I said, "You wouldn't get out of here alive."
We both dropped our tickets into Excellent. Next time I visited the movie had scored 98%. Phenomenal!
The movie is called Free Solo and it's a documentary about rock climbing. That's under-selling it. Better to say the ultimate rock-climbing movie.
In it a guy called Alex Honnold, arguably the best rock-climber in the world, ascends a desperately hard 3000 ft route on El Capitan, a magnificent cliff in Yosemite National Park. Along the way are four sections (especially Boulder Problem) that are very very hard even by El Cap's demanding standards. But they've all been climbed before so what's new?
Honnold does the route on his own, without another climber or the aid of a rope. Were he to fall it would be to his death.
The camera crew, all expert climbers, discuss what he's about to do in sombre tones. Honnold practices the four hard bits on a top rope and falls off Boulder Problem twice, saved by the rope. Then he goes ahead.
He does it. You know he's going to succeed because the camera crew say they would junk the film if he were to be killed. Yet the tension as you watch is unbearable. The cinema is dead quiet.
Excellent.
There is a superb film on Netflix called Valley Uprsing. It charts the history of climbing in Yosemite and includes a large part of the climb you refer to amongst many others, along with the now complicated access problems and infrastructure development of the Yosemite National Park. I'm not sure if you can find it elsewhere but if you can I strongly recommend.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: I am a regular visitor to YouTube with its updates on what's going on in Yosemite and elsewhere in the 8c/9c world. But free soloing at this level is something else beyond climbing. Only a few men do it and they're nearly all dead. While Honnold was preparing for his ascent came news one of the other free soloists - the German Ueli Steck (climbed Annapurno solo among other things) - had just died. Honnold and the camera team discussed Ueli, admitted he didn't plan things, took risks hoping things would go right on the day
ReplyDeleteOne of those free climbers on Yosemite I was watching packed a parachute and actually fell off and survived as seen in the film. I suppose the others would have called him a sissy.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: Yes, I saw the fall involving the parachute. But I'm not sure you've got the hang of free soloing. It's far from hairy-chested, no one's calling anyone a cissy. The mood is thoughtful and elegiac, it is after all a willing co-existence with death's possibility. I repeat: throughout the movie I was aware of the outcome and yet I was vicariously scared. The cinema was packed so I can't believe that everyone watching had a climbing background yet it seems we were all party to what was going on in Honnold's mind. I refer you to the score: 98%.
ReplyDeleteI've only seen bits of the film, but it's in my Netflix queue. (I know....I should see it on a large screen, and yes, I'm not going to.)I recall one photo of Honnold as he tops the rim onto level ground. Big smile. And I've heard him say that the climb was the high point of his life and spiritual experience. But I believe that on some level his smile was from realizing that his net worth had just been upped by a factor of 10's if not 100's. He's likeable on film, but in a sort of extra-human way. The way you'd admire a bird.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I'm not saying thoughts of gold didn't pass through his mind but another experience seems more likely. It happened to me albeit in less trying circumstance. A decade ago, as I walked away from the swimming pool on the first occasion I managed half a mile of continuous and properly controlled crawl I was overtaken by an entirely new sensation - as if Alka Seltzer had been added to my bloodstream. I fizzed like a firework. Mentioned it to VR and she explained: "It was the endorphins."
ReplyDeleteOne can imagine how wildly Honnold's endorphins were working when he finished the climb. There'd already been a hint of this when he moved smoothly through the Boulder Problem and then turned to smile at the distant camera. Having admitted during the preparations that he didn't do much smiling.
He was all smiles to the camera crew waiting on the rim. More smiles when he walked away and phoned his girlfriend who had been told to move out of the area during the climb. Then came the interview questions; still smiling except that things were starting to return to normal - and quite quickly. He was starting to think: the moment of triumph was great but transitory, what counted was the physical nature of the climb and that was now in the past, its uniqueness could not be re-created. His laconic style was returning.
During the preparation he admitted to being an oddball. That he could well have been diagnosed as having Aspergers as a child. My 31-year-old grandson who watched the movie said that one of Honnold's most impressive qualities was the way he compiled detailed notes which broke down the dynamic processes at difficult points into individual moves: Two fingers on left hand to shallow scoop, high left. Friction hold on vertical slab for sole of right foot. Climbing is a very serious process to Honnold, but he approaches it intellectually not impulsively. There's a mind as well as a body at work. That's why he's still alive while his pals are dead.
Untold wealth? Doubt it. Someone else will do an even more extreme feat and Honnold will slip into history. This isn't like basketball; most of the US population doesn't give a damn. Until very recently he slept on a Wal Mart threshold. Now he has a white van. He makes some money lecturing to kids at colleges but it isn't the Beatles at Shea Stadium.
I agree about extra-human. Fear of death is our most basic reaction. Somehow Honnold manages to compartmentalise that fear so that it doesn't affect his climbing. That isn't normal.