i .... believe he cured his "addiction" to "soloing"

yeah, it's an "addiction"....i forgot about that...[still laughing]

ya.. i've solo'd exactly 1 route in my life and i'm set with that for quite a while. I went to solo a second a few years ago that i had led with 1 stopper, backed off and said it wouldn't work. i didn't make auger that day.

ya.. i've solo'd exactly 1 route in my life and i'm set with that for quite a while. I went to solo a second a few years ago that i had led with 1 stopper, backed off and said it wouldn't work. i didn't make auger that day.

This is exactly why YOU DONT GET IT! But its ok.. Look, people dont have to solo to be bad ass. But if you've never done it, then you shouldn't be talking shit... And i might add, that was the first solo, out of a few dozen, that mike has ever done where the rope and harness were left in place. Maybe the "bad style" jesus was there to save his life that day.

There is the old saying about and experienced climber being one who hasn't been killed by his stupid mistakes. Personally, I have no memory of my first free solo. I woke up in the boulder field underneath a climb feeling kinda sore. I had a faint of memory of intending to solo the climb, but no recollection of starting up or falling off. There was a little water streak up a ways that would have made things slippery---maybe that had something to do with it. Of course, there were no cameras and not even another person around to tell me what had really happened.

I took the experience as a warning, but cannot say it ended the free soloing part of my career. I've done hundreds of free solos on crags and in the mountains, and think of it as part and parcel of my generation's climbing practices---virtually everyone I know did the same thing. One or two paid the ultimate price for it. But most of us didn't climb at the very edge of our roped climbing ability; my hardest solos were still at least a grade, usually two or more grades below what I could lead without falling. When my daughter was born, I stopped entirely.

I think some of the condemnation generated by the video is a result of the climber's substantial level of incompetence. Whatever grade climbs he has somehow gotten up, his technique classifies him as a beginner, and one out of place without protection. He appeared to start up mindlessly, then seemed to panic up high at the hard move, and didn't have the mental control to back down.

It is an interesting feature of modern climbing and the way people progress that someone with such poor technique has a host of "hard" climbs under his belt. I guess it is a testimony to what can be accomplished with a go-for-it attitude and lots of natural strength, fueled by an apparent lack of restraining consequences. Performing in a safe environment where there are no consequences of a blown move and every difficulty is solved by moving up is not good training for trad leading, much less free soloing. Attitudes and approaches actually have to be unlearned.

If it is possible to overlook the incompetence of the climber in this episode, there is another underlying message, and that is the ingredients in trad leading and even more so in free soloing include aspects of mental control as well as technical ability. What this means, as we saw, is that something done repeatedly with protection becomes another proposition altogether when one's ass is on the line. Looking at that fall as some sort of random failure that might have happened during any of the roped ascents but most unfortunately happened the one time the climber was unroped is, in my opinion, a dangerous misunderstanding of a very demanding game, because it suggests that the climber was the innocent victim of a random event, rather than having made a laundry list of misjudgements leading to an almost predictable end.

This puts me in mind of another personal experience, another type of failure. There is a climb I wanted to solo for years. It's 5.11 low down at bouldering height; I've done that part a countless number of times---its just a boulder problem. Then, higher up, in either the death or serious injury zone, is a 5.10 section. I've been up there 20, maybe more times over the years. I have moved up and down and into those moves and back. I always figured I could eventually learn enough about them to do the whole thing reversibly, and there was some truth in this, since I always did climb back down. But I never obtained the level of mastery I needed to push on, and so, in spite of years of attempts, I've never done it. Solo is the only way I've ever tried this particular route, and so in fact I never did do it, and now I'm way too far past my prime to even contemplate such an effort.

I could still easily top-rope the thing, but prefer to leave it as it is, with a bit of mystery which will be eternal for me, a challenge I confronted at length and ultimately declined, a failure that somehow seems to me to be more of a success than many of the harder routes I've managed to get up with a rope. It was a long path from the concussed awakening youth at the base of that unremembered wall to the aging greybeard smiling up at a lovely line never to be completed, a path I've managed to travel thanks to the imparted wisdom of many companions and the profound good luck to have survived my many mistakes.

So is that guy an idiot? The sad and terrible reality is that anyone who falls off free-soloing is an idiot, no matter who they were or what they did before that terrible last moment. Yeah, he's young, stupid, unskilled, and inexperienced, like me and a lot of other people who turned out ok in the end. He's been given an incredible gift, his life back, his health and vitality intact, when he had no right to expect it. The measure of the boy, or man, will be what he does with that gift, and really, we can only wish him the very best.

There is the old saying about and experienced climber being one who hasn't been killed by his stupid mistakes. Personally, I have no memory of my first free solo. I woke up in the boulder field underneath a climb feeling kinda sore. I had a faint of memory of intending to solo the climb, but no recollection of starting up or falling off. There was a little water streak up a ways that would have made things slippery---maybe that had something to do with it. Of course, there were no cameras and not even another person around to tell me what had really happened.

I took the experience as a warning, but cannot say it ended the free soloing part of my career. I've done hundreds of free solos on crags and in the mountains, and think of it as part and parcel of my generation's climbing practices---virtually everyone I know did the same thing. One or two paid the ultimate price for it. But most of us didn't climb at the very edge of our roped climbing ability; my hardest solos were still at least a grade, usually two or more grades below what I could lead without falling. When my daughter was born, I stopped entirely.

I think some of the condemnation generated by the video is a result of the climber's substantial level of incompetence. Whatever grade climbs he has somehow gotten up, his technique classifies him as a beginner, and one out of place without protection. He appeared to start up mindlessly, then seemed to panic up high at the hard move, and didn't have the mental control to back down.

It is an interesting feature of modern climbing and the way people progress that someone with such poor technique has a host of "hard" climbs under his belt. I guess it is a testimony to what can be accomplished with a go-for-it attitude and lots of natural strength, fueled by an apparent lack of restraining consequences. Performing in a safe environment where there are no consequences of a blown move and every difficulty is solved by moving up is not good training for trad leading, much less free soloing. Attitudes and approaches actually have to be unlearned.

If it is possible to overlook the incompetence of the climber in this episode, there is another underlying message, and that is the ingredients in trad leading and even more so in free soloing include aspects of mental control as well as technical ability. What this means, as we saw, is that something done repeatedly with protection becomes another proposition altogether when one's ass is on the line. Looking at that fall as some sort of random failure that might have happened during any of the roped ascents but most unfortunately happened the one time the climber was unroped is, in my opinion, a dangerous misunderstanding of a very demanding game, because it suggests that the climber was the innocent victim of a random event, rather than having made a laundry list of misjudgements leading to an almost predictable end.

This puts me in mind of another personal experience, another type of failure. There is a climb I wanted to solo for years. It's 5.11 low down at bouldering height; I've done that part a countless number of times---its just a boulder problem. Then, higher up, in either the death or serious injury zone, is a 5.10 section. I've been up there 20, maybe more times over the years. I have moved up and down and into those moves and back. I always figured I could eventually learn enough about them to do the whole thing reversibly, and there was some truth in this, since I always did climb back down. But I never obtained the level of mastery I needed to push on, and so, in spite of years of attempts, I've never done it. Solo is the only way I've ever tried this particular route, and so in fact I never did do it, and now I'm way too far past my prime to even contemplate such an effort.

I could still easily top-rope the thing, but prefer to leave it as it is, with a bit of mystery which will be eternal for me, a challenge I confronted at length and ultimately declined, a failure that somehow seems to me to be more of a success than many of the harder routes I've managed to get up with a rope. It was a long path from the concussed awakening youth at the base of that unremembered wall to the aging greybeard smiling up at a lovely line never to be completed, a path I've managed to travel thanks to the imparted wisdom of many companions and the profound good luck to have survived my many mistakes.

So is that guy an idiot? The sad and terrible reality is that anyone who falls off free-soloing is an idiot, no matter who they were or what they did before that terrible last moment. Yeah, he's young, stupid, unskilled, and inexperienced, like me and a lot of other people who turned out ok in the end. He's been given an incredible gift, his life back, his health and vitality intact, when he had no right to expect it. The measure of the boy, or man, will be what he does with that gift, and really, we can only wish him the very best.

There is the old saying about and experienced climber being one who hasn't been killed by his stupid mistakes. Personally, I have no memory of my first free solo. I woke up in the boulder field underneath a climb feeling kinda sore. I had a faint of memory of intending to solo the climb, but no recollection of starting up or falling off. There was a little water streak up a ways that would have made things slippery---maybe that had something to do with it. Of course, there were no cameras and not even another person around to tell me what had really happened.

I took the experience as a warning, but cannot say it ended the free soloing part of my career. I've done hundreds of free solos on crags and in the mountains, and think of it as part and parcel of my generation's climbing practices---virtually everyone I know did the same thing. One or two paid the ultimate price for it. But most of us didn't climb at the very edge of our roped climbing ability; my hardest solos were still at least a grade, usually two or more grades below what I could lead without falling. When my daughter was born, I stopped entirely.

I think some of the condemnation generated by the video is a result of the climber's substantial level of incompetence. Whatever grade climbs he has somehow gotten up, his technique classifies him as a beginner, and one out of place without protection. He appeared to start up mindlessly, then seemed to panic up high at the hard move, and didn't have the mental control to back down.

It is an interesting feature of modern climbing and the way people progress that someone with such poor technique has a host of "hard" climbs under his belt. I guess it is a testimony to what can be accomplished with a go-for-it attitude and lots of natural strength, fueled by an apparent lack of restraining consequences. Performing in a safe environment where there are no consequences of a blown move and every difficulty is solved by moving up is not good training for trad leading, much less free soloing. Attitudes and approaches actually have to be unlearned.

If it is possible to overlook the incompetence of the climber in this episode, there is another underlying message, and that is the ingredients in trad leading and even more so in free soloing include aspects of mental control as well as technical ability. What this means, as we saw, is that something done repeatedly with protection becomes another proposition altogether when one's ass is on the line. Looking at that fall as some sort of random failure that might have happened during any of the roped ascents but most unfortunately happened the one time the climber was unroped is, in my opinion, a dangerous misunderstanding of a very demanding game, because it suggests that the climber was the innocent victim of a random event, rather than having made a laundry list of misjudgements leading to an almost predictable end.

This puts me in mind of another personal experience, another type of failure. There is a climb I wanted to solo for years. It's 5.11 low down at bouldering height; I've done that part a countless number of times---its just a boulder problem. Then, higher up, in either the death or serious injury zone, is a 5.10 section. I've been up there 20, maybe more times over the years. I have moved up and down and into those moves and back. I always figured I could eventually learn enough about them to do the whole thing reversibly, and there was some truth in this, since I always did climb back down. But I never obtained the level of mastery I needed to push on, and so, in spite of years of attempts, I've never done it. Solo is the only way I've ever tried this particular route, and so in fact I never did do it, and now I'm way too far past my prime to even contemplate such an effort.

I could still easily top-rope the thing, but prefer to leave it as it is, with a bit of mystery which will be eternal for me, a challenge I confronted at length and ultimately declined, a failure that somehow seems to me to be more of a success than many of the harder routes I've managed to get up with a rope. It was a long path from the concussed awakening youth at the base of that unremembered wall to the aging greybeard smiling up at a lovely line never to be completed, a path I've managed to travel thanks to the imparted wisdom of many companions and the profound good luck to have survived my many mistakes.

So is that guy an idiot? The sad and terrible reality is that anyone who falls off free-soloing is an idiot, no matter who they were or what they did before that terrible last moment. Yeah, he's young, stupid, unskilled, and inexperienced, like me and a lot of other people who turned out ok in the end. He's been given an incredible gift, his life back, his health and vitality intact, when he had no right to expect it. The measure of the boy, or man, will be what he does with that gift, and really, we can only wish him the very best.

I do enjoy it a little bit. I mean 99.9% of people on here shouldn't even be rock climbing.... I just dont understand how a sport that is ALL about risk, attracts so many people that would never take one...

I just dont understand how a sport that is ALL about risk, attracts so many people that would never take one...

The really funny thing though, is that if you guys ever ran into us in person, none of you would have the balls to say ONE THING to us about being stupid or unsafe.

I'm just defending the people that mean more to me then the nerds on this site. I dont think that its part of climbing, i think this was a specific tramatic incident, and obviously alot of wrong things happened.

I'm in my twenties forced to be at my at my Rents on House Arrest. I haven't touched rock for over 7 months. WTF else am i gonna do except make fun of people on the interwebz?

From a lurker....WOW!

So is that guy an idiot? The sad and terrible reality is that anyone who falls off free-soloing is an idiot, no matter who they were or what they did before that terrible last moment.

rgold is not really a lurker, he posts fairly frequently here.

I do think that the admins need to make a feature that closes and locks a thread right after rgold posts in it, since he almost always gets the definitive, authoritative last word in.

A roped climber says that about a free soler;
a sport climber could say that about a trad climber who falls and gets injured in a way that wouldn't happen sport climbing;
and a non-climber could say that about any climber who gets injured.

That guy does seem to have been acting idiotically but not just because of his decision to solo the route and his subsequent fall--there were lots of other idiotic things going on as have been noted in great detail.

The really funny thing though, is that if you guys ever ran into us in person, none of you would have the balls to say ONE THING to us about being stupid or unsafe. So shut the fuck up and enjoy the video.

why would you not "choose"' to climb safely all the time?