Free Climb
After 19 days of free climbing two young climbers seemingly do the impossible. Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson free climb to the summit of the 3,000-foot rock known as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. This was the first time a free ascent of the notoriously difficult section called the Dawn Wall had been achieved. By any steps of the imagination this was an incredible feat. One part of the free climb took 11 attempts to achieve. They had to wait for their fingers to heal after sheering the skin off their fingers trying to find a hold on the rock.
They slept in small tent platforms secured to the rock secured by a rope tethered to the rock wall. The nerve and courage to make this climb must be incredible. To sleep on a cliff face in the wind and rain, without thinking you are going to fall off must take a confidence and belief in your kit and ability that most of us never experience. Dicing with life and death must guve an incredible feeling of being alive. We admire this kind of achievement. The tenacity, the focus and drive needed to make this free climb has a simplicity and purity that most of us cannot attain in our evryday lives. The mundaneness of life is complex, messy, and unclear.
An alternative opinion is that these guys are nuts. Why would they do something like this? Why would they risk their lives on something so meaningless and empty? Are thw cut off from feeling? What’s the point? To be loved and admired? To satisfy the ego? Life is so boring that it has to be pumped up to such extreme limits? Is it an addiction to danger? Then what about the comedown? How long would the adrenalin trip last? How long before the next free climb? How long before they die?
Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique.