this post was submitted on 06 May 2025
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Mildly Interesting
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I understand, hey go climb a big rock. cool.
i don't understand doing it without a basic life line attached to you to ...ya know, prevent .... rapid inertia.
Is the rope hanging off him not a life line?
~~I see no rope.~~
Better picture given in another post shows a fall rope plain as day.
Yellow line from his butt.
I'd also have a yellow line coming from my butt in this scenario.
Someone else posted a better pic, definitely looks like a fall rope tied to something. The OP Pic is potatoes and you can only discern a line that could be natural crack.
Honestly, I'm not sure. I actually didn't even notice it until you said something. It blends in very well. Looks like it only goes below him but I don't see an anchor point and you really don't want them too far apart. The more distance between them, then more force it's got to hold if you fall.
I'm not sure what else you'd use a rope for here. Just saying it's also weird to not see an anchor point since it looks looks to be over 10ft of rope we can see.
He's barely above the last bolt in the picture. There's a quickdraw sticking out by his lower heel.
Also the forces involved in a climbing fall are partly mitigated by the stretch of the rope, and the belayer will soften the catch by jumping as the climber falls. The length of a fall has little impact on the forces experienced by the climber or the gear in a typical climbing fall.
There's an anchor right below his feet but it's hard to make out in this copy of the photo because of the lack of pixels.
Either way I still think he's crazy, I couldn't get 10 feet off the ground without having a panic attack.
Multi story buildings must be your kryptonite.
This is a normal human reaction.
But then you do it a few times and you get used to it.
My guess is it's a tow line for something. Notice how the rope is taught (would not be the case if it were an anchor, he'd have to ditch the anchor and use a new one if that were the case)
Though again it would be weird to have whatever you're "towing" that far below you, considering the longer the rope, the stronger the pendulum when wind starts to blow your gear around..
Look up thread. Better pic posted shows it is clearly his lead line, and he has a bolt at his feet. The rope looks tight because it has friction from running through the pieces below, and because the rope has weight of its own pulling it down.
According to the article it was free solo.
The article is wrong. You can clearly see Adams lead line in the picture in the article.
Adam on The Dawn Wall was super impressive - iirc, he sent the route in a single ground-up push or something like that, when it took Tommy, like, 8 years to establish the route. But he def didn't solo it.
Source: rock climber for 10 years, going to climb in The Valley later this week.
This is wrong, he free climbed the dawn wall but definitely did not free solo it. Every photo from that article shows him climbing with ropes and google more into it he definitely didn't free solo that face of El Cap.
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