I know you didn’t ask and probably don’t care, but free climbing and free soloing are different things. Free climbing uses a rope, but does not allow you to use artificial means to ascend, like pulling on gear you put on the wall. The gear is just there to arrest a fall.

Free soloing is where you climb without a rope. Free climbing uses a rope for safety, but upward mobility is hands and feet on wall. Aid climbing is where you climb by fixing gear to the wall and use it to ascend.

If you know what you’re doing, free climbing is pretty safe. Free soloing is not, but people do it successfully without their huge balls weighing them down.

As a side note, bouldering is also climbing without a rope, but you don’t climb high enough to make a fall fatal.

I did… that was the part about extracting value from a dying industry.

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