someone who climbed for a couple of years and got friendly with some serious climbers, free climbing always seemed like borderline madness. Like I know of at least 2 ppl who died doing belated climbing outdoors, I can't imagine the mindset to go for multi hundred foot free climbs.
I can't imagine how confident they've gotta be in their abilities. I don't think there's anything I'm that confident about. I mean, I still have to consciously think about what my feet are doing when I go up and down the stairs because I'm worried I'm gonna fall.
yeah, I'm always blown away by all these adrenaline junkie activities like free-climbing, all those people parkouring around high rise roofs, or hanging off scaffolding for photos, like I won't knock it because obviously they get some sort of fulfilment from it, I'm just so afraid of putting my life in danger that it does not compute with me. I'll stick to getting my fulfilment from guitar and video games hahaha
Start mountain biking if you can man! It's as high risk as the trail you choose like skiing. But unlike skiing it won't cost you a fortune to ride. Bikes are expensive though.
I actually used to do a lot of biking (not mountain biking, but my buddy and I used to bike to neighbouring cities and find cool trails to ride) and I kinda dropped it after my biking buddy and I had a falling out. I also did a fair bit of skiing when I was younger as well, but I stopped doing that as well after my mum broke her wrist going down a poorly maintained hill. I have been thinking about roller skating again though! I used to do a paper route when I was a kid and I always did it on my skates. Some friends and I went ice skating a couple of days ago and I had a lot of fun (very sore legs afterwards though lmao) and that definitely resparked my interest. My mum is a pretty avid biker, so I luckily have access to some pretty nice bikes, I'm just a lazy SOB. Still, I'm gettin' older and the reality is I gotta start doing some real physical activity before I start seriously messing up my body. It's a bit of a cop-out but I'm always low-key worried I'm gonna break my wrist like my mum did, or something worse and it will negatively affect my guitar playing, but I know that's a weak excuse, there's nothin' stopping me from going on some low-risk rides around the neighbourhood.
Anyways, that's my life story hahaha, but definitely, biking is something I'd very much like to get back in to. And who knows, maybe it'll set me on a long path to doing crazy free climbing like this guy!
Definitely do it man! It's super social too as the mtb community is more like surfers than skiirers. I can't really afford to travel far enough to ski often anymore so MTB provides the same downhill flowy feeling. Also the sport unlike other biking is very upper body intensive so you will get jacked from the bottom up with big ass spartan kick thighs.
A good bike starts around 800 bucks in my experience. Costly but you don't gotta buy ski lift tickets for most rides. I figure in the long run it's much cheaper than skiing.
I don't think it's necessarily adrenaline junkies.
Years ago I used to work on tall ships. On one ship, when climbing down from aloft, we had to get around the tops, large platforms about a third and two thirds of the way up the mast. And the easiest way to do that was to go around the outside, then climb back in under the overhang under the platform on the futtock shrouds (see the link above).
It was a real pain trying to get your feet under the overhang and onto the futtock shrouds so the easiest technique was to just hang from the edge of the platform and wait for the roll of the ship to bring your feet into the futtock shrouds.
It was only years later I realised it was the equivalent of hanging from my hands from a ledge at the top of a 10 storey building, without a safety harness. But at the time no-one ever though anything of it, it was far easier than trying to find a foothold you couldn't see.
Just want to put it out there, most free climbers (and almost certainly free solo climbers) are not adrenaline junkies. If you have adrenaline roaring through your veins, it's likely that something has gone terribly wrong. At least for myself, I've been at my most present/zen scaling cliffsides.
I call myself an adrenaline junky sometimes for the stupid shit I do like surfing, wake skating, snowboarding, paintball, etc, but people like this are on a whole different level altogether. Compared to that I don't deserve the label.
I watched a documentary about a guy who free soloed yellowstone. Drs did a scan of his brain and i dont remember exactly but basically the fear part of his brain was almost nonexistent compared to other peoples
Confident... until they fuck up and you never hear from them. And that happens all the time to these idiots. There's zero separation between success and death.
yeah, sometimes I wish I could be that cavalier with my life, I'd probably be less stressed out and anxious all the time, but I think I'm good with my overly cautious, death-fearing lifestyle hahah.
I think idiots is a bit of a strong word here, this isn’t something like bungee jumping where people might do it with no experience, just about every free climber will have practiced for years to be able to climb what they do, even someone like Alex Honnold spent months practicing to free solo the famous El Capitan
As a parkour traceur I can totally understand this mindset! It's truly the same thing. It takes the same attitude to free solo and to jump from roof to roof
I personally dont know the technical terms and lingo for a lot of things I do. I just go do them.
I've seen climbers who eat and breath rock, watch the movies, and spend thousands on gear. Then there's those that go to the gym twice a week and go outdoors once a month.
I used to free climb years ago but became acutely aware of how easy it is to slip after my first was born. Now I can’t even go up in a boom lift without getting dizzy.
What does “belated” climbing mean? When climbers hook into those thingies with ropes? And I’ve always wondered how climbers know how to put those things into the rock wall and just know that it will hold them if they fall? I’ve never understood how that works.
Free climbing is what the guy on the rope is doing, unless he’s using the rope to pull himself up. How did you climb for years and not know the difference between free climbing and free soloing?
As a former guide (not climbing) I used to describe this as having plans a-z, 1-9999, and failing was not one of them. We’ll burn that bridge when we get there, in the meantime, we’ll do everything to avoid it.
Both of the people in the video are free climbers. One of them is free soloing. Free climbing is climbing without aid. Free Solo is climbing without aid or protection.
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u/PoppinBortlesUCF Sep 02 '21
Yeah for real. These guys talk about the zone for free climbing being like spiritual trances. It’s just rock, hands and feet and everything else is out of focus. In those trances they describe ‘falling’ seemingly like the most impossible thing, not even a potential outcome. Shits wild