El Capitan is so sheer and steep that even the easiest of these routes qualify, for advanced recreational climbers, as petrifying and magnificent once-in-a-lifetime adventures. More than two decades ago, when I climbed regularly, I trained for three years — as do men and women all over the world — to prepare for El Capitan. Twice, I climbed with a partner about a third of the way up, only to retreat in terror, as is common among those ascending for the first time. In the summer of 1992, with two partners, I finally overcame my fear. We hauled supplies by rope and pulley, slept on tiny ledges and made it to the top in five days.

On each of the four mornings before I met up with Honnold and Allfrey, they climbed El Capitan from bottom to top before lunch, taking a different route each time. They set speed records on three of those routes, passing dozens of startled slow-moving climbers. They did this roped together, with Allfrey in the lead on aid-climbing sections, moving like a frantic construction worker hammering his way up a skyscraper, and with Honnold sprinting up any terrain he could free-climb. Honnold so rarely attached his rope to the cliff that he risked long falls.

Beatrix Kiddo wrote:https://such.forumotion.com/t30867-dizzy-just-watching-it#194828

Life is defined by risk. Every time you enter a crosswalk at a busy time of the day, you take a risk. Buy a pack of chicken parts from the meat counter, you take a risk. Sell Apple stock short, you take a risk. So in everyone's life, the various risks that they take in to survive, or even to find that elusive, probably non-existent thing called "happiness," is defined by risks.

So any single life is in fact, a "basket" or collection of risks one takes, and those risks define who you are in a fundamental way. What I see is that Mr. Honnold has invested nearly all of his "risk-capital" into one spectacular risk that defines his life the way he wants to live it.

People may think that he is being selfish by not dedicating his life to "helping others," but that ignores that fact that by pursuing this particular dream or obsession, he is taking a path 180 degrees opposite to that of all the others whose self-interested agendas end up causing misery to others. So by not causing misery to others, he is helping others. "Do no harm."

I read him as a modern mystic, a fundamentally spiritual man, a monk of mountain-climbing if you will. As such, he has my admiration. The closest I have come to attaining that kind of mystical transcendence by defying the laws of gravity, was when I flew motorless gliders (soaring planes), as a much younger, and if you will, more foolish person.

Now I just meditate on solid ground, but still a mystic of sorts

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/magazine/the-heart-stopping-climbs-of-alex-honnold.html?_r=0

Kris wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/magazine/the-heart-stopping-climbs-of-alex-honnold.html?_r=0

>>>The guy has balls and maybe a death wish. Its scary even to look at these guys in Yosemite and I am talking about the ones with ropes. He seems like he is well adjusted and his mother has made her peace with it. Hope he has a long, safe climbing career ahead of him.