Sweaty palms was the least of my worries, I can hardly breathe and have to make a conscious effort to keep my heart beating lol. Nearly finished me off when his climbing companion couldn't make the horizontal traverse despite flinging himself through mid air to attempt to hang on with his finger nails and kept falling off. Not for the feint hearted.
Watched 'Free Solo' recently. I had previously watched 'The Dawn Wall' and didn't think it was possible to take free climbing to another level. I was wrong. Alex is worthy of every accolade. A truly magnificent achievement. I do hope he lives a long life, but can't help feeling that he is one slip away from death.
Interesting to hear his view on Samurai warriors. I don't think he would use a Parachute as it would sully the purity of the Warrior experience.
Almost as tense the second time as watching in the cinema. Just a bloody shame the damn adverts come on in the middle of the main climb and spoil the atmosphere!
I rarely watch films but this interested me a lot. Because it was real. Gripping stuff indeed (see what I did there). What a guy! just under 4 hours to climb a 1,200 metre vertical wall of rock. Incredible. You could tell from the film the guy's a bit nuts. Mildly psychotic but not in a violent way. I felt sorry for his bird, he'd be murder to live with. He should quit now because he'll almost certainly run out of luck. Amazing cookery skillz and dining room etiquette too
Haha yes to all of the above! It certainly must take a certain 'type' of person to do this stuff. Even more amazing when you consider most strong climbers take about three days to complete the route, and even the original professional climbers who first did this route took 15hrs!
He was definitely genetically gifted for the job. Not an spare ounce of fat on him, body like platted leather and no doubt a superb power to weight ratio. I'm certainly no expert but I'd imagine free climbing saves you shitloads of time as there's no faffing with ropes and fasteners plus you'll be a good bit lighter....
It's the head game he wins big on. There's a good number of people climbing at his skill level technically but his head is just something else. Agree with above he should stop now.
