The "Thank God Ledge" in Yosemite National Park, California

That's a nope for me, dawg.
- He’s got a harness on but it doesn’t look like it’s connected to anything.
  
  I don't think that's a harness I think it's a chalk bag. You can see the bag just behind his hand.
  
  This is a well known picture of Alex Honnold free-soloing the route. Free-soloing means he is climbing without a rope. He has a chalk bag on a belt, but no harness or rope. There is a documentary that features this called “Free Solo”, if you could imagine. It’s worth a watch if you don’t have anything pressing going on.

It’s Alex Honhold. He’s wired differently than most people. Definitely not tethered.
http://www.alexhonnold.com/
- Wired very differently. Free-climbing El Capitan is certified bonkers.
  
  It’s amazing to me that he’s still alive, and lives in Las Vegas with a wife and kids. Like somehow he has a “normal” life on top of his climbing insanity.

Fun fact, Alex said in an interview that this is a picture of him having a panic attack. Just shaking and desperately trying to keep calm as adrenaline pours through his system.
- Oh, this guy.
  Dude needs to keep his death wish to himself and maybe use some safety gear when he's on camera.
  Like, he's good; really good. But being good and being sensible are not exclusive.
  Unpopular opinion, I get it. I never understood free climbers, especially when I was playing outside (I was raised gymbo with no wish to be mangled and no illusions about my normie skill, and one of those things makes me need to see a safety line on that kid). Downvote away because apparently that's cool.
  
  I’ve got a hard time glorifying potentially deadly sports. Hang on, I know the next comment is gonna be about something like F1 racing or something, but even F1 goes to great lengths to protect the drivers as much as reasonably possible. It’d be like going back to car racing in open air, no crashworthiness, no helmet, no HALO, etc. to compare to free climbing like this. This guy dies and people will idolize someone playing with suicide. Don’t particularly care if he dies doing it for himself, but the attention he gets could be done without.
  
  Iirc, he was doing that up until about the moment that this photo was taken. He started soloing because he was too awkward to make friends at the crag. He gets really good at it, doing it purely out of an enjoyment of doing it - before this photo, he was living out of a van, basically jobless, no social media, just dedicated to climbing.
  Then the news of his solo ascent of half dome gets out, 60 Minutes does a piece on it, and gets this photo. Turns out a lot of people are captivated by the feat. Suddenly he has offers coming in from every direction to become a pro athlete, to endorse products, to do commercials, etc. So what does he do?
  He figures that if he was going to do the climb anyway, then he might as well have a camera pointed at him to get paid. This allows him to not have to work part time jobs, and climb full time. He starts really raking it in, and what does he do? He buys a slightly nicer van, then donates what he doesn't spend on his still very modest lifestyle to efforts to alleviate global poverty.
  Speaking about the potential influence he could have on others, he has noted that free solo rock climbing is typically a self-limiting experience. A random 14 year old might think they want to go free soloing - but every human has a natural self-preservation instinct that will kick in after you are about a dozen feet off the ground, and said 14 year old will quickly realize that what they are doing is a terrible idea. It takes years of practice and mental exposure to get to the point where free soloing even very easy routes isn't a completely paralyzing experience - at which point, we would say that such a person has sufficient experience to make their own decisions about the level of risk they are willing to take on. His point has been borne out - I have yet to hear about any people who have died soloing right after they watched Free Solo.
- Didn't know that he was able to have panic attacks at all. Something to do with his amygdala or something. Good to know that he's only human, I was deeply moved after watching him in Free Solo.
- Is it this picture or this ledge? I believe his half dome assent was scary because he wasn’t fully prepared. However this specific picture was taken afterwards.

The good thing about this is that you don't have to do this

When I say I'm not afraid of heights; what I really mean is that I'm not abnormally afraid of heights.
*bonus edit: the legendary Dan Osmond. Died not long after, when a rope snapped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCByLWtM7y4
- Misread:
  The legendary Dan Osmond who died not long after his rope snapped.
  
  Two meanings. Sharing a goal...
- The fatal jump
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY6YsM5Rh0Y

Why? Why would you do this?
And to quote Gwen on Galaxy Quest:
Well fuck that!
- I have a fear of heights, so this is terrifying to me. I also wonder why people do this.
  
  I have a fear of heights.
  I broke my ankle in a life altering way falling down two stairs unto a sidewalk. That, to me, justified my already reasonable fear of heights.
  I don't understand why this is the "Thank God" ledge rather than the "Oh My God!" or similar ledge.
  
  I'm very far from doing something like this, but I do have quite a bit of experience hiking/climbing in exposed terrain, so I can do my best: People usually start off enjoying relatively light hikes in the mountains, because it feels good to be hiking in cool terrain with awesome views. As you get more experience, what seemed scary a couple years ago doesn't look scary anymore. You like hiking, so you go for the hike, without thinking much about the fact that you thought it looked scary and dangerous a couple years ago.
  Keep repeating this cycle, and you might suddenly find yourself tied into a rope, with crampons, an ice pick, and skis on your back, on the top of some frozen mountain that looked insurmountable some years ago. It doesn't even feel scary, just really awesome.
  Add some brain damage (slight joke, but Alex Honnold does have a smaller "fear center" than most people), and you end up in situations like the one in the photo.
  My point is that it isn't really about adrenaline seeing like a lot of people think. It's about going for awesome hikes, and your limits for what you feel safe doing shifting over time as you gain experience.
- "Well ~~fuck~~ screw that!"
  
  Is my memory failing me and she actually did say "fuck that" and they dubbed it over with "screw that"?
- Never give up, never surrender!

What a nice place to relax and have a cool refreshing glass of NOPE.

Remember kids, it's not the fall that kills you...it's the sudden stop at the end.
- Just completely miss the ground and you'll be fine, duh
  
  Today I fell off a ledge into orbit.
  
  True, good luck breathing
- That and all the bouncing off the rock face on the way down.

/c/majorlyterrifying

Just by looking at this I have a panic attack. Fuck this shit.
- Same. Yikes.

Imagine standing there and then suddenly that slab under your feet shifts.

Just looking at this picture makes my hands sweaty
- It makes my feet tingly.

I can imagine myself on that ledge and being the one person where after thousands of years of being perfectly fine, the ledge finally decided to give way and separate from the cliff.
- Geologic time includes now.
- As a Pyr of science you should test your hypothesis and publish your findings

Imagine sneezing

"Thank God Ledge" is an iconic feature on the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. This narrow granite ledge, approximately 35 feet long, varies in width from about 5 to 12 inches and is situated roughly 1,800 feet above the valley floor.

"Because it's there" is not sufficiant reason for climbing a mountain.
- It's a good enough reason for me.
- Row, row, row your boat?

On a scale of "1 to NOPE" I rate this an "absolutely the fuck not, what is wrong with you?"

Thank God I'm not stupid enough to do this LOL.

Reminds me of the Via Ferrata in Switzerland. It really gets the blood pumping and gives you a massive adrenaline rush, as your feet are walking on tiny metal bolts driven into a sheer cliff. You can see all the way down to the valley floor from between your toes :3
- There's more than one via ferrata.
  
  They are all super cool :)
- Yeah, nope. That sounds utterly terrifying.
- It looks like you get clipped in so it's probably safe
  
  It is! It's mostly just psychological, but it's a fun traverse.

It's not as bad as it looks, the photo is at an angle. Look at the horizon or the trees. The actual ledge leans back

Is it really as steep as shown in the picture? The trees seem to lean a little bit to the left.
Either way. Hell no.
- It's the sheer face of half dome. It may not be exactly 90° upright but it basically is.
- Oh you're right. If I tilt my laptop so that the horizon is flat, it's not as steep. (but still.. too steep for me.)
  
  See the pic somebody else linked. The horizon is not flat in that area :)