The monitor-sized block that almost swept me from the ridge of the Evolution Travers in the Sierra Nevada, California.
The monitor-sized block that almost swept me from the ridge of the Evolution Travers in the Sierra Nevada, California.
The panic that engulfed my friend who, climbing ropeless in the Wyoming’s Cirque of the Towers, had to compose herself to avoid being swallowed up by the gaping, exposed nothingness reaching for her ankles.
The giant rock block that I dislodged but managed to catch on my knees, which would have otherwise eviscerated the four climbers below me in Canada’s Bugaboo mountains.
There’s been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of free soloing, especially in light of the publicity of Alex Honnold’s scarcely believable free solo of El Cap in Yosemite.
Discussions among climbers traverse whether it should be done at all, given the obvious risks, and if so, how. This isn’t a treatise imploring you to go out and try it, but rather an exploration of the rationale.
Much of the public perception is misguided, casting free
