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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 8, 2006 - 01:27am PT
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Is the whole point of Free Soloing to show how bad ass one is.
Is it to give God the middle finger?
To produce more Adrenaline?
Bipolar Disorder?
Having soloed a few multipitch 5.9 routes on Taqhuitz, looking back I have to really question my motives.
It was rather fun at the time, but I did feel kind of dirty.
Like I was breaking some rule?
What was my point?
Juanito
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WBraun
climber
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There is a time for insanity.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Muir Woods National Monument, Mill Valley
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Have you become sane?
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2006 - 01:32am PT
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I really need to learn to !@#$%^& right!
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WBraun
climber
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Oh do I wish .........
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2006 - 01:35am PT
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I free soloed to impress others. I admit it.
I wanted to be like Bachar, Long, and the others showing off on Intersection rock.
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todd-gordon
climber
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I free solo mainly to tick routes......it's a greedy goat thing....no one need be around to watch....
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Fluoride
Trad climber
on a rock or mountain out west
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I'm with Todd.....greedy goat free soloing is the only way to go. The goats love it.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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To be alive?
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JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 8, 2006 - 02:08am PT
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Low serotonin levels?
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CAMNOTCLIMB
Trad climber
novato ca
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Every soloist knows from the first step off the ground that they are playing a very serious game. Yes I said a game, You can define it anyway you want, but the end result is that you know from the first move. Nobody ends up soloing by chance. Nobody forces you to do it. Yes their is some input from peers and we all would like to climb like Bacher or Croft, but in real life we all climb to our own abilties and style.
Granted there are a few beers in this statement, And I never have soloed on a big time level. I have walked up to and away from more climb than I can remember. I have also down climbed a few after only a few feet. It was not the right time, climb, or whatever...
Celebrate free soloist, hell yes. Copy them, maybe, never solo, that cool too. The choice is yours and yours alone.
Brian
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WBraun
climber
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"Nobody ends up soloing by chance."
Ah? thus the universe is not created by chance! Thus there is an intelligent creator ........ ?
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NinjaChimp
climber
Davis, CA
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I think you just took a giant leap in your logic. Do explain.
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CAMNOTCLIMB
Trad climber
novato ca
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Werner, I was thinking more of free will, Intelligent design went into cams modern belay tools, lost arrows ect. Who had the free will to infuse within each of us the ability to use free will, well that is defined by ourselves, for ourselves, through self exploration.
Brian
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Intelligent Free Soloing maybe - Hmmmmm.
I have some fairly biased views on free soloing. I've had only one pure, elegant, and unpremeditated free solo where it just came on me to do it and I knew for sure before ever leaving the ground I would be absolutely safe and so let go completely and just climbed. It was a transcendent moment of perfect control and freedom all at the same time with absolutely no anxiety or fear. On the otherhand, all the rest of my free solos have been deliberate and premeditated calculations of skill and knowledge with varying degrees of anxiety from slight to considerable. And on every single one there was some serious and concerted active manangement of my overall condition going on - they weren't by any means "free flowing".
I feel quite thankful that I can tell the difference between the two and have no obsessive need to recreate or deliberately chase the former experience because I don't think you can, it just happens. I also don't believe the Reardons, Bachars, Potters, et al are experiencing that perfect, precognitive "flow" when they solo 95% of the time either, but rather have achieved a remarkably high level of physical and emotional control along with an incredible depth of experience on the media and superior risk mitigation skills.
I'm not saying they don't "flow" themselves on occasion; but I think the two approaches - "precognitively flowing" and "superiorly skilled" do visually converge to a in the eye of an inexperienced observer such that the two look indistinquishable. Most folks simply can't tell the difference by watching. And while my belief is that these states are worlds apart, I do feel that a very high level of skills and experience can certainly open doors to the possibility of experiencing that "flow" state much more often, just not on demand.
And I think there is a very high potential after a while for a person to mistake or confuse being in the "zone" w/ superior skills (what I'd be willing to call "Intelligent Free Soloing") with what I'll call "Precognitive Flowing". Particularly so given you might quite unknowingly cross back and forth between the two states fairly fluidly after a certain amount of solo yardage. Making that mistake of distinction on occasion is one thing, but I would guess it's probably a grave error to allow your ego or need to confuse the two states and / or con yourself into believing you can call up contiuous "flow" at will on-demand.
In either case, my feeling is any celibration should be internal and I worry for those that do such climbs on schedules and as events or "stunts" associated with other people's expectations. Maybe Reardon really has figured out how to break-on-through to that on-demand "flow", but my suspicion is he has just come close to perfecting "Intelligent Free Soloing" and never allows himself the luxury of believing he can simply let go of all control and just climb the remarkable things that he does.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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oh, poor Opus!
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CAMNOTCLIMB
Trad climber
novato ca
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nice touch, I aways new those wings were god for something.
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Grug
Trad climber
Golden, Colorado
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Ultimately, in some weird psychological way, i think its related to wanting to score with chicks.
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dirtineye
Trad climber
the south
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My first reaction is, " Ohhh Please, not again.".
Second take, as somone who does the off the cuff, here I am, there it is, lets go, on sight even in trail shoes sort of FS, (and highball boulder problems), I feel that these things should not be done in public.
Having had at least one or two "oh sh#t why am I here" moments, followed by either luck or skill (hard to tell them apart sometimes), I find that Free Soloing is incredibly stupid, but also great fun.
I'm fairly certain my FS days are over, at least on anything higher than three crashpads will protect, LOL. But you never know.
So my answer is, finally, NO, we should not be celebrating free solos or free soloists. I sincerely hope nobody is doing FS for the publicity. But I have to admire those crazy feckers just a little.
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville
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when i did climb ropeless i did it because it was an adventure. it was fun and i felt good knowing i could do it. purely selfish reasons.
i did not like an audience. i avoided people as amatter of fact.
i may do it again when my kids are grown, who knows? but now my responsibility lies with them.
Wbraun was closest with this quote i think.
"There is a time for insanity."
to answer the question.
celebrate the soloist as you would any climber.
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