Buildering

While climbing rocks is cool some climbers like to take their skills to more urban settings and climb man made structures. This almost always illegal sport is called urban climbing or buildering because well... you climb buildings and such. Buildering was started or at least recognized and given a name by the famous British alpinist Geoffrey Winthrop Young in 1895 as a spoof of rock climbing(but we all know the Auditores have been climbing buildings for generations before this). He even wrote an unofficial guide for the underground sport while attending Cambridge. The new "sport" found it's way around different college campuses in England and became a nighttime activity for many students bored of monotonous college life.
     Oh... so you know that crazy scene in Mission impossible: Ghost Protocal where Mr. Cruise climbs part of the Burj Khalifa(tallest building in the world). Well the guy in the picture did it for real. His name is Alain Robert or more suitably "The French Spiderman". The way Alex Honnold is the face of climbing rocks Alain Robert is the face of climbing buildings. And like I said before buildering is almost always very illegal... and that's why Alain Robert has been jailed multiple times. But he keeps coming back to it, for good reason though. His latest notable climb was the Burj Khalifa which was done for the massive skyscraper's grand opening and was sponsored to draw attention to the new landmark. He was paid an incredible $18,000 to climb this behemoth

Alex "No Big Deal" Honnold

Alex Honnold is one crazy mother fool. He is without a doubt the greatest and in turn the craziest free soloer alive... key word alive. He dropped out of college while going for engineering, packed his belongings into the family van and took off to dedicate himself and his time to climbing. I told you he was crazy. He currently shares the record for the quickest speed run of Half Dome in Yosemite with a time of just over 2 hours, the usual time for an experienced climber is about 18 hours just to put things into perspective. Oh yeah, and he free soloed it, he  is the only one to do that by the way... EVER! 4,737 feet with no ropes or equipment other than climbing shoes and a bag of chalk. Alex is always so chill and climbs because love the sense of accomplishment and not the adrenaline rush most people do it for. He is incredibly calm in ever situation, that is part of the reason he is still alive and the reason he has the nickname Alex "No Big Deal" Honnold. An adrenaline rush while free soloing usually leads to panicking and panicking to falling. Seriously this guy has bigger balls than even Evil Knievel. Just watch this, watch this and tell me you're not impressed. "This is surreally cool"

Intro

Rock climbing is a sport like no other, it is as mentally demanding as it is physical. Only within the past one hundred years has the sport really been recognized as that... a sport. Although climbing has always been important as a means of travel and exploration only recently have people been crazy enough to do it for fun. The sport  has taken many forms since its birth; bouldering, aid climbing, free climbing, and free soloing are of the most common. bouldering involves climbing small routes without the use of any ropes and minimal safety gear. aid climbing uses ropes, harnesses, and weights to assist in the ascent, and is only intended for complete wusses as it is by far the safest and there is basically no change of injury. free climbing relies on the athletes own strength in the ascent, but still uses ropes to maintain safety, a second person is often used to belay or spot. And last, but last from least is free soloing which is by far the most difficult and respectable form of rock climbing. Free soloing uses no ropes or safety gear whatsoever the athlete relies solely on his or her own mental and physical skill, strength, and preparation. In free soloing a fall not over water almost always means certain death and dozens of free soloing's more notable athletes have met this fate. Free soloing due to it's extreme amount of awesome will be the main focus of this blog. Pictured: Alex Honnold free soloing the Half Dome at Yosemite .. I'll talk about him more later.