PULSE
Alex Honnold’s climb of a 900m cliff without a rope can be seen in an award-winning documentary
Climbing up a 900m wall — without ropes
Alex Honnold is a superhuman athlete, whose prowess ranks alongside icons like Usain Bolt, Cristiano Ronaldo and Serena Williams. He’s also a dreamer who sets his heart on extreme feats: on June 3 2017 he climbed the 914m sheer wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, California, with no rope to protect him if he fell.
“On El Cap I was not really thinking about anything when I was climbing. For the most part I was just performing and that’s why it was such an enjoyable experience,” he said this week in an interview from London.
This “free solo” style of climbing demands perfection; any mistake would have been fatal for the climber with big hands and a wide smile.
Capturing his sublime climb on film demanded mastery of another kind, which feted filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi and world-class photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin have achieved in their documentary Free Solo.
A mesmerising and intimate record of Honnold’s accomplishment, Free
Solo won a Bafta (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) award on Sunday and it has been nominated for an Academy Award.
Honnold, 33, who mostly lives in a van and bought a suit especially for the premiere, said: “Chai brought that Xfactor to the film. The team talked about wanting to elevate their craft to meet mine and I felt that reversed a bit, like I had to do them justice. The crew worked so hard to get into position to film the high climbing.”
In Free Solo the talented couple speak about not wanting to put any pressure on Honnold and being sensitive to the space he needed on El Cap. “I totally trusted them,” said Honnold. “I felt a sort of obligation, not a pressure to perform, but wanting to go up there and do my best.”
Watching him move up the massive cliff, holding grips barely bigger than the edge of a coin, it is clear he was in a zone where every move flowed.
Honnold trained physically and mentally for more than a year — not relying only on his talent. His efforts were disrupted by falling in love and a n ankle injury. Despite these unforeseen events, Honnold never wavered from his goal.
And after the climb, which took three hours and 56 minutes — climbers with ropes typically take a few days to get up — he didn’t just kick back with coffee. Instead the exhilarated
Honnold returned to his girlfriend, whom he had left asleep in the van, and did pull-ups on his hangboard.
“I’m sure the feelings I get climbing could be assuaged in other sports, like ultra-running, but I’m not thinking of stopping climbing,” he said, when asked about other outdoor adventures.
“There are tons of people pushing the limits outdoors,” said Honnold, mentioning Spanish ultra- runner Kilian Jornet who has shattered records running up major mountains.
For now, Honnold is focused on “doing something useful in the world” through his foundation, which supports solar-energy initiatives to tackle inequality and protect the environment.
His next major climb could be the 1,000m Trango Tower, which soars into the sky at high altitude in the Karakorum mountains in Pakistan.
For now, his free solo ascent of El Cap has captured the world’s imagination as the ultimate rock climb. That’s until an even more mind-blowing athlete comes along and again breaks the limits of what people think is humanly possible.
Free Solo, reviewed as “a miraculous opportunity for the rest of us to experience the human sublime”, will premiere on National Geographic on Monday March 4 at 9pm