16 February 2019

K2 is much more dangerous than Honnold's Free Solo

National Geographic has presented some more insights in regards Alex Honnold's Free Solo of the 950 meters Freerider 7c in Yosemite. It turns out that he had practiced the boulder crux, midways up, >60 times. "One move on the most difficult section required him to cling to a pea-size nub while “karate kicking” one leg to reach a toehold." The Freeblast slabs he practiced >90 times and the Enduro corner >40 times. This just underlines the strong message in the movie that Alex is not a lunatic but instead he had rehearsed so much so the risk was very low. In practice, the boulder crux was probably 7A+ meaning for him it was just more or less a technical and mental difficulty and the same goes for the Freeblast slab. Alex has 961 climbs recorded in his scorecard out of which two 8A+' as well as three 8c+'. (His next climbing goal is to do 9a). So his safety margin doing 7c pitches and one 7A+ boulder was probably very big. In reality, the best estimation how dangerous it was might be to say that if he had done it 100 times, he had fallen to the ground once. This 1 % risk of death could be compared with trying to summit K2 with a much higher probability to die. So the million of movie viewers should instead think about how much dangerous it is to summit K2. "About one person dies on the mountain for every four who reach the summit."
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