Alain Robert is Still Going Strong
Alain Robert is a French rock/urban climber, famous for his free solo climbs of skyscrapers (free solo climbs are done without any kind of ropes or protective equipment).
Alain Robert is a French rock/urban climber, famous for his free solo climbs of skyscrapers (free solo climbs are done without any kind of ropes or protective equipment).
The effect of the building’s windows adds a great touch to this performance, as the mirror effect seems to double the number of participants (and also provides a counter-motion to each performer).
In the makeshift sever room, which was more or less a back storage area. There were three PCs stacked on top of one another, all connected to a single monitor. There were also three separate keyboards hooked into the machines, and a single mouse. Who doesn’t love a puzzle?
“New to multi-pitch climbing, she needs to come to terms with the concept of the jumps. She falls four times in just one pitch, but it’s exactly as route-setters Simon Margon and Katja Vidmar have planned, putting challenging jumps in early on the course to get the pair accustomed to them.”
“The French explain it as L’Appel du Vide, or call of the void. Are they just French, or can the void really beckon you to kill yourself? New science on balance, fear, and cognition shows that the voice of the abyss is both real and powerful.”
Ten Meter Tower is a fascinating, short documentary about decision and doubt. A part of the New York Times’s Op-Docs, the project found 67 people from an online ad, who had never been on a 10-meter (33 feet) diving tower before.
I walked near another guy who was also looking up, and asked him if he knew what was going on (he didn’t). I explained that I saw all these folks staring up, but that I tried looking… and had no idea what they were all staring at.
“You can’t just be a good ice climber. You can’t just be good at altitude. You can’t just be a good rock climber. It’s defeated so many good climbers and maybe will defeat everybody for all time. Meru isn’t Everest. On Everest you can hire Sherpas to take most of the risks. This is a whole different kind of climbing.”
“Coming down… it’s like coming out of a cloud. You sort of come down it, and it just disappears and then you’re back on normal ground again. You think, ‘Jesus, what a different way of life down here than what it is up there.'”
It reminded me of the work skydivers will do, packing up their parachutes. All that equipment, and so much faith that it will take care of you high up in the air.
I’m afraid of falling down, and afraid of getting pulled up. I guess I’m just incredibly happy with things as they are.
Two adventurous lads (Vitaliy Raskalov and Vadim Makhorov) decided to climb Shanghai Tower – the second tallest building in the world.
Originally posted on the National Mall and Memorial Parks Facebook page, this helmet cam video shows a group of construction works setting up scaffolding high atop the Washington Monument.
Using images taken from the building’s public open-air observation deck, this interactive piece lets you explore both the sights and sounds of London (quite literally). It’s impressive how much you can actually zoom in on a small section and the details you can spot, particularly when you remember that all the images were taken from high atop the structure. Definitely explore around and get lost a while, here.
Yesterday morning, as I was sitting down at my desk in the morning… I noticed two guys, slowly lowering themselves on a scaffold across the way. The office where I work is on the 7th floor, and I pretty much got a straight-on view of these two guys.