Will Stanhope on Big Walls and Soloing
Stanhope, one of the sport’s best, was sidelined by injury and loss. Now he’s back on the rock again.
Autumn, 30 minutes west of Yosemite Valley: Will Stanhope and Wilson Cutbirth weave down the hillside, poison oak brushing against their arms and plumes of white dust kicking off behind their flip-flops. They’re headed to the Octagon swimming hole, a local getaway, to escape the harsh California heat and take a rest day from the 30-pitch 5.13d Pre-muir route on El Cap. Things aren’t going well after six weeks on the project, making them question if this is the route for them. Despite their best efforts, both climbers are still unable to do the route’s stemming crux.
Stanhope, age 33 – a climber since he was nine – is one of the world’s top trad climbers, soloists and runout face climbers. Over 24 years on the rock, he’s pushed his boundaries, with solo highlights including Zombie Roof 5.12d and Zap Crack 5.12d in Squamish and, and Separate Reality 5.11d in Yosemite. “For those hard solos, I wait years. I keep those on the shelf until I feel a hundred per cent locked in,” he says. In those years he’s also had to climb back after injury.
But after talking with him, it’s obvious he’s struggling with more than just the difficult climbing and getting over past physical injuries. He’s lost friends in accidents – some recently – and he’s still reeling from the emotional pain. The losses are tallying up, and at times he’s found it hard to cope. He tells me as we crack our beers, “For a while, I felt like the world was passing me by and I had zero ambition.”
Career Highlights
While swapping leads with Alex Honnold in 2010, Stanhope got the third ascent of the runout 5.12d Southern Belle on the smooth south face of Half Dome. Stanhope wrote on his blog, “There we were adrift in a sea of open slabs, tick-tacking our way to the bolts, trying to make good decisions. I was concentrating really hard, and don’t remember much. Dean Potter told me it was the only route that made him feel nauseous from the runouts. I can relate.”
His 5.14 trad ascents include Cobra Crack 5.14a/b and the ffa of the Tom Egan Memorial route in the Bugaboos, a 14-pitch 5.14b, which is one of the hardest alpine climbs in North America.
In 2017, partnering with Leo Houlding, he linked three huge routes on the Howser Towers in the Bugaboos in a day, covering 60 guidebook pitches up to 5.12+ in 23 hours 36 minutes. “In the end, it was a perfect project: within reach, but barely,” Stanhope wrote in the American Alpine Journal.
Over four trips to Argentine Patagonia he’s summitted seven towers. Most recently, in 2019, he climbed Cerro Stanhardt with Jesse Huey, via Festerville a 550-metre 5.11 WI5. Before this, he’d only climbed rock routes in the area and Festerville opened his eyes to frozen Patagonia. “It took me into a new realm of the unknown. It was the craziest place I’ve been to; you have this deep feeling that humans aren’t supposed be there,” Stanhope says of the enormous towers covered in rime ice and hoar frost that he says resemble a white Dr. Seuss landscape.
Losing his Friends
Over the years of gains, Stanhope has had losses as well: his friend David Nykyforuk, one of Stanhope’s first climbing partners died in 2013; Hayden Kennedy committed suicide in 2017 after surviving the avalanche that killed his girlfriend, Inge Perkins. “Hayden’s death rocked me hard and I’m still dealing with it, to be honest,” he says. Stanhope’s climbing partner Marc-andré Leclerc (M.A.) and Ryan Johnson died during their descent in Alaska’s Mendenhall Towers in 2018. “So many of the heavy hitters have been taken out in recent history. It’s really sobering. It cooked my motivation for a while. I miss their energy and curiosity and their counter-culture vibe. I miss their maverick attitude.”
The Pre-muir
Taking a swig from his 32-ounce Mexican lager, Stanhope tells a story from the day before, about how he and Cutbirth rapped El Cap top to bottom, swinging into anchors for hard-aid routes parallel to the Pre-muir. Thin pitons and tiny copperheads protect the cracks on these routes, and since the two weren’t carrying a hammer, they knew they would be unable to ascend if they needed to. Up there, with a light rack and two ropes, a rope hang-up or any mistake would be epic. “Rapping next to the Muir wall was not safe,” Stanhope says. If he makes it up the Pre-muir, this will be his fifth El Cap free route. Freed in 2007 by Justen Sjong and Rob Miller, the Pre-muir is on the must-do list for the world’s best big wall free climbers.
At the Octagon, Stanhope takes a breath and steps off the edge of the waterfall and drops five metres into the cool water below. I jump in after him and we swim to shore.
Early Days
Stanhope started climbing with his dad, Rob Stanhope, and his dad’s friend Brad Forster, who’d read in Playboy that climbing was a great way for men over 40 to get fit. The sport quickly consumed Stanhope’s life and he became a regular at North Vancouver’s Edge Climbing Centre (now Climb Base5), where he met his longtime partners Jason Kruk, David Currie and David Nykyforuk. After taking a weekend-long how to lead climb course from guides Andrew Wilson and Graeme Taylor, Stanhope and his friends applied their new knowledge to increasingly demanding routes in Squamish, away from any adults.
There were days when he got in over his head on free solos, including the 5.11b The Horrors of Ivan, which “freaked me out the first time I did it. I’ve since done it dozens of times,” Stanhope says. Other times, when climbing with a rope, he’d find himself in the no-fall territory on severely runout slabs. “Going for it above your gear is what we did. That’s how we cut our teeth, on these totally forgotten routes. When I was a kid, the classic runout lines are what people would write stories about. You felt obliged to do them. Routes like the White Lightning 5.10cr, seven pitches, they’re ingrained in your memory forever.”
By his early teens, climbing became an all-encompassing part of Stanhope’s life. He’d do anything to get a ride to Squamish, 45 minutes north of his hometown, including taking his dad’s car without asking. While Stanhope was a senior in high school, he and Kruk, a year younger, dashed up to climb the “scruffy Squamish Astroman,” Stanhope says of the six-pitch 5.12a Northern Lights. But, finding themselves in over their head, they ended up taking all day. The two took numerous falls and as they got higher, their arms started cramping. “The route was way harder than we expected, and we got back well after dark,” Stanhope says. “Jason’s mom showed up in the parking lot around dusk, and Jason was carted off back to North Vancouver like an inmate. He was grounded.”
In his late teens, Stanhope became a nature guide at a tourist trap. Stanhope wrote on his blog, “while most of my friends were struggling with a wheelbarrow load of gravel landscaping, I had landed perhaps the most relaxing summer job in North Vancouver: ‘Nature Guide’ at the Capilano Suspension Bridge. In between eating ice cream underneath the bridge, I perused the park in an oldtime fisherman’s outfit, pointing out the coastal flora and fauna to tourists. This job left me with plenty of daydreaming time, and I was never too tired after work to climb.” He also set routes at the Edge Climbing Center. He later became a professional guide.
As his teens turned to his twenties, Stanhope continued searching for his limits, whether it came to soloing, runout trad, or thuggish overhanging cracks. He applied that knowledge to big wall climbing in Yosemite, and in 2010, he and Kruk completed their first El Cap free route the 41-pitch 5.13 Golden Gate. Two years later, he did his second El Cap free route, The Prophet. He also climbed El Cap’s Freerider in a day (2014) and El Corazon (2017).
He says modesty, time and practice is what it takes for him to send the hard, runout lines. To keep safe, “I think it’s about staying humble. Curious. Keep learning. I think as soon as you think you have something figured out, then your days are numbered. He adds, “for hard climbing, it’s about being motivated. It’s that thin line between recklessness and being in control. It’s a feeling.” Stanhope prefers the adage from Alex Huber in Alpinist 25: “Tension and fear climb with us as we edge along the boundaries.”
A Big Fall: Hitting the Ground from Parthian Shot
In 2011, at age 24, Stanhope decked from 40 feet off Parthian Shot in the Gritstone in the U.K. Cams and nuts placed behind a flake had held Alex Honnold and Matt Segal when they attempted it, but when Stanhope fell onto it, the suitcase-sized feature ripped off. He saud, “I landed hard, on a grassy slope, completely on my left foot. I couldn’t breathe when I hit the ground, then started retching blood. I tried to weight my foot, but it felt like the bones inside were swimming. I had also cracked a lateral-process in my neck.”
He continues, “I was gun shy after I hurt myself. I was really scared of any fixed gear or anything like that. So I got into easy soloing. That was my rehab.” With his foot still healing, a year later Stanhope visited Indian Creek, Utah, to repeat hard lines and put up first ascents with Hayden Kennedy and crew. The accompanying video “New Routin’ in the Creek” by Arc’teryx opens with Stanhope, shirt off, and showing off his tongue in cheek humor. Pointing to his biceps one after the other, as he flexes, he says, “Thunder, lightning, don’t get caught in the storm. Bam.”
Here he explored “the lines between the lines,” doing cracks protected by the smallest units, complete with face moves on friable rock and go-for-glory mantels. He ran it out between placements as he cranked down on 5.12+ finger cracks. With the bones in his feet still healing, he pasted them against brown patina sandstone instead of jamming his toes.
After Kennedy sent the longstanding 5.14- project he dubbed the Carbondale Short Bus, Stanhope committed himself to his own difficult, dangerous FA. The climb – Down with Albion 5.13R – has a seven-foot 5.13 traverse with a fall that would slam him into a sharp corner. “You have to grit your teeth and want it,” he says in the video, which shows him on the unprotected traverse underclinging single-digit edges as he smears his feet on slippery bumps. He sent the route a year to the day after he fell on Parthian Shot. “The route gave me my mojo back,” Stanhope says.
His next project was to headpoint El Cap’s difficult, dangerous Prophet, a 600-metre 5.13DR/X.
“I couldn’t breathe when I hit the ground, then started retching blood. I tried to weight my foot, but it felt like the bones inside were swimming.”
A Film: The Prophet
Stanhope and Sonnie Trotter helped Leo Houlding film The Prophet and watching him and his partner Jason Pickles through the viewfinder, they saw the route up close. Inspired, they tried the necky line.
Climbing ground up as Houlding did for many attempts, Trotter and Stanhope encountered huge runouts protected by 00 micro nuts. With the extreme runouts, chaotic rock and life-risking moves, “It was pretty harrowing [and I] was paranoid about re-hurting myself,” Stanhope says. Eventually, the two changed their style and rapped into the upper pitches for pre-inspection.
Trotter completed the route’s second ascent, but Stanhope wasn’t able to link the route during that visit. Nik Berry climbed it in spring 2012, and, a year later, Stanhope returned to the route with David Allfrey, where Stanhope nabbed the fourth ascent. He wrote of the final moves of crux pitch on his blog, “I was splayed out on my tippy-toes, squeezing two-sidepulls for all they’re worth, rope weaved around the arete, staring up at the first good finger lock. This move is gigantic, at the very apex of my six-foot frame. I caught it, just barely, but not deep enough. Slipping out, body sagging, I made one last Hail Mary attempt to re-adjust it. This time it sank deeper. I composed myself, gulped a lungful of air, and wobbled to the anchor, clipped it, and slumped over in my harness.”
What other climbers have to say about Stanhope
Today, after more than a decade of visiting Yosemite, he’s earned a reputation from Yosemite locals, including professional climber Beth Rodden and photographer Dean “Bullwinkle” Fidelman. “Will Is one of those climbers that respects tradition thereby allowing him to achieve truly original work,” Fidelman says.
On the Metolius website, Rodden wrote, “He has become one of the best trad/adventure climbers of his generation. With free ascents of The Cobra Crack, El Cap, and the coveted third ascent of Southern Belle on Half Dome, Will has put himself in the top tier of climbers around the world.”
What’s Next
Back at the Octagon, with our beers empty, Stanhope, Cutbirth, and I pack up our bags and start to head up the hill. I ask Stanhope what’s next. He says he wants to climb in the Trango Valley, where the cold mixed with high altitude makes the cracks fill with ice and snow collect on ledges. Up here above 6,000 metres, it’s hard to breathe. “As dangerous as it might seem, I’m most interested in getting to the mountains,” he says. “The most powerful experiences I’ve had have been mountain climbing.”
I ask if it’s worth the risk. “It’s worth it until it isn’t,” he replies.
Chris Van Leuven is an award-winning writer and climber based in Yosemite.