Alex Honnold

So I think that's the big misperception because easy free soloing is probably like if I'm somebody, you know, who's like an expert rock climber or whatever, I've been climbing 30 years.

If I'm on an easy free solo, that's almost certainly safer than a very hard, certain types of hard climbing with a rope on.

You know, and most of my scariest experiences as a climber actually have been with a rope on because with a rope, you're much more willing to push yourself into unknown terrain because you're kind of like, surely there'll be something good just around the corner.

And so you keep going around the corner and you keep not getting good gear and you're like, holy shit, it's getting scarier and scarier.

Are we allowed to curse?

Yeah.

Yeah, perfect.

Yeah.

But so a lot of my scariest experiences have been with a rope on because you're kind of like, I'm sure it'll get better.

I'm sure it'll get better.

And it keeps getting worse and worse.

And then pretty soon you're in some position where you're definitely going to die if you fall.

But you never would have climbed into that position if you didn't have a rope on because you're just so much more conservative when you're ropeless.

And when you're ropeless, you're kind of like if something seems wrong, you just go down, you know, because you're just not going to push that far.

I mean, that's an example of pushing really freaking far with a rope on.

It's like because you have a rope, you're willing to just keep pushing into the unknown.

But then you wind up in a position where you're like, this is pretty freaking extreme.

I mean, you saw the film.

It's all totally insane.

Like, yeah, it's true that most places if you fall off, you're going to die.