Alex Honnold

You know, when you're, like, standing on a little ledge and it's bulging and you're looking down, you know, it's easy to be like, oh, my God.

You know, it's like if you just bend forward a little bit, you're just going to take a swan dive like 70, 100 feet to the ground.

Safer than you would think.

Everyone thinks it seems crazy, but it's not that crazy.

I don't know actual statistics, but I suspect that it's actually pretty comparable to skiing or something.

You know, because like recreational skiers die all the time, like falling in tree wells or like going off cliff spikes and things like that.

Climbing is actually surprisingly safe, which is one of the things I love about climbing.

I mean, climbing is very, it's very sort of binary where it's like either you're totally safe or you're going to die.

And the odds of you dying are very, very, very small.

But because they're there, they always keep you on.

You know what I mean?

Like it basically keeps you alert, but you're never really going to get hurt.

Yeah, I mean, for the most part.

I mean, a couple people have died free soloing.

I mean, people occasionally die free soloing, for sure.

But actually, most of the sort of cutting-edge free soloists have not died soloing.

They've, like, died in other things.

I think it was in the documentary on Netflix, Free Solo, where one of your colleagues... Yeah, Tommy is like, most free soloists are dead now, which is kind of true, but it's slightly misstated.

I mean, you know, he's just, like, speaking off the cuff, and it's not, like, strictly true.

Like a couple of the best free solos have died free soloing, though they died on very easy terrain.