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bmacd
Trad climber
Beautiful, BC
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Mar 25, 2010 - 12:00am PT
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supertopo trolled by Ed Drummond ? weird ....
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guido
Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
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Mar 25, 2010 - 12:03am PT
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Trolled by.............................................?
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tom woods
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Mar 25, 2010 - 12:07am PT
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If the kid can hack it, only he knows.
While we're arguing, some crazy drunk Euro will probably come over and send the freerider naked and barefoot, or maybe with just some old inner tubes wrapped around his feet for "superior friction capabilities."
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Todd Eastman
climber
Bellingham, WA
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Mar 25, 2010 - 12:28am PT
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We are the peanut gallery!
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Tarbuster
climber
right here, right now
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Mar 25, 2010 - 12:39am PT
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Peanuts, mix'd nuts, & tards.
Now just placeholdin' for Edwin's Drummins.
C'mon Ed D.
Chime in before Pate hacks your avatar for some crowd pleasin' follow up.
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Fletcher
Trad climber
Just me and three kids
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Mar 25, 2010 - 03:13am PT
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I happened to see the film of Alex soloing Moonlight Buttress and HD last night.
My tiny, small tard brain is still processing. Meltdown may be imminent (but that may just be caused by my kids).
Lots to think about here on this particular campfire.
Eric
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Lambone
Ice climber
Ashland, Or
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Mar 25, 2010 - 11:49am PT
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What makes you guys so sure the OP is really Ed Drummond?
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Mar 25, 2010 - 11:53am PT
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Valid question, but I can answer: it is Ed. Both posts. He has taken the plunge; now he is working on how he wants to proceed.
I think he should come up with a six word response to all the posts on this thread.
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Edwin Drummond
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 26, 2010 - 11:08am PT
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A Homage to Alex Honnold
It appears to me that Alex, the morning star of the en-dangerists, the harms way film makers, equipment sponsors and magazine under-writers, is, perhaps pre-consciously, allowing himself to become their puppet. That commercial strand of disconnect in our common, climbing culture, the hypermedia, by focusing upon the exponents of extreme, over-exposed, un-roped, solo rock climbing as representing the true summit of climbing ability and achievement, is misleading. For many, if not most of us who came to climbing in the bold days when there were no sticky boots, cams, or harnesses, only a few budding nuts, climbing was, at first, a dream, a waking dream that we experienced in broad daylight, an effortless pleasure, a way of making love with our mother, Nature. And though, slowly, but inexorably, we came to, had children, spouses, houses, divorces, and grew heavier, most of us on the rocks managed to avoid killing ourselves; for one good reason... Not so the un-roped soloists.
Since late last year, after thinking about the issue for several months following my first viewing of Alex’s film, at the Reel Rock Climbing Festival presentation in San Francisco, recently, after seeing the film for a second time I felt an un-ignorable surge of concern, which, I decided, I needed to share with him. So, not knowing him personally, but publically – by invitation as it were through his film and an article or two, I wrote.
“And, you know what Alex? To be brutally honest I hoped to terrify you. Let’s ignore momentarily the distinction between private, unpublished, solo, un-roped climbing such as it appears Peter Croft committed on Astroman, and roped, protected climbing with a partner, the sum of which is always greater than the parts we play along with when alone, and concentrate upon what appears to be the case with your filmed ascent. From what one of the posters writes, apparently, at the monthly R.I.M. club meeting in Santa Rosa, in, I believe, October 2009, you admitted to staging a personal crisis on the Thank God traverse. If this is true, that you misrepresented yourself in order to dramatize and manipulate affect in the viewer, clearly one is entitled to wonder just how much ‘scripting’ (i.e. assistance from the film team) of your allegedly free solo took place. What, for example, was the reason they apparently didn’t film you on the hardest pitch, the exit bolted slab that you almost fell apart on as you described in a later article? Perhaps you can inform us. Further more I find it hard to accept that you climbed the entire N.W. face of Half Dome without any water, food, or rehearsal, which is what the documentary would seem to imply. Now, if you had, first of all, before the film climbed the face alone with no personal nourishment or previous experience of it, then, I have to say, it truly saddens me that you would hold yourself, your life, with all its bright promise, so cheaply: rock breaks, as do nerves. And then again, if you had in fact climbed the entire route previously in such a naked state in order to repeat it in whole or part for money and (fleeting) fame, is surely tempting fate.”
“Look down Alex…at your belly. See that knot? That tells it as it is. That’s how we come to this world: umbilicusly, tied in, connected. Climbing, and pretty much everything humans do in the name of life depends upon recovering contact, connect, ‘the touch of warm rock to the hand’ as Robbins says, (and, I would add, commonsense). Ignoring that connection – because it cannot be seen optically – by soloing at the edge of sanity endangers everyone, not just you. Whether it’s the Nose, Free Rider, or that slickest of routes, Whatever, doesn’t matter. We are human, and – unless we’ve automatonized by overdosing on adrenalin through repeated exposures to high risk – do feel fear, do need to love, be loved, and to work.”
“Up-scaling un-roped solo climbing at the hardest and most marginal levels as being the highest achievement in climbing would seem to me to be, as someone has posted, regressive. And I would add repressive. It is always grounded upon prior knowledge/information and learning/experience (praxis). As such it steps back into the past, memory, muscle memory and the mastery of mind control of emotional (often childhood) trauma, not forward – thanks to the rope – into that real creativity that can always, relatively safely, risk a fall. That kind of Keatsian awareness, negative capability, that un-certain, querky, quarkian consciousness resides I believe at the site of all genuine creation, including climbing a new, unknown route, on sight, though not a previously climbed one that any such knowing, and subsequently unroped climber might attempt. However, that kind of climbing – of an unknown, unclimbed new line – is a kind of climbing that likely no one who is alive can tell us about, and is one which, in my opinion far surpasses in danger, difficulty and creativity the levels discussed so far. Were anyone of as great ability as you Alex possess to attempt to do so, isn’t it at least conceivable that their parent(s?) or the NPS, would consider having them restrained as suicidal?”
“Imagine: An unclimbed cliff of soaring, sheerest aspect, one perhaps recently stumbled upon in, let’s say deepest China. You decide to try it. Call it The Great – est – Wall... Twice El Cap high, perfect granite, with intermittent cracks and corners, wrinkled faces, and sweeping slabs that steepen into arches and separate reality overhangs; a mild 5.12 at most! – as far as you can see. And there appear to be shallow, silver pools that have gathered from run-off on large ledges, reminiscent of Royal Arches, one or two every thousand feet or so, and palm trees laden with clusters of dates, and bird-size butterflies that brush your face as you gaze upwards. The temperature is like an Indian summer-September in the Valley. This is it. Paradise. Clad in shorts, tee shirt, sun cap, and the new super stickies – Yo ho ho! – off you went, alone, un-roped, no gear except for your supplicant chalk bag, and an insupportably beautiful new route that you know nothing about; all yours for the (s)ending, and in camera! Now, tell me you wouldn’t do it… Would you? But just imagine doing all that with a mate, a wonderful friend, someone you trust and love, someone to share leads, and nights with. Heaven on Earth, that would be something to write home about!” (‘If you’d had a home. If you’d had a Dad… If you hadn’t slipped.’)
“You do, in our hearts. Maybe you can find him…
You write the ending.”
Ed. Drummond
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handsome B
Gym climber
SL,UT
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Mar 26, 2010 - 11:24am PT
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A few points of clarification.
RNWF and Moonlight were both rehersed. Both were climbed first without documentation, then reenacted for the cameras. Croft reenacted Astroman for the cameras, it's one of my favorite shots.
Alex climbs on a rope. Alex climbs hard FAs on a rope. Alex climbs hard FAs on a rope in uncharted tropical wonderlands.
Alex lives in the back of a van.
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WBraun
climber
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Mar 26, 2010 - 12:12pm PT
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"The temperature is like an Indian summer-September in the Valley. This is it. Paradise."
You're wrong, it's far from paradise >>> it is hell itself. (shocking statement)
If you really knew what real paradise is ......
Also the whole assumption of your ideas reek of fatalism, nihilism, and voidism as this life is all in all and nothing further beyond the death of the individual gross physical body.
You think the individual is the body. The driver of the vehicle is not the vehicle/body.
You are seeped in gross physical materialism speculating it is all in all .......
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Studly
Trad climber
WA
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Mar 26, 2010 - 12:17pm PT
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There is just one thing certain.....
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Norwegian
Trad climber
Placerville, California
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Mar 26, 2010 - 12:23pm PT
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ed,
i appreciate your your creative efforts.
i appreciate your depth as a climber, and the perspective that you have earned.
i appreciate your kind sentiment, and the grace in your expression.
i appreciate you taking the time to share your heart's yearnings.
it can be a tough crowd. though most wield a soft hued heart.
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Bullwinkle
Boulder climber
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Mar 26, 2010 - 01:03pm PT
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as always. . . .clueless. . .
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aaronjones
Social climber
ditch
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Mar 26, 2010 - 01:31pm PT
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ed drummond=supertard
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tarek
climber
berkeley
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Mar 26, 2010 - 02:03pm PT
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tastes in writing shore do vary...
to me, the flaw in ED's take on this (and his take swells with hubris born of excess groupie praise and real risk-taking long past its expiration date - in my opinion) is the idea that one's intentions matter most of the time at the gross level of chosing the moment when we exit this place.
can't remember his name, but there was a guy who'd trekked all over the Himalaya, came home to Berkeley, decided to get a vasectomy, walked out of the doc's office onto the street, fainted and hit his head on a concrete planter. Dead.
ED should have written that guy a letter.
Lots of climbers dead on 4th class terrain, vehicle accidents, etc. Or, what could be more dangerous that high-level mountaineering?
In fact, if he's so determined to save the lives of people who hang it out, he should try basejumpers first. My buddies who do it tell me that super-experts die regularly in Europe. Or write to that dude who wants to be the first to land a jump with only a wingsuit. That guy has had way more publicity than Honnold.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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Mar 26, 2010 - 02:15pm PT
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Seems more like the issue is not free soloing per se, it's doing it with the overriding goal of turning it into climbing porn.
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tarek
climber
berkeley
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Mar 26, 2010 - 02:17pm PT
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he had a rope on for that stuff lambone recounted. So why didn't ED write about his roped climbing? Speculation: b/c this is an exercise in more public drama creation for a writer who, like all writers, is cultivating an audience (nuthin' wrong with that). Coulda written a thoughtful general essay, as several have mentioned, though.
You don't think it's arrogant for ED to think that he could scare AH with words, after all of the stuff he's done??
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pa
climber
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Mar 26, 2010 - 03:02pm PT
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What Werner said.
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tarek
climber
berkeley
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Mar 26, 2010 - 03:03pm PT
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Radical,
Yeah, it's all math, I agree. Try multiplying all of the major probabilities...then try multiplying all of their interaction terms, then their bundled interaction terms. But, as you say, it's also a matter of paying attention, something that soloists do extremely well, as a rule.
We've all been in "situations," with a rope where it was basically unplanned soloing. A friend of mine died when rock broke on easy ground and he was way run-out.
The reason I'll stop writing now is that I'm just contributing to the OP's show, and my opinion is that his writing here is lousy, and his motivations stink. But I agree that the issues are worth thinking about.
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