Alex Honnold

I would say, though, that the obvious visual dangers, like for a non-climber just watching free soloing, I think they generally misperceive all the dangers and risks involved.

You know, they just see it and they're like, that's crazy.

That's whatever, you know, and like whatever they're bringing to it is probably not the actual case.

Just because it's hard to visually tell what's challenging in climbing.

You know, you're like, that's a vertical wall.

But if it's like a nice crack going over a vertical wall, that's actually quite easy and secure climbing.

But then some of the other stuff, you know, if they're really small holds, you're trusting your feet.

I don't know.

I mean, it's just really hard to judge that stuff visually.

Like, you have to do it to experience it.

But I think that...

that honestly the whole perception of risk around free-soling is maybe slightly misperceived by people.

So with climbing in general, like if you go climbing with a rope, like if you're traditional climbing, like you're climbing with a rope and gear and you're going to climb half-dome, let's say, when you start climbing from the ground, you go some distance before you put your first piece of gear in because that's just kind of the nature of climbing.

You go for a ways and you put in some gear, you clip your rope into it, and then you're protected and then...

for whatever distance you're going, you're essentially free soloing to that point.

There's always risk involved in climbing because even if you have a rope on, depending how far you're going above your last piece of gear and what the terrain is like and whether or not the rock is good and all these other factors, you're more or less safe.

And so I think people look at free soloing as this binary.

If you don't have a rope, that's dangerous.

And you're kind of like, well...

Anytime you're climbing, there are dangers or there could be, and you're constantly evaluating those and trying to mitigate them.