Possibly the best athletic achievement anywhere, ever?

[budwom]

Pretty bombastic assertion, but having watched (on TV) Alex Honnold's extraordinarily climbing of the 3000 ft El Capitan in Yosemite with NO ropes or safety gear was just staggering. A front page article in the NY Times today makes the assertion that it needs to be considered as the best athletic achievement ever, and if you watch what this guy did, you (I at least) have to put this appreciate this as a spectacular achievement. There are thousands of ultra skilled and daring rock climbers, but none has ever tried this before. Amazingly smooth rock, what he did seems to be absolutely impossible.

edit: the only gear he used was shoes and a bag of chalk for his fingers...no spikes or hammers or anything else. Lots of video available...

[-jk]

Old climbers and bold climbers...

Still, impressive.

-jk

[cspan37421]

Valley Uprising is worth a watch. Was on Netflix awhile back; not sure about now.

There is no "best" except in the mind of the beholder. It's like judging art.

[OZZIE4DUKE]

This year's Darwin Award winner is ... The next person who tries this.

You might be a redneck if you say "Hey! Watch this!"

Insanity. Pure insanity to try that.

[Indoor66]

Pretty bombastic assertion, but having watched (on TV) Alex Honnold's extraordinarily climbing of the 3000 ft El Capitan in Yosemite with NO ropes or safety gear was just staggering. A front page article in the NY Times today makes the assertion that it needs to be considered as the best athletic achievement ever, and if you watch what this guy did, you (I at least) have to put this appreciate this as a spectacular achievement. There are thousands of ultra skilled and daring rock climbers, but none has ever tried this before. Amazingly smooth rock, what he did seems to be absolutely impossible.

edit: the only gear he used was shoes and a bag of chalk for his fingers...no spikes or hammers or anything else. Lots of video available...

But he isn't athletic. He doesn't run, jump or dunk!

[camion]

But he isn't athletic. He doesn't run, jump or dunk!

But if he did jump, think of the vertical !!

[BD80]

But if he did jump, think of the vertical !!

Repeatability is the key to accurate measurement ...

[jimmymax]

At this point in life I'd certainly never attempt a climb beyond the second story of my house. In fact, the future cleaning of my gutters is uncertain. I am amazed at this unharnessed speed climb: a unique achievement to be sure. If this feat piqued your curiosity, I do recommend the book/film Touching the Void.

[-jk]

At this point in life I'd certainly never attempt a climb beyond the second story of my house. In fact, the future cleaning of my gutters is uncertain. I am amazed at this unharnessed speed climb: a unique achievement to be sure. If this feat piqued your curiosity, I do recommend the book/film Touching the Void.

Gutters... I spook myself every time I go up. And I insist I only do it on days where it's been dry at least a couple days. (Alas, I live in a tulip poplar rain forest - really messy trees; really messy gutters...)

-jk

[Reddevil]

I'll reserve judgment on this achievement until we hear from Doug Gottlieb.

[Indoor66]

I'll reserve judgment on this achievement until we hear from Doug Gottlieb.

And Stephen A?

[Mal]

The Times's assertion is an interesting question/discussion starter for sure, budwom. Some items perhaps worth considering:

- semantics. Is rock climbing athletics or is it intensely demanding, difficult physical activity? Is there a difference? Taxonomically, I feel like "athletics" is really close to synonymous with "sports" these days, despite some potential conflict with the Merriam-Webster definition ("exercises, sports or activities engaged in by athletes"). Regardless, there's no score or clock (yet) in climbing, and no opponents in a traditional sense, which are important aspects of my personal working definition of "athletics." And yet the achievement of new things in rock climbing is certainly competitive, in that one climber's accomplishment drives others to try the same or to one-up them. I bring it up only to note that, as the question's been framed, we're comparing this climb to Roger Bannister breaking the 4:00 minute mile mark, Usain Bolt's speed, Roger Federer's grand slam semifinals streak, and on and on.

- in reading about this last weekend, I was very interested to learn of some climbing terminology that put what Honnold has done in a different context for me. What he did is "free solo," meaning no gear whatsoever. There's also "free climbing," in which ropes are there for safety in the event of a fall, but are not used to help maneuver up the face (so, if I understand correctly, the same thing in terms of moment-to-moment execution, but with a safety net in case you mess up). Then there's whatever climbing people do with ropes actively used to help them. In any event, a couple of guys free climbed what's considered an even more difficult route on El Capitan a couple years back. So, assuming they didn't end up needing the safety ropes they had on them, I come to a couple conclusions: first, that what those guys did might have actually been "harder" in a purely physical sense - everyone climbed up the same face of rock, two guys took the harder route, and technically no one ever had to rely on any ropes; and, relatedly, what sets Honnold's climb apart primarily is the quantum leap in bravery (or INSANITY, depending on your perspective) that it took to do it. All that's caveated by the fact that I know nothing, really, about climbing, beyond what the average person does, so I could be completely wrong.

- in sum, I guess I'd consider what Honnold did to be possibly the boldest voluntary individual physical achievement ever. The physical difficulty of it is extremely high and beyond comprehension to most of us, but not an order of magnitude beyond what other talented and experienced climbers are doing. The mental aspects of it are what's truly astonishing, IMHO.