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It's Not A Free Solo, It's A Highball, DAD!

Climbing

Issue 154

OH. MY. GOD. Stop worrying! You and mom are such babies. I’m not going to “kill myself climbing without a rope” because that doesn’t even make sense. I’m a boulderer. You can’t boulder with a rope because then it wouldn’t be bouldering. Roped climbing is for losers: Do I look like I’d hangdog for an hour wearing orange pants and doing jazz hands so I can climb five more feet to the next bolt and then do it again? I know you saw Alex Honnold on 60 Minutes and suddenly you think you know everything about climbing. But, uh, actually? You don’t know anything. What I do is called HIGHBALL BOULDERING, not FREE SOLOING, and it’s completely different.

- Kevvie Corrigan

It's Not A Free Solo, It's A Highball, DAD!

First of all—if you weren’t so old, you’d already know this—free soloing happens on cliffs; highball bouldering happens on boulders. Do you seriously not know the difference? Let me make it easy for you: The fake rocks at Blackbeard’s Cave at the putt-putt near Ruby Tuesday are boulders. The gym where I learned to climb at Ryan’s birthday party is made of cliffs. If you fall off a cliff free soloing you die, but if you fall highball bouldering you just get super fucked up. It’s not even close to the same thing.

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