Alex Honnold's Free Solo - Is this the greatest sporting achievement in history?
Running the 4-minute mile, winning the world cup, sailing around the world. All of these amount to some of the greatest sporting achievements of all time, but do they even come close to the sheer feat of endurance an mental strength as that shown by climber, Alex Honnold?
You might not have even heard of this diminutive American, but if you know anything about the climbing world, you will no doubt agree with me that in climbing the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without any ropes, this 33-year old from California has climbed his way into sporting history.
It is very rare to find a sporting achievement that has not been repeated to some degree, a world record that hasn't been broken or is likely never to be broken again but Alex may well be the only person to ever perform such a feat on such a grand scale.
El Capitan is an approximately 3000 ft wall of solid granite and a climbers dream. Not because it's an easy climb. On the contrary; parts of it are like climbing glass with only the tiniest holds for fingers and feet. The average roped climber would probably spend days on many of the routes up El-Cap, spending nights suspended in tents hanging off the face.
Alex climbed in under 4 hours.
While being filmed
With no safety equipment.
Just a single mistake away from falling to his death every single second.
The climb has been documented in the Oscar-winning film, Free Solo which I managed to see yesterday and I was literally blown away. Even though I knew that he had completed the climb successfully, the last 20 minutes or so of the film where you actually see him on the wall were some of the most petrifying moments in film history. It cannot be overstated how dangerous this is, at some points, he is crimping onto holds just mm in size at hundreds of feet above the ground with just the very end of one or two fingertips.
It takes a certain kind of person to be able to do this kind of thing. Some might say that he has to be on the autistic spectrum and the film reveals that the parts of his brain that respond to that kind of danger are pretty inactive. You get a remarkable insight into his attitude with regards to his family and loved ones and the fact that he would rather die climbing that stop because he thinks people would be upset with him killing himself.
Seeing his close climbing friends such as Tommy Caldwell (who recently released a film of his own based on climbing a route on El-Cap - The Dawn Wall ) struggling to come to terms with what he is doing, really brings home how remarkable this is. You can only really understand how close to the edge Alex is if you have climbed yourself. Personally i can only manage very simple routes with pretty large holds and even un-roped on a 4 m bouldering wall scares the bejeezus out of me.
Sat at home watching, you cannot help but feel uncomfortable with the whole thing, which makes you wonder how the filmmakers such as the remarkable Jimmy Chin can manage to keep a camera on him, knowing that at any moment they may see their great friend just fall to his death. I'm pretty sure that the least nervous person involved in this film was Alex himself. He is some kind of machine.
The film is a deserving Oscar winner and I would recommend seeing it to anyone. Even if you aren't interested in climbing, it's a remarkable insight into the mind of one of the most incredible human beings on earth.
Take a look at the trailer below. It's also worth watching Alex' TED talk on how he managed to do this
@trang and I thought Free Solo was an OKAY documentary about an extraordinary feat. On the other hand, Man on Wire is an extraordinary documentary on an extraordinary feat:
I like Man On Wire too but I do think Alex just about edges it in the technical ability stakes.
I couldn’t Resteem this one fast enough, Mark. Thank you for putting this together—great article!
Cheers man, I've been trying to find something similar to climb in Norfolk. Closest I've found are the stairs at work.
You should also vote for @c-squared as a witness if you have a spare vote ;)
C’mon man. And you should know I already did that a long time ago.
yeah, Im dumb. was logged into the wrong account when steemplus notified me "dandays isnt voting for your witness". I'm having a brain fart day.
Good post and response to the movie. I just saw it also. As you said, even though we know he made it and we know what will come in the last 20 minutes or so, that footage left me sweating. A monumental achievement and a really fine movie about it.
This post was shared in the Curation Collective Discord community for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account after manual review.
@c-squared runs a community witness. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us here
"It takes a certain kind of person to be able to do this kind of thing"
Too bloody right it does! I've been putting off buying a ladder to clean the first floor windows and treat the window frames as that's a few meters too high for my liking. Talk about having faith in your own abilities.
Hello @markangeltrueman, thank you for sharing this creative work! We just stopped by to say that you've been upvoted by the @creativecrypto magazine. The Creative Crypto is all about art on the blockchain and learning from creatives like you. Looking forward to crossing paths again soon. Steem on!