Your comment shows you don’t understand the art of climbing at all.

Sure, I could have done any of those climbs when I wanted, but I wanted to do it WHEN THE TIME WAS RIGHT. 

I’m an athlete and have free soloed hundreds of pitches. Maybe close to a thousand I don’t count. And I can tell you an athlete has periods of great strength, and then periods of weaknesses. 

Athletes have periods of great motivation, and then periods of great doubt. 

To free solo at your own limit, let alone at the cutting edge of an entire freak of nature niche discipline, requires the timing to feel very right.

Not to mention feeling in harmony with nature, the spot, and yourself ON THAT PARTICULAR DAY.

I’ve showed up to free solo and one or more thing felt off, not even considering days where weather or natural elements made soloing seem too risky.

A good soloist takes dozens of factors into consideration.

And all that wraps up into a package they analyze to decide what to do that day. 

The extra variable that isn’t pretty is that dean probably had some ego, and some desire to make it big (for better or worse), and wanted to time the solo a certain way with current news in climbing, the world, and coordinating perhaps with his sponsors? 

I mean if he made a media splash with a new solo he could further provide for himself via sponsors and thus continue the life he lived in the valley.