Current Events > I wish I understood more about the sport of climbing to appreciate Adam Ondra

(+) Yeah! (+)

The jargon is basically impenetrable, the scaling system doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I don't even know what the hell is going on half the time, but when Alex Honnold (free solo guy) says "Adam is the best climber in the world by far. like, he's A LOT better than everyone else" it makes me wish I did understand the sport so that I could get it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6OvrRbGU68

From what I understand, this particular route is the sort of thing that the best climbers in the world will spend months studying and testing before they can do it, and he was able to do it first try having only watched another person go up it once.

That sort of comparison impresses me, but I still have no idea about how the sport works.

Just from the thumbnail, the dude's climbing a sheer face of a mountain barehanded at an angle that looks like it's bending out over open air, so I don't necessarily need to know the jargon to be impressed.

pegusus123456 posted...

Just from the thumbnail, the dude's climbing a sheer face of a mountain barehanded at an angle that looks like it's bending out over open air, so I don't necessarily need to know the jargon to be impressed.

I think I'm impressed by basically any top climber and I don't have the requisite technical knowledge to spot the difference between this guy and the next 100 guys, basically

Did you watch The Dawn Wall? That documentary about Tommy Caldwell? Thats my favorite climbing doc. If you keep watching climbers youll definitely start to see why Adam is considered to be a peerless genius in the sport. The way he makes decisions so quickly about holds in routes he is seeing from the climbers perspective for the first time, peoples brains just dont typically work like that. Another thing is that hes processing all of this new information while his body is under a massive physical strain similar to intense weightlifting. All the top climbers seem to be a really good window into just how cerebral and intellectually demanding rock climbing is as a sport.

Have you done rock climbing?

Like, not sarcastic, it's one of those things where experiencing it personally helps.

Anything with an incline like that is fucking torture. Shift back like that even a few degrees and suddenly you have to wedge in and hold on just to maintain position, let alone make progress.