One of the best drives I’ve done is from Queenstown (on the lightning bolt lake) up the west coast to Greymouth (on the north west coast where the snowcaps stop, the plain there).
Beautiful scenery - you’d be driving (no speed limit, so you can concentrate on the bends) through rainforest one minute and then emerge onto a vast river delta with a giant wooden bridge, then back into forest, then out onto a plain with towering snowcapped mountains above you, then back into forest, then pop out at a beautiful beach.
Never experienced anything like it, it’s one of my favourite memories of my trip to NZ.
Sorry should clarify - the rainforest road was marked with this sign from the article.
So yes a maximum of 100, but due to the nature of the road there’s no way you could do over that without killing yourself. Most of the time, you’d only have time to get up to 60 (if that) before another blind bend.
It just felt nice not to have to worry about speed and focus on the road, because here in Australia they’d have a posted speed limit way too slow and a speed trap around each bend.
That’s one thing I noticed about NZ, during my first trip: the speed limits are generally sane. If anything, the rural speed limits have a genuine sense of reality to them.
In stark contrast, driving in Canada (Toronto area) and the US (Texas) most times I felt I could safely go faster, were it not for the constant threat of speed traps or random / stealth cruisers.
In NZ if you’re doing a long drive and you don’t heed the slower speed limits as you enter a bend in the road, you may have just fucked yourself. Especially if the roads have a layer of moisture, which is likely.
And the more built up areas have a decent amount of traffic calming, which is nice.
Toronto and really all of the GTA need a severe dose of NotJustBikes to get sorted.
Interviewer: Does having a family make it impossible to climb without fear entering your mind?
Alex: “Time will tell. It’s maybe possible, but it might be a challenge. I think it’s easier to free solo when you can tell yourself that your life doesn’t matter that much. You’re kind of like, “Well, I’m just doing my thing, and it’s my own choice.” And if you have any real acceptance that your life matters a lot to other people, then you are sort of like, “Well, you know, it’s sort of my responsibility to not squander that.”
On the other hand, with a lot of the hard free soloing, the whole point is to make it feel safe and relatively comfortable. To basically prepare enough that it doesn’t feel like you’re rolling the dice.
Actually, last fall I did a big soloing traverse in Red Rock, near my home in Las Vegas. It was a 32-hour soloing traverse by myself, climbing up over all the major peaks in Red Rock. I think to the average viewer, they’d be like, “Holy shit, he’s still soloing at a really high level.” But the reality is that, for me personally, that just doesn’t feel like extreme free soloing in the same way. It was kind of more akin to ultrarunning or like a giant endurance event or something. I was free soloing, but it’s a far cry from El Cap.”
**My thoughts:**While he is skilled he isn’t taking the natural environment in his equation. It might be a easypeasy climb like he mentions in the interview above. Sure, but the risk of Rockfall, high winds, adverse weather, unexpecited animals mid route, sudden noises etc. that scare you are still real. In Nevada where he climbs they have air force jets, if you get caught off guard during a climb things can get friggin’ dangerous.
Yeah I understand this doesn’t happen every day but once you have children I wouldn’t want to risk a single solo climb. It’s not required and he is climbing at a level he doesn’t have to prove anyone anything. He is rich and already extremely good. At this point it’s selfish and stupid. I don’t know normally I really don’t care but well I don’t think free soloing should be glorified and he is a person that younger people look up to. He is a person younger people SHOULDN’T look up to. Climbing without a rope shouldn’t look like they are better climbers than climbers with ropes. Especially because we have access to ropes, we have them for a reason.
Most climbs he solos are nothing and I’d say most of the climbs might go well but nature can screw him up. A fly lands on your nose and you get distracted - you die. Free solo equates with being totally alone on the rock, not being able to call anyone for help, and not being able to bail if things go wrong. You either go up, or you fall (and very probably, die). Another option might be climb back down, but… dunno why would you climb down if you already know the route and are confident?
That’s all it is. Nothing a man should risk once you have children.
There is risk in everything. Being an employee and relying on a business to provide you with money is risky, yet billions of men take that risk across their working lives.
If a man cannot risk anything to have a family, then there will never be any man who qualifies.
In fact many men work high risk jobs because they pay the most.
I think you misunderstood. What you mentioned are risks that have a payoff; some reason to do them, and sometimes that’s required. This doesn’t really. Maybe he makes slightly more money, but he really doesn’t need that even if that’s the case. It’s more like the risk of sticking a loaded gun in your mouth because you like the taste, not going to work because you need money to live.
How much would he make using ropes. I’m sure it’d be pretty damn close. Slightly more money means how much with ropes - how much without being fairly small. It’s not saying he’s not making a lot in general. That’d be stupid.
How much would he make using ropes. I’m sure it’d be pretty damn close.
I’m confident he would be just another climber and wouldn’t be world famous and wouldn’t be able to demand such high payment. He makes fat stacks because he is extraordinary, not because he’s doing what everyone else is doing.
Alex Honnold (born August 17, 1985) is an American rock climber best known for his free solo ascents of big walls. Honnold rose to worldwide fame in June 2017 when he became the first person to free solo a route on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park (via the 2,900-foot route Freerider at 5.13a, the first-ever at that grade),
I’m not saying in the past, nor is anyone else in this thread. We’re saying today, now that he has a family. He wouldn’t lose his fame because he started using safety gear. He’d still be extraordinary. He’d still be doing things no one else can. In fact, dealing with safety gear would add to the challenge. It’d remove some of the fear, but the climbs would be more challenging.
You forgot to mention that a sudden health problem will result in 100% death as well (like losing consciusness for whatever reason) in a free climbing context.
What if you do so without any protection that said training would recommend that you have?
You see - simply being knowledgeable about the risks doesn’t mean you aren’t being stupid. In fact knowing the risks and taking them anyway could be seen as more stupid than if you were simply ignorant.
Astronauts and engineers in the apollo program deeply understood the risks. Were they stupid for attempting increasingly complex orbital missions and even landing on the moon?
It was insanely risky, but they studied it, and understood it as best they could.
This dude is the world’s preeminent free climber, it’s safe to say he used protection when he was a novice climber, and it’s safe to say he has “NASA” levels of understanding of the risks he encounters on a wall.
Mitigating risk is achieved through deeply understanding the problem space, and putting in the training to demonstrate ability to operate within the workspace.
Edit if Alex tried to mitigate risk to 100% he’d never climb again…people die all the time while using protection. Things happen. Life happens.
Stupidity is blundering in without understanding the space. Ex “local man who has never climbed before takes up free climbing” is stupid.
NASA absolutely pared down safety “wants” left and right, they pioneered the technical risk analysis methods that resulted in the successes (and failures) of that program. It’s a fascinating read if you’re curious
Nah, there is no rational thought process that’s going to lead you to the conclusion that doing this is a good idea. That’s like saying playing Russian roulette is a good idea if you’re aware of the risks.
You are a kind person taking her in and taking care, she made a good choice staying. She looks somewhat older to me (10+) looking at her face. Ours is 17 now, kind to everyone and still in reasonable health, limbs are getting a bit stiff though.
That feature has always been annoying to me, even on phones. I always turn it off because "I" will control whether my screen rotates or not. Maybe sometimes I don't want it to rotate when I turn the phone (like when I'm viewing building plans at work and want to orient the screen with how I'm looking at the building I'm standing in).
Not sure how standard this is, but on Pixel phones the default is no auto rotation, but when the phone detects rotation it will display a tiny rotate button in the corner of the screen for just a few seconds. Best of both worlds IMO.
That rotate button is incredibly annoying. I turned off auto-rotate for a reason and the button obscures other information displayed in that corner of the screen. Wish I could turn the button off too.
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