alright then let's liveblog this

[kaberett]

the context: rydra_wong has been telling everyone about The Dawn Wall and Free Solo emphatically and with great enthusiasm for Several Months at this point. I kindasorta tried to get my act together to see Free Solo in the cinemas but I... don't go to the cinema alone (at the moment I'm managing to leave the house by myself twooooo to three times a week, and only going to places that are super familiar -- making it as far as work is happening maybe twice a month?) and it turns out that A super did not want to watch it without being thoroughly spoiled by someone who is familiar with his twitches in this area, which as it turns out is Not Me because I... wasn't aware he had them until I was all "wanna go see this movie with me?"

Anyway.

He's currently up in the Lake District being idk a space orc or something, and I'm currently failing to remember how to make pasta (there is a lump of dough on the pastry board and I'm not thinking about it), so last night I watched The Dawn Wall & tonight I am curled up on the sofa with Free Solo, and in between I watched a bunch of related shorts.

(rydra_wong, my questions so far are approx (i) do people... memorise the sequence of moves for lengthy pitches? is it like bellringing? (ii) was KJ not interested in the Fitzroy Traverse? what is the politics of who you ask to go to a climb with you??? (iii) MOUNTAINS)

Herewith I flail as we go along, starting fifteen minutes into Free Solo. (Did you know that VLC now has Chromecast compatibility? I DIDN'T and I am pleased.)

I... okay I see what Rydra means about the Learning To Eat One Vegetable At A Time, and also I am a bit WHY ARE ALL THESE CHILDREN LIKE THIS in re eating an entire frying pan full of food off a spatula children whyyyyy

(I have a great deal of sympathy for I Really Hate Talking To Strangers So I Just... Didn't)

... a moderately successful dentist

... did... did he just O Hai

I mean that's certainly AN attitude to have to a girlfri-- oh NO don't FUCK UP YOUR BELAYING people you have ONE JOB a u g h

oh Tommy. oh Tommy and your Climbing With Alex Is Kinda A Vice.

(I'm also finding myself wondering, belatedly, if my baby brother's acquisition of "boom!" as an interjection is less to do with him being A Yoof Of Today and more to do with him getting into the climbing scene esp. in the Bristol area...)

I am also kind of charmed by the pointed shot of Alex taking both his hands off the wall to chalk them, utterly relaxed, juztaposed with Tommy falling off the wall

yes good glad you're all thinking hard about worst-case scenarios and decisions to film

"I haven't had anyone die who I was really really close to... yet" TOMMY WAS THAT POINTED. you did a little facial expression I SAW YOU

okay dude well it's nice you had a chute that you could deploy THIS TIME

... he is confused about whether he has depression

(gosh I'm enjoying all the looks at El Cap having been staring at a different angle on it for a lot of the last day or so)

(but I am not super into the shots of Sanni being a Less Good Climber)

okay well that was a much more interesting way to break an ankle than my baby brother managed. ... aND HE DIDN'T EVEN BREAK IT, wtf

whta . the actual. fuck. I. He is climbing a wall with an air boot on. What hte fuck what the fuck what the fuck. I SUPPOSE IT'S AN INDOOR WALL AND HE'S ROPED SO IT'S TAKING IT EASY EVEN IF HE'S SPENDING A BUNCH OF TIME JUST HANGING OFF ABOUT FOUR FINGERS

oh piss off stop blaming your girlfriend

... I'm very very very into his mother, you por poor woman (AT LEAST HE DOESN'T TELL YOU?????)

*snort* yes I have a lot of sympathy for the re overy stage that is managing to stand on one leg again

... oh my FUCKING-- good fucking grief, a one-month recovery period???

... HI ALL THE SMALL CHILDREN CARVING AN PUMPKIN oh no Fitz pulling a wee face about textures ... is that... a drill. is that a power drill.

HELLO PRACTISING HUGGING CHILD

... hello you have an enormous hang-up about "love" bless you

and also Oh Dear about Autistic People Don't Have Emotional Bonds

... but hurrah for realising that you'd fucked up parenting

... and also owwwwwwwwwwwww the fucked-up relationship with the parents, oh you poor child

... Tommy you are not good at an emotion

... oh good grief perfectionism

... HOW do you NOT UNDERSTAND people and their feelings this badly child why are you L I K E T H I S also I sincerely hope the people you're dating are women. "maybe that's a little too callous" good GRIEF

... "Teflon Corner" is not an... encouraging... name... for a pitch...

(I am curious about his assertion that He Doesn't TEll Anyone Before He Does A Solo given that... he clearly gets footage of at least some of them taken? by other people? but maybe actually we didn't see any footage of the others... but if people were all "lol no u didn't" about The Hostage Situation then I am Baffled that they would believe in an uncorroborated free solo??? I suppose he might mean "anyone but climbing buddies he trusts"...)

............ DOUBLE DYNO WHAT THE FUCK

okay no I am charmed by Sanni + Alex working on Skills Around Validation

... oh good grief free soloing up a waterfall

that's a beautiful shot of a rainbow, though

oooooooh enjoying the sunset-on-El-Cap shot

(nobody else is... going to try pulling this shit, right)

(just. holy shit. watching how often Caldwell and KJ fell on the Dawn Wall...)

"I wouldn't want to fall off in front of my friends 'cause that's... kinda messed up."

Heh. Discussion of Not Pushing It and HEre's Where I'm Gonna Die and Where The Cameras Will Be.

All their little faces focussing super hard on The Technical Aspect Of Getting The Shot to distract them.

"Oh, we'll see, we'll see--" that. sounds SO MUCH like my brother.

oh no the pointless funerary haircut

"I appreciate your concerns and I respect that" d-do you though

he's. he's not got any water or any food or anything has he.

("let's hope it's a low-gravity day")

A thing I am finding interesting in this vs The Dawn Wall: the amount that we're hearing the breathing

also good HE DOES EVER BAIL

... IT DOESN'T HAVE TO DRAG ON LONGER -- okay thank you interlocutor for telling him he could JUST NOT

"maybe I just suck" CHILD NO

... aRE THEY GETTING A HOUSE -- hi Sanni I have a great empathy for your furniture wrangling -- AND YOUR TAPE MEASURE we are Kindred Spirits [... oh god now they are have a fight]

"this is like, so adequate" IT COULD HAVE BEEN LIKE TWICE THE HEIGHT good grief

oh Sanni "I'm patient but I also have self-respect" GOOD FOR YOU -- "the most healthy and stable relationship I've ever had, certainly more communicative" rEALLY

... hi Aeropress loser nerds

"nobody achieves anything great coz they're happy and cosy" REALLY NOW

... he is brushing the mountain's teeth

(I have been enjoying watching the chalk smears all up the routes; it's deeply reminiscent of going up in the middle of nowhere in the Lakes and finding the spot lst year's geology students hammered)

"What made the big difference for me was that he did turn around last year" -- yes Ethics In Rock Climbing (Photo)Journalism

lol, hi fingerboard on the side of the transit

ye-ah-aaaaaaaah the I Have To Help Because He's Going To Do It Anyway

oh sweetheart you are quite justifiably convinced that he's going to die

I am really enjoying all the wildlife. And all the situating shots! The This Is Where We Took It From; the sense of joint endeavour and desperate hope.

(I definitely appreciate the sheer WTF of the downclimb section more having seen Dawn Wall first, and also... I... he... oh dear climbing Past People.)

good fucking grief did he pick a route with any fucking rest points I AM NOT ENJOYING THE TENSION MUSIC

OH GOD THE BOULDER PROBLEM WHAT IS HE GOING TO GO FOR OH GODS ABOVE

augh nobody is willing to watch I don't FUCKING blame them I'm deeply unhappy about it and I know!!! that he makes it!!!

OKAY NO THERE WAS A REST POINT also holy SHIT my hands are so unpleasantly sweaty and I'm just watching!!! I mea. It's a big screen but EVEN SO.

oooooh close-ups on the hands I am deeply interested in how they achieved that. Was this all still the remote cameras?

"I can't believe you guys are actually gonna watch" WELL GIVEN WHAT HE WAS JUST DOING WITH BENDING HIS KNEE BACK LIKE THAT I'M NOT THE FUCK SURPRISED YOU'RE SURPRISED AT THEM WATCHING HOLY SHITTTTTT

(I've been jumping every single time the radio boops go because WHAT IF THEY STARTLE HIM before I realise they're being played over and HE CAN'T HEAR THEM but it takes me a second every. time.)

I'm enjoying all his little asides to the remote cameras. Holy shit you guys I am so impressed by how well you're holding it together.

I think I am just reduced to "oh my genuine fuck" at this point, to be honest. THAT SURE LOOKS LIKE ONE HELL OF AN OVERHANG TO MY UNEDUCATED EYES.

THEIR RELIEF. THEIR JUBILANT RELIEF.

oooooooh is this sweeping zoom-out the slightly dodgy helicopter shot it is isn't it

... a smol hat

"I'm sort of at risk of crying too. I feel quite emotional. [...] I think the movie would be better if I bursrt into tears but I don't really want to."

"I love you. I appreciate you." AAAAAAAH

"I forgot my rope."

"A normal person would probably take the afternoon off."

"Good work not plummeting to your death! I'm really glad it's over!"

Gosh that is some feelings.

And b'loved? Yeah I'm pretty sure you were absolutely correct that you did not want to watch this. xx

Comments

[fyreharper]

Eeeeek yes I watched a short making-of bit about them trying to figure out whether filming Free Solo would make him more likely to die in the attempt and became rather convinced that ACTUALLY I DON’T NEED TO WATCH THAT and reading this is just confirming that decision o_o

[kaberett]

Ha, at least some of that discussion made it into the documentary, which... yes, good. <3

[davidgillon]

at the moment I'm managing to leave the house by myself twooooo to three times a week, and only going to places that are super familiar

I resemble this statement.

whta . the actual. fuck. I. He is climbing a wall with an air boot on.

Have you watched the shorts Rydra linked of Fran Brown? She's an incomplete quadriplegic and has to lift her feet onto a lot of the holds. Holy compromised arm strength, Batman!

[rydra_wong]

Replying here because you may both be interested:

whta . the actual. fuck. I. He is climbing a wall with an air boot on.

This is totally normal and standard climber behaviour. a) We are not good at taking time off climbing when injured, not good at all, and b) as numerous para climbers have established, you can do a lot of climbing without the standard complement of limbs available.

And even for the people who normally have the standard complement of limbs, it can be a good technique exercise to practice climbing without one (the legendary Johnny Dawes does a lot of one-handed and no-handed climbing).

This week I have been climbing without putting any weight on my left middle finger (because I tweaked the tendon and am trying not to annoy it while it heals), which means only being able to use my left hand in some unusual ways which wouldn't normally be my default ("guppying" holds by hooking the back of my hand round them, using "back two" -- little and ring finger -- on holds, doing strange pinches with my first finger and thumb). It's been fun and educational!

[kaberett]

I have not yet watched them but they are on the list! Today is nice weather so far, though, so my priority is getting out of the house and having a stab at levelling the ground for the greenhouse to go on...

[recessional]

. . .how on-brand is it that the bits of this that are making me not want to watch are the bits that are all about people apparently being bad at being humans to other people and saying stupid things, not the flail at the actual climbing?

(wait I may not have actually given you context as yet: this is my cousin. We grew up together. I am basically innoculated against visceral terror of someone else doing something Outrageously Dangerous unless I have an actual concrete reason to think they're going to die, which, knowing the outcome of the film and that he is not dead, would not apply.)

[rydra_wong]

. . .how on-brand is it that the bits of this that are making me not want to watch are the bits that are all about people apparently being bad at being humans to other people and saying stupid things, not the flail at the actual climbing?

Amusingly, this is also Alex's response to the film. The climbing at the end makes him all :D :D :D :D :D (apparently when doing post-screening Q&As he would sneak in at the end of the screening to watch the last bit of the film).

It's much of the film before that which he watches through his fingers cringing and going "oh no".

(ETA: It's also extremely on-brand for him that he seems to have gone "This is Important Feedback, I must Improve My Performance at Relationship-ing." As one of the directors said, Alex is all about Best Practices.)

I sent one friend a content advisory right after I saw it to warn him that there's stuff that will make him wince in recognition (as it did me), in the "oh shit I think that's what my failure mode sometimes looks like oh ouch" way.

[kaberett]

1. oh good grief re cousin, I am hear thinking about all the RNLI's desperate pleas to Not Do This Shit and wincing. :-p

2. and yeah people are indeed BAD AT HUMANS but they DO get Better at it! but there was a lot of CHILD NO. I'd have been much less okay with all of it if (i) rydra hadn't made v clear that He Gets Better and (ii) there hadn't been a bunch of really explicit "okay but I want you to validate me"-style feedback that he listened to and took on board and put into practice. But... yeah.

[rydra_wong]

rydra_wong, my questions so far are approx (i) do people... memorise the sequence of moves for lengthy pitches?

Yes, if it's something they've practised beforehand (which is generally the case for things at the cutting-edge of difficulty, or where failure would be dangerous). So extremely yes for the Dawn Wall and for Freerider (the route Alex solos).

Conversely, "onsight" means climbing something with no pre-knowledge of it (beyond the guidebook description of "this pitch follows this line"); you can't have practised the moves beforehand or watched anyone else climb it or had anyone else give you tips on it or "beta" (description of the sequence of moves).

is it like bellringing?

Don't know anything about bellringing so I don't know, but I imagine "memorizing an intricate sequence which you need to perform precisely"? If so, yes.

(ii) was KJ not interested in the Fitzroy Traverse?

Yeah, KJ was specifically solely interested in the Dawn Wall (also not into mountains). Conversely, Alex's take on the Dawn Wall was "No way, dude, that sounds heinous. Too much work."

what is the politics of who you ask to go to a climb with you???

Potentially emotionally-charged, but in practice it tends to work out surprisingly easily -- most people have multiple climbing partners and will climb with different people depending on who's free, who's interested in something, etc.. Situations where someone only climbs with a single other person for ages (like Beth and Tommy for a long period) are very unusual.

The thing which seems to get extremely fraught is Inviting People On Big High-Prestige Mountaineering Expeditions.

[kaberett]

Thank you for all of this. :D

Yes, if it's something they've practised beforehand (which is generally the case for things at the cutting-edge of difficulty, or where failure would be dangerous). So extremely yes for the Dawn Wall and for Freerider (the route Alex solos).

So KJ was in fact muttering to himself a memorised sequence of moves? And one of the things Honnold does is memorise shit to the point where it circles back around to being solid stable intuitive built-in knowledge rather than a thing he needs to consciously think about in the same way? (I think I am thinking about this by analogy to cooking: from a recipe, one step at a time, or in parallel with sufficient situational awareness & familiarity that the book is irrelevant & monitoring what needs to happen next doesn't even really take any conscious attention? I suppose I might use "driving" as an analogy except that I don't...)

Don't know anything about bellringing so I don't know, but I imagine "memorizing an intricate sequence which you need to perform precisely"? If so, yes.

Ha, yes. (In precise time with multiple other people, with big physical motions that might kill you if you fuck up. I have played in an orchestra without music and without a conductor! Bell-ringing... is a Whole Different Thing.)

Yeah, KJ was specifically solely interested in the Dawn Wall (also not into mountains). Conversely, Alex's take on the Dawn Wall was "No way, dude, that sounds heinous. Too much work."

*snort* :D

Potentially emotionally-charged, but in practice it tends to work out surprisingly easily -- most people have multiple climbing partners and will climb with different people depending on who's free, who's interested in something, etc.

Beth-and-Tommy: yeah I got the impression that was unusual! I just wasn't sure how unusual, and was specifically curious about how it shakes out for... well, Doing The First Ever [Ridiculous Thing] that... gets award-winning documentaries made about it...

... because from an external perspective that very much looks High Prestige, but of course external metrics are likely to be very different to intra-community ones.

The bit that hadn't occurred to me, quite, is that people can be... not... interested... in mountains? Because from my perspective "into mountains" is the baseline, but of course if the majority of the shit you do is bouldering that REALLY DOESN'T REQUIRE A MOUNTAIN let alone fuckin' glaciers, and my default here is a bit skew.

[rydra_wong]

rydra_wong, my questions so far are approx (i) do people... memorise the sequence of moves for lengthy pitches?

Also a lot of energy and work goes into working out the sequence of moves on very hard things, of course. Hence all the time spent trying different things and failing.

For an extreme example, see this little film about Adam Ondra's first ascent of Silence, the world's first 9c (and current hardest single-pitch route):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRTNHDd0gL8

(Content note for Adam Ondra's VERY LOUD SCREAMING when he climbs, ranging between pterodactyl and Godzilla noises, which can be startling if you are not expecting it.)

[kore]

is it like bellringing?
Don't know anything about bellringing so I don't know, but I imagine "memorizing an intricate sequence which you need to perform precisely"? If so, yes.

That does sound to me, again, like dancing and piano playing, which are the two examples I always fall back on, heh.

Yeah, KJ was specifically solely interested in the Dawn Wall (also not into mountains). Conversely, Alex's take on the Dawn Wall was "No way, dude, that sounds heinous. Too much work."

//chokes on tea

[rydra_wong]

oh NO don't FUCK UP YOUR BELAYING people you have ONE JOB a u g h

My ob!note about this, c-and-p-ed from my linkspam:

http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/articles/13201213878 -- Alex's accident report from when he got lowered off the end of the rope (it was widely publicized in climbing media at the time as a Lesson To Us All, anyone can fuck up, etc.). One of my few quibbles with the film is that they kind of give the impression this was Sanni's fault, which isn't really the case -- getting lowered off the end of a too-short rope is not a rare accident, and Alex's report correctly makes it clear that it was a collective fuck-up (this happened to Dave MacLeod too, and I don't recall anyone particularly blaming his belayer).

(Which makes it interesting when he has gets whiny about how it's all somehow her fault tht he's getting injured lately, because he wrote up the report very objectively.)

ETA: advance apologies for all the spamming of your comments I will be doing as the caffeine kicks in and I progressively wake up enough to reply coherently re: different things! Also thank you so much for writing this up, it is a delight and a joy to me!

[rydra_wong]

Also, okay to post a link to this post? I think people would appreciate.

[kaberett]

RIGHT so my immediate context is that my baby brother is (still, I think) recovering from a broken ankle last year after his belayer fucked up on... I think it was even an indoor wall rather than one of the cliffs around Bristol? And his belayer should absolutely not have fucked up in that instance (and the friend who was hanging out! and watching! who was an off-duty instructor! should ideally ALSO have noticed that shit was about to go down!)

So given that I was predisposed to accept the film's narrative about the belayer having fucked up, but it is Good To Know that -- it wasn't even "more complicated than that", just "that wasn't even what happened", and for my next step I will curl up with the accident report!

(I'm also quite impressed by Alex's apparent lack of self-awareness around the injuries around Sanni - like, it seems pretty obvious to me that at least some of the problem was probably that he was suddenly climbing a bunch of routes he Thought He Was Too Good For so he wasn't really paying attention...)

& you are v v v welcome re the write-up; your glee is a delight! no apologies for commentspam required -- I deliberately wrote this up so you could have another person to flail at! (And in that vein I'm quite glad I DID watch it at home rather than in a cinema, which 1. enables liveblogging and 2. enabled me to pause and skip back when I missed things or wanted to rewatch something to make sure I'd understood what was going on -- the section of Alex and Tommy going up Freerider where they SWAPPED SHIRT COLOURS between the interspersed climbing & interview segments was A DISASTER for me, as I'm sure you can imagine...)

[rydra_wong]

(I am curious about his assertion that He Doesn't TEll Anyone Before He Does A Solo given that... he clearly gets footage of at least some of them taken? by other people? but maybe actually we didn't see any footage of the others...

Yeah, a lot of film of his previous solos has been shot later, with him repeating certain bits for the cameras, rather than the original solo being filmed.

Everything in the film is footage of actual solos when it happened, though.

but if people were all "lol no u didn't" about The Hostage Situation then I am Baffled that they would believe in an uncorroborated free solo???

Yes, in an interview Jimmy described how when Alex first burst onto the scene and it was reported that he'd soloed something notable, he was sceptical and asked around, until he'd spoken to people he trusted who knew and had climbed with Alex and were like "no, this kid's totally legit, he did it."

There HAVE been cases in the climbing world when all someone's notable achievements are uncorroborated and there's a mysterious lack of evidence and they won't say who belayed them when they sent such-and-such sport route and everyone goes into Plucky Detective mode and it turns out to be a giant MsScribe-like wank.

[kaberett]

the wank sounds Glorious, oh my goodness

(I now have your Free Solo linkspam open in tabs and will be working slowly through it!)

[kore]

AHAHAHA THIS IS GREAT even though I haven't seen it yet! What did you think of Dawn Wall?

(I have been enjoying watching the chalk smears all up the routes; it's deeply reminiscent of going up in the middle of nowhere in the Lakes and finding the spot lst year's geology students hammered)

Aww, nice!

[kaberett]

I VERY MUCH ENJOYED DAWN WALL AND INTEND TO REWATCH IT TBH.

I think I fundamentally found TDW a more enjoyable watching experience than FS, for reasons I've flailed about a bit in comments, but -- ahahaha yes hello thank you for enjoy!

[me_and]

A super did not want to watch it without being thoroughly spoiled by someone who is familiar with his twitches in this area

I don't think anyone is familiar with my twitches in this area given it's not relevant to my life to approximately five-nines. I think my requirement was more about being thoroughly spoiled by someone who know me well rather than someone who knows my twitches in this area well.

But yeah I agree from those notes I suspect my not-enjoyment will significantly outweigh my enjoyment of the thing.

[kaberett]

*headbutt*

Regret misunderstood/misremember!

I did really love The Dawn Wall, though, which is the one that's all roped free climbing, so should you be willing to curl up and vaguely watch it with me I'd enjoy that. <3

[rydra_wong]

"A normal person would probably take the afternoon off."

But his training plan was fingerboarding every other day, and it was the other day!

[kaberett]

well I mean

you don't end up pulling this kind of ridiculous shit WITHOUT that kind of ridiculously obsessive and rigid dedication

[rydra_wong]

okay dude well it's nice you had a chute that you could deploy THIS TIME

Is that the shot of Dean Potter soloing with a chute?

... I'm very very very into his mother, you por poor woman (AT LEAST HE DOESN'T TELL YOU?????)

As an interesting complement to the film -- Alex takes his mum (who learned to climb in her retirement) up El Cap for her birthday:

https://www.climbing.com/people/el-cap-in-a-golden-day-alex-honnold-leads-his-mother-up-lurking-fear/

And you definitely see the methodical and driven way she pushes herself, and where he gets some of it from: "So I approached it like any other of the many challenges in my life -- I found out what was required, got the necessary gear, and set up a practice schedule. "

But also the relationship they clearly do have, and the way she's engaging with this thing which is most of his life.

and also Oh Dear about Autistic People Don't Have Emotional Bonds

And Alex obviously feels he did have an emotional bond with his dad.

This strikes me very much as one of those things where the undiagnosed-autistic parent isn't providing emotional connection in a way that works for the NT parent, but is absolutely connecting with the undiagnosed-autistic kid in a way that works for both of them.

(This is ... a thing I have observed, let's say.)

(nobody else is... going to try pulling this shit, right)

Nobody else is even THINKING of pulling this shit. It's hard to convey just how far ahead of anyone else Alex is when it comes to free-soloing.

You know how sometimes something is the Obvious Next Step (the four minute mile, the sub-two-hour marathon), and it's just a question of when it'll happen and who'll do it first?

Soloing El Cap is NOT like that.

(just. holy shit. watching how often Caldwell and KJ fell on the Dawn Wall...)

To be fair, the Dawn Wall is many grades harder than Freerider (5.14d vs. 5.12d).

On the other hand, while it's the easiest of the free routes on El Cap, Freerider is not chopped liver. Climbing it with a rope is still a notable achievement for most people.

he's. he's not got any water or any food or anything has he.

Apparently he pre-stashed water and snack at certain ledges along the route.

"this is like, so adequate" IT COULD HAVE BEEN LIKE TWICE THE HEIGHT good grief

I commend this Q&A to your attention for Chai's refrigerator-taunting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esF9MHGBD90

"nobody achieves anything great coz they're happy and cosy" REALLY NOW

He has officially changed his mind about this.

good fucking grief did he pick a route with any fucking rest points

No, lots of rest points. Except between some of the last hard pitches, which are normally done with hanging belays (where the belayer is sitting in their harness hanging from the anchor, because there's not a ledge to stand on). Obviously, no rope, no hanging belays to rest at. So he did have to run some pitches together without a break. But for most of the route, lots of rest points.

"I can't believe you guys are actually gonna watch"

MIIIIIIKEY. I love Mikey.

Jimmy Chin commented that, for most of the camera crew, at least they could only see their little segment of the route that they were in place to shoot. But poor Mikey was doing the long shots so he had to watch the whole thing. And he had to keep adjusting the camera so as to keep it tracking Alex, so he could only look away for little bits.

And also Mikey has led Freerider (with a rope), so he he knew the difficulties of the route better than anyone else except Tommy.

"I love you. I appreciate you." AAAAAAAH

And it doesn't sound like it's hard to say.

[kore]

As an interesting complement to the film -- Alex takes his mum (who learned to climb in her retirement) up El Cap for her birthday

Aww, OMG his mum, I had not seen that at all!

[rydra_wong]

Okay, I disapprove VEHEMENTLY of all April Fool's things that make any actual attempt to fool me, but this is charming:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/camping/accessories/introducing_the_latest_addition_to_the_alex_honnold_signature_series-11859

[kaberett]

... oh no :D

(bonus points: I have that exact model of spatula in blue not five feet from where I am currently sitting. they literally just stuck a decal on it. :D :D :D)