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Psilocyborg
climber
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Nov 21, 2014 - 05:42pm PT
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According to Donini....this is no adventure site.
And based on many of those here, this is more of a knitting site.
That is a hive-like mindset. Pushing the boundries for yourself is what it is all about, it is what this life is all about. Competition, comparing, or impressing others is for the ego, but adventure is for your inner self where no one is watching. That happens on snake dike or an unnamed peak in patagonia, and is equally as powerful, moving, and meaningful.
In other words, like someone said above, adventure is in the eye of the beholder, and to think otherwise means you are dying on the inside
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Nov 21, 2014 - 05:49pm PT
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Let's all try to work on reading comprehension. I started the adventure thread NOT to say that my definition of adventure was better than yours. I was railing against companies, both manufacturing and service oriented, using AND diluting the meaning of the word to further their self interests.
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wstmrnclmr
Trad climber
Bolinas, CA
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Nov 21, 2014 - 06:12pm PT
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It's hard for us here to grasp "the laymans" view as most of us are climbers critiquing from a climbers point of view.
Shifting the point of view to that of a the layman, although hard, is interesting. NYT does an excellent job in conveying from a layman's perspective to the layman. Those of us on this forum are decidedly in the minority when reading and critiquing the article. I got much more out of reading the comments below the article, most of which seem to obviously come from non-climbers (my favorite comment being "Depositing oneself for others to clean up after violates the first rule of a wilderness experience: Leave No Trace".
My parents take on the 60 minutes profile was "he's nuts" and wanted to watch for the chance to see if he fell. Much like DMT's earlier post of watching free soloing akin to watching Nascar to see a wreck.
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crankster
Trad climber
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Nov 21, 2014 - 06:38pm PT
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Good points, but maybe you're looking too deep.
Company says, """hmmm, these guys and gals are getting pretty extreme. Is this in line with what we want to promote? We have other athletes, maybe we should cut them loose".
My complaint with Clif would be that their firing seemed pretty blunt. Maybe it had to be. I suppose you wouldn't consider going to Honnald and asking him to please use a rope.
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wstmrnclmr
Trad climber
Bolinas, CA
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Nov 21, 2014 - 06:40pm PT
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But that's the irony Crankster....we're picking it apart from the inside..... I guess I'm trying to see it from the outside(most of clifbars clientele?).
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nov 21, 2014 - 08:17pm PT
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Scads of lads or scants of ants it only takes one. Off the top of my head I can quickly count five or more solo climbers who have taken the plunge.
--
Over how long a period? And from a set of how many free soloers? There are precious few expert climbers who have not free soled at some level. IF from the hundreds of thousands of these, we only have five people who have perished soloing, over a period of years (decades?), then the odds are favorable that free soling is less risky than NASCAR, big wave surfing, cave diving, BASE jumping, hang gliding, small plane flying and almost any other adventure you can mention.
Fact is, free soling is potentially deadly - as hell. But only one or two experts a year bite it -piddling numbers for a practice experienced by at least half the people on this list - at least at moderate levels.
Not true that free soloing is as dangerous as all that because the people who do it -- even here and there - generally know their limits and are not in a hurry to exceed them. And the notion that free soloers provide a "bad" example for school kids is based on the fiction that they will be encouraged to solo as well, but before they have the judgement to do it with any degree of mastery. Another nothing that is simply not true in any real numbers.
Bottom line - most of the arguments about soloing don't hold water in terms of the fears and doomsday declarations playing out in the real world. It can be deadly, for certain. But so can a lot of other things we humans do.
Now if you were advance the argument against proximity flying, that would be a totally different affair.
JL
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Nov 21, 2014 - 08:28pm PT
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Largo: most of the arguments about soloing don't hold water in terms of the fears and doomsday declarations playing out in the real world. It can be deadly, for certain. But so can a lot of other things we humans do. Now if you were advance the argument against proximity flying, that would be a totally different affair.
Or driving down a two-lane road at 65 miles an hour against traffic. 3-4 feet the wrong way can mean absolute disaster. Seems very risky. Strange that it doesn’t happen far more often.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2014 - 08:29pm PT
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Over 17 climbers hit the deck this year using ropes.
Not one free soloist fell.
The free soloists ate clif bars.
The guys that hit the deck must of forgot to eat their clif bars ????
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ms55401
Trad climber
minneapolis, mn
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Nov 21, 2014 - 08:41pm PT
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Not true that free soloing is as dangerous as all that because the people who do it -- even here and there - generally know their limits and are not in a hurry to exceed them
except for Croft and Honnold, the climbers most closely identified with soloing at a high level (in the modern period) are dead, killed while free soloing. You know who they are.
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The Larry
climber
Moab, UT
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Nov 21, 2014 - 08:50pm PT
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except for Croft and Honnold, the climbers most closely identified with soloing at a high level (in the modern period) are dead, killed while free soloing. You know who they are.
Dumbest post of the day.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nov 21, 2014 - 09:09pm PT
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except for Croft and Honnold, the climbers most closely identified with soloing at a high level (in the modern period) are dead, killed while free soloing. You know who they are.
What percentage of all free soloers do these few climbers represent? And when Bachard died soloing, he was 52 and suffering from various serious ailments, including an arm that would go dead on him. Of course people have died free soloing. This ain't canasta. But as it is practiced by experts, the ratio of deaths to participants is approaching zero.
Again, what people get confused here is the potential risk as opposed to the participant to accident ratio. Cliff Bar yanked their sponsorship based on the potential risk, not owing to a spate of recent free soloing deaths. Fact.
JL
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rbord
Boulder climber
atlanta
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Nov 21, 2014 - 09:28pm PT
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Thanks HFCS.
Largo don't think I can. I think my "objective" is the same as your "objctive". I wouldn't call it work, but my information bias is that I have an autism spectrum child and a severely ADHD child who I love and admire more than anything in the world, but when their teacher tells me that they're struggling to learn math and English, I sense that that's a valid perspective on reality too. I think that humans' brains work differently, just like our skins do.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 21, 2014 - 09:28pm PT
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The so called free soloist uses a rope not visible to the naked material eye.
The free soloist uses the eternal universal umbilical cord that's attached to the anchor of eternity .....
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MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Nov 21, 2014 - 09:42pm PT
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Extreme sport sponsor-rejection is so hot right now!
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Nov 21, 2014 - 11:58pm PT
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I'm with Largo on this. Free soloing isn't statistically dangerous. And impressionable teenagers are far too busy texting while driving to be lured into something as safe as free soloing. Anyway, as I said earlier, free soloing is in principle arguably part of many, perhaps most trad climbers days, whether they have a rope on or not, because there are often places where a roped fall would still kill them, and they have to climb exactly as a free soloist does.
I do think that something changes when you earn at least part of your living as a free soloist, bringing camera crews along to record the feat. (And sometimes it is a major production to get camera people in place.) At that point, you become an entertainer, not simply a climber doing their thing, and like it or not, part of the entertainment value of your performance, as it was for the ill-fated and unfortunately-named Flying Wallendas, is the potential for you to die doing it. I don't think there is any way around it; this morbid component is part of the bargain you make with the devil in order to finance the life you want.
I saw a video of Honnold climbing a building somewhere, pulling on potentially crappy bits of facade, every single move exactly the same as the last one. It is hard to imagine how joy, artistry, and freedom of the spirit would have brought him or anyone to that unremarkable exercise on a dull urban street corner. No, he earned some coin for doing it, and that's why he did it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging him or anyone for their choices. It is possible, if unlikely, that one day the devil will show up at the crux, demanding Payment In Full, but hopefully that is not the way it plays out. Even so, there are aspects of the situation that could cause any sponsor to pause and consider whether, for reasons both moral and commercial, they want to be a critical part of this particular form of entertainment.
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crankster
Trad climber
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Nov 22, 2014 - 07:30am PT
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Largo makes a reasoned argument.
So does Clif..
Over a year ago, we started having conversations internally about our concerns with B.A.S.E. jumping, highlining and free-soloing. We concluded that these forms of the sport are pushing boundaries and taking the element of risk to a place where we as a company are no longer willing to go. We understand that some climbers feel these forms of climbing are pushing the sport to new frontiers. But we no longer feel good about benefitting from the amount of risk certain athletes are taking in areas of the sport where there is no margin for error; where there is no safety net.
So, they part ways. I don't see it as a big deal. I've had friends who do all the above risky activities and there is always an internal debate going among friends about the sanity of these activities.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Nov 22, 2014 - 08:31am PT
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Fat Dad already nicely summed up Honnold's article; nothing to add there. I thought I'd mention that I just browsed through the 2011 N.A. accidents report (it was free on line). I counted 4 free soloing accidents (three deaths) and at least one of the people who died apparently had no idea what he was doing. Makes me wonder exactly who Clif Bar is trying to protect? The great majority of rock climbing accidents occured on sport routes or moderate (less than 5.10) trad routes.
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wstmrnclmr
Trad climber
Bolinas, CA
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Nov 22, 2014 - 09:27am PT
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Fat Dad and the rest summed it up nicely from a narrow field of vision. Most of the world sees this very differently. And they're the ones clif bar is accountable to. All the in depth nuance of the soloist is seen very differently.......
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Nov 22, 2014 - 10:10am PT
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Robert L. said: Largo: We ought not sight concepts of reliability (consistency) as tantamount to safety.
Safety or "safe" should never be used in reference to adventure sports because the potential for death is always there. But there is some merit in being able to separate out potential danger from the actual, real-world ratio of how many people free solo (read what Dr. Goldstone wrote) and how many die from doing so. Very few. One or two a year - a small number compared to even skiing of SCUBA diving. This does not mean the potential danger approaches zero, rather that experienced climber's judgement is generaly good when their lives are at stake. So it's the accident to participant ration that approaches zero.
As the man said, based on how many people actually die from soloing, you wonder who, exactly, is Cliff Bar trying to protect? My point is in terms of free soling, Cliff Bar is acting soly on the grounds of perceived or potential risk - and that's a slippery slope if you start backing away from that, since ALL adventure sports and most businesses involve risk.
They'll have to change their name to "Sand Bar."
JL
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crankster
Trad climber
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Nov 22, 2014 - 10:16am PT
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I don't think climbers are their target audience. A tiny segment of their customers will make any connection to the athletes they sponsor or don't. They are, remember, in the business of selling bars, gels and stuff. In the scheme of things, this all really amounts to much ado about nothing. Steph Davis is free to use her wingsuit and Honnald can solo on, unfettered.
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