5 March 2019

Honnold's Free solo ignored truths?

Climbing has published an article on Facebook that quickly has created a debate in regards Honnold's free solo - "Uncomfortable Truths, But Ignored Others" "The film ignores two important things:" 1. The film crew created some motivation for Honnold to go for it. 2. The film crew made it more simple for him to bail out. I certainly do not think these two important things were ignored in the film. On the contrary, they dealt with it perfectly. However, even if they had been ignored, I do not see a problem with this. The only thing that I think was ignored was how big risk of death did Honnold face? When we judge how irresponsible Honnold was towards his family and friends, it only comes down to the risk of death. Of course, the risk can not be measured in percentage but I do think Honnold's risk for falling to the ground up on El Cap was much lower than the risk of death, the guys pushing themselves towards the top of K2 face. If this is true, we should question every person trying to summit K2 instead of saying Honnold and his film crew was irresponsible. 8a has had a policy to not publish free solo ascents except exceptional ones which have reached mainstream. In the early days of 8a, before this policy, we several times did receive emails where climbers asked if they would get a headline on 8a if they did a certain route free solo.
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