By comparison, I tend to consider a brisk walk too much exercise.
Hmmm...actually, that's very unlike many of the developers I know... ;-)
add to it very friendly community, possibility to focus on anything from 2m boulder problem to few thousand metres of altitude difference alpinism depending on your current wishes, and I am not surprised.
there are tons of great sports out there, tried many (but far from all!) but this one just works for me personally best (+ ski touring in winter).
Mmmm, my experience was quite different. I found it very click-ish and there was never a shortage of people saying "you're doing it wrong" based entirely on an incomplete observation from an obstructed vantage, technical differences of opinion or merely vanilla brow-beaters. If lots of testosterone(not exclusively) and competition is what you're after, then my point doesn't apply to you. This does not imply all climbers, but enough times I opted to avoid established routes and crowds. To each their own.
Been exploring remote canyons & game trails solo for 25 years, I find the experience of discovery on 3s and 4s more satisfying than conquering 5+s for the nth time.
edit; addwd an "If"
I climb, many of my climbing partners are developers, including a few who recently climbed in Yosemite. It's engaging and fun. If you've got a climbing gym around, you should check it out!
On most business trips I have always pair of my climbing shoes and first lookup in a new city is for climbing gym :-)
Amazing feat!
PS: Would be happy to take anyone else's recommendations for videos or books too.
https://video.aktualne.cz/dvtv/mam-lezecky-mozek-sedi-mi-div...
For English speakers I would recommend "La Dura Complete: The Hardest Rock Climb In The World" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1P97VVt6_k)
I just finished Alex Honnold's book (Alone on the Wall) and it's a fun read. Gives you a bit of backstory to the media frenzy that surrounds him at times.
In terms of videos, the Reel Rock film tour is amazing. They cover some really awesome climbs. And "Meru" is on Amazon Prime Video in a lot of countries (a short version was in Reel Rock one or two years ago).
edu marin from spain is also very good climber, I've found mostly shorter videos for all of these.
IMO, as someone who has climbed in the Valley for more than 25 years and has always been a traditionalist, drilled bolts have there place in climbing. It would be hard to convince me that bolts on El Cap or any where else in the Valley have 'ruined' the massif.
You might be interested in the ascent of "Wings of Steel" which originally took Mark Smith and Richard Jensen 39 days, later also completed by Ammon McNeely and Kait Barber. The first ascent team had to deal with a lot of problems too. Not only less modern gear, but open and dangerous hostility from some of the local climbing community.
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/assault_on_el_capitan
http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/el-caps-hardest-wings-o...
http://gripped.com/news/dec-16-2011-top-climber-confesses-to...
Most bolts are placed by local climbers, and it's widely recognised that there is an "ethical" aspect to bolting: whether they should be fitted, where they should be fitted, etc. If someone came along and indiscriminately bolted a route, without any consultation with the local community, it would provoke an outcry.
Generally, bolts are fitted by a climber on an abseil rope. They'll reach the top using an alternative, easy route (at many crags, you can reach the top simply by hiking along a path), then abseil down, and drill/fit the bolts whilst attached to an abseiling rope.
Installing bolts whilst lead-climbing is done, but it's not very common. The climber would start by securing themselves to the cliff using traditional 'lead protection' (which is designed to be temporary, and generally not as secure as a bolt). Once secured, they would drill and fit the bolt.
Who: Aside from Yosemite, the answer is "it depends", a lot of these are just set up by enterprising enthusiasts, often technically illegally, but few care enough to bother them.
In some parks & locations they're set up by whoever manages the park / owns the area to attract climbers & the business that comes with it.
Some people in the mountaineering / climbing community don't like them since they leave a permanent trace ("take only photos, leave only footprints"), and prefer to use removable versions of these for just the duration of the climb.
The Dawn Wall has been a significant battleground in this war. The first ascent was made by Harding and Caldwell in 1970 using bolts and significant aid climbing; A year later, Royal Robbins made the second ascent, chopping off the bolts as he went.
If you think it isn't sporting, just do the route solo free so you don't have any impact on the rock at all. /elitist /maybe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fANAk7UC6rg&feature=youtu.be...
So for such climbing do they use earlier runs to put the rings (whatever they are call) for the safety lines during the actual climb?
http://www.rockandice.com/dawn-wall-el-cap-yosemite-topo
EDIT: I should note that this image is the route that a different pair of climbers took last year. I’m not sure if Adam followed the same route or not.
They're both the best at what they do, but they do different things, and I don't think either of them could do what the other does.
http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/races-sports/alex-honno...
> People just assume I must be some great climber but I'm like, 'yeah but this is even harder than anything I've done.' It's really, really hard. The holds are just a little bit smaller and [a] little bit further apart.
You can check out the topos for each climb. This is the nose (http://www.supertopo.com/topos/yosemite/thenose.pdf [p15-16]), and you can see, with just a few exceptions, most of the pitches are graded 5.10 or easier.
This is the Dawn Wall (http://www.rockandice.com/dawn-wall-el-cap-yosemite-topo). It's much, much harder, particularly when you realize that the Yosemite Decimal System progresses like the Richter scale, in the sense that a step from 5.13a to 5.13b (an increase of 1 grade unit) is leaps and bounds harder to achieve than improving from, say, 5.8 to 5.9.
Please refrain, Thx
Your second link mentioning problem solving is interesting. But overall I think the comparison is a little stretched.
As always when someone asks such questions (including when I asked one a week or so ago), the answer is that this is a site for news of interest to hackers, not necessarily news about hacking. If you want to judge whether this is of interest to hackers, then just look at the lively activity of the rest of the thread; it compares quite favourably to even some quieter front-page discussions.
Still, the livelyhood of the thread is not much of a factor in my opinion.
Though rock-climbing is in itself interesting (maybe more than average to devs) it has no direct link to being a hacker/dev.
It borders on 'lifestyle' kind of content.
That said, this is a pretty descriptive article describing what happened in a way accessible to fairly general audience. I particularly liked the comparison "it's akin to Usain Bolt also being the fastest marathoner alive. That’s the hold Ondra has on climbing." It's incredible to imagine how far this guy might push the sport, given everything he has already accomplished at such a young age.
If you look at a photo of Adam on one of his 9b's [1], it looks like a guy having a really hard time in a really steep place, but there are holds there. You see things that seem like a fella could hang from them.
Compare to the photo in the article, with its dead vertical, mile-high flat granite surface that's, well, kinda bumpy. There is nowhere in that image that the layman could picture himself existing for even a second before falling off.
It's a shame, in a way, that we sort of climbed off the top of the feasible difficulty for this style of route back in the '90s and had to turn to steeper, longer routes. You just don't get the captivating photos like you used to these days.
[1] https://www.8a.nu/images/news/large/636002137114161240_13320...
layman can see me climbing some easy overhang in the gym (say 5c) in amazement, but it's basically a series of pullups with some stamina required (yeah, I am not a very good climber). on real rock with similar surface angle, or on some proper route I wouldn't last there for 2 seconds
I have such immense respect and awe for those people that can climb such a flat surface. You really realise the insane grip strength and stamina they must have to be able to actually not fall off, let alone climb up.
I am quite happy with my positive holds on a flat surface and indoors though. Youtube bouldering world championships for some insane athletes!
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=cs&tl=en&js=y&prev...
Google translate learnt Czech from people from Prague :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR1jwwagtaQ&feature=youtu.be...
The whole video is pretty interesting, but may make your hands sweat even more.
