Rock Climbing, Now with Enhanced Recklessness

Reader “Goophball” sent me this clip of a ridiculously fast free climb up the side of a cliff by Dan Osman. If that’s the sort of thing that would make you say to yourself, “I bet that idiot killed himself,” you’d be partially right. Osman did die in a climbing-related accident when his “rope failed while performing a controlled free-fall jump from the Leaning Tower rock formation in Yosemite National Park.” That’s right: having tired of climbing for thrills, Osman began throwing himself off the sides of mountains, relying on his ropes (and a series of custom pulleys and brakes) to stop him before he hit the ground. Then one day, the rope broke.

Osman was on the phone with his friends when he jumped.

Then, from an angle on the pillar he hadn’t tried before, he leapt. The heavy whisper of the wind through the phone lasted ten, 11, 12 seconds, past what Fritsch and Gambalie knew to be the limit of the rope. The phone went dead.

Terminal Velocity [Outside Magazine]