My beef with Free Solo was with the main character itself, Alex Honnold.
Growing up climbing mountains, running rivers, and everything in between. You learn there is always risk but you always try to mitigate as much of it as possible. The idea of going up without a rope, even if you’re only risking your own life, I personally find to irresponsible and reckless. What worries me the most is that this movie is going to inspire more free climbers and cause more deaths because of it.
I prefer Meru because they get 100 feet from the top. 100 feet from making history. 100 feet from being the first to conquer the peak and instead they turn back. That’s an extremely tough call to make and I gained a lot of respect for those guys because of it.
It’s only a good trip if you and friends make it back in one piece.
As a consummate risk-taker, there is absolutely nothing irresponsible about risking your own life as long you are not placing others in danger or otherwise placing them in harm’s way.
Each person must draw the line where they are comfortable. Many find climbing in any fashion irresponsible.
@Jamesh actually broke his back climbing lead indoor at a gym here in Boulder. Even with the proper safety gear and skilled climbers/belayers involved, things can still go wrong. Could things have gone much worse without the safety gear? Sure, though you’d be hard pressed to find a climber not acutely aware of that.
Personally, I find a LOT more of an issue with something like this:
Free soloing is insanely dangerous, and every climber I’ve talked to is acutely aware of that. Having in some ways a false sense of security from a chute seems more dangerous since it encourages one to tackle routes beyond what they would tackle if they knew/thought their life was truly on the line.
Wearing a 'chute should not give a climber any additional conference. It is useless when you are falling against the side of a mountain. You need free air to open a 'chute.
Fortunately Jamesh is young and sturdier than he looks - he’s healed fully at this point, though I know he sometimes has to stretch out some stiffness in his back in the mornings.
And I agree with you on the chute - it’s scary to hear the climber featured in the video outright say that he climbs routes he wouldn’t without the chute.
As long as we are in the genre of science fiction: Solaris, the original version, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Described as the Russian answer to 2001. A beautiful film.
