"The ground doesn't lie, and neither do the tendons and ligaments in your legs, or fine bones in your wrists and hands, or the plates of the skull ... or the spine. Heason laid on the ground in a state of shock, believing he'd “just get up and have another go.” Then, as time passed, he realized he'd broken both ankles, doing severe soft-tissue damage to one of them — damage that would take years to heal. “It hurt a bit,” says Heason. “But not as much as I'd have expected broken bones to.”
Michael Reardon and Matt Samet recount some tales of solo climbers hitting the ground at Climbing.com
Quite clear which side of the camp you sit on. There were more stories there than Reardon's slip off, yes I agree, a short pocketted wall at Malibu (was Malibu?) However: Romantic Warrior and others http://freesoloist.com/http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0512/features/adventurers_of_the_year.html 7. Michael Reardon Tackling the toughest routes—without a rope Last summer, the buzz in climbing circles was Michael Reardon's ascent of Romantic Warrior, in the California Needles near the Nevada line. Everything about the climb is challenging: From the base, you look up almost a thousand feet (305 meters), all vertical or overhanging granite. There is no warm-up; first pitch, you are into 5.10, an expert-level climb. By the fourth, it is an even harder 5.12, with the kind of exposure that makes nonclimbers feel weak simply looking at the photographs. The only break comes on the ninth and final pitch, a 5.9. For the sport's finest talents, Romantic Warrior is a long and hard day's climb, but Reardon, 35, a movie director from outside of Los Angeles, sent it in less than two hours—and he did it without a rope. Reardon is a free soloist, one of the very few who climb entirely without protection. Without it, of course, any mishap could be lethal. The unexpected wet spot on the rock, the unseen fracture that gives under pressure, the momentary loss of concentration after hours of intense focus—all fatal. The question, then—so obvious you want to scream it—is, Why? "You get so cluttered up with gear and tools that you lose the purity of the experience," Reardon says. "Climbing is all about going until you get too scared to go any farther, like when you were a kid climbing trees." After Romantic Warrior, Reardon attempted the Palisades Traverse, a 160-pitch route across 13 peaks in the eastern Sierra. Previously, a pair of climbers had done it in 12 days. Reardon did it in 22 hours. "People think I must have a death wish," Reardon says. "I don't. I have a wife and an 11-year-old girl." He explains, "There are just two kinds of relationships in this world, parasitic and reciprocal. I'm trying for a reciprocal relationship with the rock." And that explains everything . . . or does it?
I've just looked at that website - OS solos of Stanage Without Oxygen and Warm Love!!! Ha ha, that's funny. The guy doesn't have the ability to climb those routes, let-alone redpoint them. I've seen him climbing in person and unless it's a very elaborate trick, he doesn't have the required skills or conditions (I talked to him when he was here on his UK trip and it was baking hot).
WTF!!!!! There's even a photo of him OS soloing Neon Sunset at Froggatt - I presume he means Neon Dust?? Flippin' hell. Pull the other one. He struggles on 5c's and 6a's. This is worse than Si O'Connor. Where are some awesome photos of him actually on the cruxes of the routes?
I don't know the guy so I can comment about the rest of it, but that photo intrigued me too. I think Neon Dust is the seriously hard wall just left of Narcissus - and finishes at the Valkyrie traverse. The photo seems to be of the top pitch of Valkyrie, still not something I'd want to solo, but the caption does seem misleading.
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