Ping!...............
I get the willies looking at images of them celebrating. I do not understand this. But it’s a free country, I guess. Look out below!
Here are the details:
He climbed real high, then he fell real far, then he went "splat!".
he now holds the descent record... or tied at least, posthumously of course.
I guess Jake Whisenant must have beat Alex Honnold’s record free climbing assent on El Capitan.
Sorry he died. It’s a dangerous business.
He’s now a Speed Faller.
Can’t work up any sympathy for this guy. IMHO, extreme rock climbers are supremely selfish. Especially the ones who also choose to marry and/or have children.
The fall didn’t kill him, but he stuck the landing.
Going up the mountain fast is hard.
Going down fast is easy.
Speed kills. As they say, he died doing what he loved. That is the flip side for people who engage in dangerous stunts--they get the admiration when they are successful, but if they fail and are killed, people are somehow shocked and horrified.
At 30 years old, it is a young life wasted. May he rest in peace and may the good Lord comfort his loved ones.
Tulare County = Mexico Del Norte
These people who go for record ascents have, from my experience, a supremacist, narcissist mind set. They will risk all to be the best, even though who cares.
No word on the state employees who were assigned to recover the body and bring it down to ground level.
They probably also had to risk their lives.
There are old climbers and there are bold climbers. But there are no old bold climbers.
It wasn’t enough to be engaged in a dangerous climbing sport so he had to be the fastest. Speed climbing is not a good combination. Mistakes and slips can happen and rock climbing is not forgiving. Well he died doing what he loved - being splattered apart upon the rocks.
“Yosemite speed climber who set record for scaling lethal El Capitan dies in Sierra Nevada accident”. I knew a guy from El Capitan, he trained his pig to bark at strangers.
The speed climber just experienced v = 32.2 X t
Too fast to last, sorry for him and his family.
Most of you are confusing speed climbing with free climbing. I can find nothing stating Whisenant was a free climber or was free climbing when he was killed.
Honnold remains the only climber ever to free climb El Cap solo and in a single attempt.
In fact, Honnold still is actively seeking new “firsts,” like seeking out the tallest rock faces on the world. Two years ago made the first recorded ascent of a sea cliff in Greenland called Ingmikortilaq that is 1500 feet taller than the nose of El Cap. But now he’s climbing roped/protected, and with a partner, a woman.
Ingmikortilaq is made of gneiss and granite and if you know anything about geology/petrology you know gneiss rots (relatively) quickly once it’s exposed to weather and the biggest danger on this climb was getting you skull caved in by a chink of rock the lead climber had dislodged. I round it refreshing watching Honnold work in an environment that didn’t make me want to suck the upholstery of my La-Z-Boy into my anal sphincter.