Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure

by Alex Honnold

  Should have stayed more calm and walked off. Pussy.

  • • • •

  The most scared I’ve ever gotten while climbing came when I was twenty-one, a couple of years after my snowshoe fiasco. I was with my second serious girlfriend, Mandi (short for Amanda) Finger. She was a solid 5.13 climber I’d met at Jailhouse Rock, a sport-climbing crag near Sonora. She was five or six years older than me, but we hit it off. We climbed together at Joshua Tree and Red Rocks near Las Vegas. We even talked about going to Europe.

  Anyway, on this particular day we decided to climb a three-pitch 5.12 route called the Nautilus, in the Needles, a range of granite spires near the Kern River. The routes are trad climbs with the occasional bolt anchor. The Needles as a whole have a well-earned reputation for being intimidating.

  The Nautilus is actually on the east face of a formation called the Witch. It takes a long and tricky approach, winding between and around other towers, then scrambling up to the base, just to get to the start of the route.

  I led the whole way. The first pitch is a classic 5.12b. I climbed it in style, thinking, “Ah, sweet!” According to the topo, or route diagram, that I had with me, the next pitch was 11+, followed by a 5.10 finish. I didn’t have any major trouble with the second pitch, but at the top I saw that the bolt anchors were way out in space, on the blank wall to the right, away from the crack system I’d climbed. It looked like a 5.11 traverse just to get to the anchors to clip in and belay.

  So I said, Screw that. I’ll just keep going. Combine the third pitch with the second in one long lead. I had a seventy-meter rope, so I figured it would reach.

  What I didn’t know was that the last pitch was loaded with loose, refrigerator-size stones that you had to lieback past—“death blocks,” as climbers call them. We were in shade, it was cold, and by now I’d developed serious rope drag from all the bends in the rope as it linked the pieces of pro I’d placed on the previous pitch. There I was, doing strenuous liebacking, trying not to dislodge any of the death blocks, and the rope drag was making it really hard to pull up any slack. On top of that, I couldn’t get in any protection, as I’d used up most of my rack on the third pitch. All I had left was a Black Alien—the smallest cam anybody manufactures—a few nuts, and three carabiners.

  The climbing just felt too hard. No way it was 5.10. Later I found another topo that rated the last pitch at 11+. Basically, I was getting gripped—grasping the holds too hard out of fear and uncertainty.

  Mandi had been stuck in her belay way below me for about an hour. Now she yelled up encouraging comments, like, “I’m cold! I’m scared! Can we go down?”

  If I could have gotten in an anchor to rappel off, I probably would have gone down. Instead, I kept fighting my way upward. I placed no pro in the last forty or fifty feet. If I came off there, I’d take a really long, bad fall, with all those big blocks to worry about pulling loose or cutting the rope. The dread was mounting. I was seriously scared.

  The last pitch ends in a little roof that caps the whole route. I got to just below the roof, but here the rock turned all licheny and dirty. The rope drag was horrible. There was a last mantle move to get over the roof, but I couldn’t figure out which way to do it. At last I found a crack to get the Black Alien in, and I just busted for the top. I did a really hard move, a full-on iron cross, crimping on tiny holds.

  It was so fucked. As I sat on top, belaying Mandi, I had only one meter of rope left. I’d used up the other sixty-nine linking the last two pitches. And I could barely pull up the rope, the drag was so bad.

  That’s the most frightened I’ve ever been climbing, and it came not on a free solo but on a conventional roped climb. All because of an impulsive decision to skip the bolt anchor and an ignorance of just how difficult the top pitch was.

  Today, I would have handled the whole thing better. I’ve got more tools in my tool kit now. Maybe I could have downclimbed, or placed less pro on the second pitch so I had more left for the finish.

  But as I sat there, emotionally exhausted, hauling the heavy rope that was tied to Mandi, I thought I was ready to give up climbing for good. Maybe I should go back to college, I said to myself, and finish my education.

  Of course, by the very next day, everything seemed different. I wasn’t about to give up climbing. I’d just make sure to avoid getting stuck in cul-de-sacs like that last pitch on the Nautilus.

  Easier said than done.

  • • • •

  On September 6, 2008, a thousand feet up the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, as I pushed through dirty cracks and vegetation, wondering if I’d gotten off route on the Higbee-Erickson free variation, I sensed the threat of another cul-de-sac. My anxiety wasn’t ratcheted up to the level of genuine fear, but it got my attention. So I focused hard, took a deep breath, and sorted out my options.

  I told myself it wasn’t a do-or-die situation. Climbing down is almost always harder than climbing up, but I still felt that I could have downclimbed the whole route so far, all thousand feet of it, if I had to. For that matter, if I got into a truly nasty predicament, I could always sit and wait, even for a day or two, until some other climbers came along, ask to tie in with them, and finish the climb as their probably unwelcome guest. “Hitchhiking,” I call it. Other climbers in Yosemite have chosen that means of escape, or even have had to be rescued by helicopter, but I’ve never had to resort to either gambit, thank God—except for my ignominious chopper rescue on Mount Tallac, but that wasn’t climbing. On Half Dome, “hitchhiking” would have really sucked, and a helicopter rescue would have been even worse.

  As I later realized, I had climbed too high before traversing right. For all I know, on that traverse I was inventing a new variation to the Higbee-Erickson free variation, charting new waters. The variation is supposed to end with a hundred-foot downclimb of a 5.10 finger crack. I actually had to downclimb 150 feet. Eventually, though, I found some old nylon slings hanging from pitons, and that bolstered my confidence. But then I found it hard to get my fat fingers into the 5.10 crack. I could only lodge the first knuckle in a crack where other climbers—Lynn Hill, for example—could have sunk all three knuckles on each finger. So the downclimb felt distressingly “thin,” harder than 5.10, and the pitch took me a long time. In all, the variation cost me a ton of time—in actuality, maybe fifteen minutes, though it seemed an eternity—and a lot of stress, and I was relieved to finally get back onto the clean, well-traveled path.

  I put on my headband iPod again and switched back into autopilot mode for the next five hundred feet of chimney climbing. It felt great to be in a clean, secure chimney. A pleasant routine of squirming my back, stemming my feet, palming, and repeating for hundreds of feet. I took it slow and steady, enjoying the climbing. And that brought me to Big Sandy, an enormous ledge system 1,600 feet up the wall.

  So far, I’d eaten none of my food and drunk none of my water. Big Sandy isn’t the only place on the route where you can sit down, but it’s such a spacious ledge you could have a barbecue there with friends (if you could get them up there in the first place). I spent a few minutes taking off my shoes and relaxing. It had taken me about two hours of climbing to get here, and now I needed a breather. I ate my bars and drank the water, so I wouldn’t have to carry the weight through the next hard pitches. Some climbers might have tossed the plastic flask once it was empty, but I’ve always believed in packing out your trash, so I stuck it back in my pocket. Soon enough, I retightened my shoes, set my iPod to repeat Eminem, and started climbing again.

  The day was getting warmer, even though I was still in shadow. At some point I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my waist, cinching it with an over-and-under tuck of the sleeves. My short rest stop hadn’t really felt like relief, because I knew the hardest part of the climb was still above me. That final challenge hung over me the whole time I sat on Big Sandy, ramping up my concentration and intensity for the crux to come.

  Resting can be a double-edged sword. When you’r
e free soloing, the pain in your feet and your fatigue just seem to vanish. When you rest, those annoyances come back. You have to snap out of it and get serious again.

  The next three pitches above Big Sandy are called the Zig-Zags, presumably for the single, zigzagging crack/corner system they follow. Rated 5.11d, 5.10b, and 5.11c, they’ve always seemed harder to me. Maybe it’s because I happen to have huge fingers, but the thin crack set in a steep, polished corner has always felt more like 5.12. Aesthetically, the Zig-Zags represent the best Yosemite has to offer, perfect clean corners with staggering exposure. But I wasn’t thinking about the amazing view of the Valley as I carefully liebacked my way up the first tenuous pitch.

  I climbed almost in a daze. I knew what to do; I just tried not to think about it too much. I didn’t think about the next hard pitches above. I didn’t think about the 5.11+ slab on top, a pitch above the Zig-Zags. I just moved steadily between small fingerlocks up the steep dihedral. The crux of the first Zig-Zag felt much easier than it had two days before, probably because now I had the sequence dialed. Every hold felt crisp and perfect, and I pulled really hard.

  The second pitch of the Zig-Zags flew by in a frenzy of hand jams and hero liebacking. The climbing was secure enough that I could relax and enjoy it. With every zag of the crack, I found myself handjamming over big protruding blocks, the base of the wall almost 2,000 feet below me, the Valley floor itself 4,000 feet below. The pitch was a delight, compared to the thin liebacks above and below.

  Handjamming is another essential technique for the rock climber, and it’s surprising that it took many decades to invent. If a vertical crack is between about two and five inches wide, but there are no edges inside it to grasp with the fingers, you can still use it for a hold, by inserting the whole hand, then flexing it to fit the crack, either by making a fist or by arching the back of the hand against the straightened fingers. Your hand acts like a wedge that you can put your whole weight on. Jamming is tough on the knuckles, and guys bent on a hard day of crack climbing will tape their hands to minimize the damage. I’ve never been into tape myself, though, mainly because my skin is so naturally resilient—I don’t tend to suffer from the little cuts and scrapes that other climbers do.

  I stopped again for a minute below the last Zig-Zag. I felt good but wanted to be sure I didn’t get pumped. On a rope, you’re forced to rest at least fifteen minutes per pitch while you belay. But when you solo, you never have to stop, so I force myself to pause at stances and relax, just to make sure I don’t get ahead of myself. After a two-minute breather, I set out up the undercling lieback feature, a slight variation on the original aid line. The undercling is somewhat pumpy but only 5.11c, not terribly difficult compared to the original corner, which is supposedly 5.12+ (though I’ve never tried it). The real crux of the variation is making blind gear placements in the flaring crack. But since I wasn’t placing gear, I was doing the pitch the “easy way.”

  Still, it was another pitch of insecure liebacking, with both feet pasted against a smooth granite wall and flared jams for my fingers. Again, as on the whole rest of the route, the crux of the pitch was an extra-thin section. I knew exactly what to do and hurried through it. The nearly two thousand feet of climbing below me were beginning to take their toll. I was finding it harder and harder to give the climbing my complete attention. Part of me just wanted to get the climb over with.

  With the last Zig-Zag below me, I was soon walking across Thank God Ledge, the amazing sliver of rock that traverses out from beneath the Visor, only about 200 feet shy of the summit. I could hear noises from above and knew lots of people would be up top on this perfect late summer morning. The easy Cable route up the other side of Half Dome is one of the most popular hikes in the Valley, culminating in a fifty-five-degree slab on which the National Park Service has installed a pair of metal cords to use like handrails. On a warm sunny day like this one, there’s a nonstop procession of hikers lined up on the cables like airport travelers in a taxi queue.

  I could hear the chatter of the tourists on top, but no heads peered over the edge. I was glad no one was watching.

  I walked across Thank God Ledge as a matter of pride. I had walked its thirty-five-foot length before, but I’d also crawled or hand-traversed it. It’s less than a foot wide at its narrowest, with the wall above bulging ever so slightly at one point. But I didn’t want to taint my solo ascent—I had to do this correctly. (Incidentally, walking Thank God Ledge is another of those things that’s quite a bit easier with no harness, rope, gear, or pack hanging off you. The balance is more natural.) The first few steps were completely normal, as if I was walking on a narrow sidewalk in the sky. But once it narrowed, I found myself inching along, facing out with my body glued to the wall, shuffling my feet and maintaining perfect posture. I could have looked down and seen my pack sitting at the base of the route 1,800 feet below, but it would have pitched me headfirst off the wall. The ledge ends at a short squeeze chimney that guards the beginning of the final slab to the summit.

  I paused for a moment beneath the ninety-foot slab, looked up to see if anyone was watching (still no one), and started up. The first few moves are easy enough, on somewhat positive holds with good feet. As you get higher, the holds disappear and the feet shrink. Two days earlier, I’d considered two sections “cruxy.” The first involved a step-through onto a miserly smear, while the second, thirty feet higher, involved a few moves of shitty hands and feet before reaching a “jug”—a big, positive edge I could wrap my fingers around that marked the end of the hard climbing, sixty feet up the pitch.

  I also knew that it was this slab that had thwarted Higbee and Erickson’s attempt to climb the whole route free. So close to the summit, they’d had to use aid to surmount the last obstacle. Perhaps that should have given me pause.

  I hardly noticed the first crux. I cruised right through it, feeling pretty good about myself. Twenty feet of thin cord hung from one of the bolts. I very briefly considered running the cord under my thumb—not weighting it but having it there just in case. But that felt suspiciously like cheating.

  I climbed into the upper crux, feeling good about doing things legit. And then I ground to a halt. I’d expected to find some sort of different hold or sequence from the one I’d used two days earlier, which had felt pretty desperate, but perhaps I’d done it wrong. This time, in the same position on the same holds, I realized there were no better options. I had a moment of doubt . . . or maybe panic. It was hard to tell which. Although I’d freed the pitch maybe two other times the year before, I could remember nothing of the sequence or holds, perhaps because there aren’t any.

  A gigantic old oval carabiner hung from a bolt about two inches above the pathetic ripple that was my right handhold. I alternated back and forth, chalking up my right hand and then my left, switching feet on marginal smears to shake out my calves. I couldn’t make myself commit to the last terrible right-foot smear I needed to snag the jug. I’d stalled out in perhaps the most precarious position of the whole route. I considered grabbing the biner. With one pull, I’d be up and off.

  Tourists’ oblivious laughter spilled over the lip. Tons of people were up top. I was in a very private hell.

  I stroked the biner a few times, fighting the urge to grab it but also thinking how foolish it would be to die on a slab, sliding and bouncing almost 2,000 feet to my death, when I could so easily save myself. My calves were slowly getting pumped. I knew I should do something soon, since treading water was only wearing me out. Downclimbing never occurred to me—I was going up (it was just a matter of how high) one way or another. But now, real fear seized me. Once again, I took a deep breath, studied the holds in front of me, and tried to think rationally about what I had to do.

  Although I never wanted to be on that slab in the first place, I had to finish what I’d started without invalidating my ascent. Finally, I compromised. I kept my hand on the pathetic ripple but straightened my right index finger just enough for the tip of my last pad
to rest on the bottom of the oval. My thought was, if my foot blew, I could snatch the biner with one finger and check my fall.

  I smeared my foot, stood up, and grabbed the jug. No problem. I was delivered, free from my little prison, where I’d stood silently for a good five minutes. And I hadn’t cheated by grabbing the biner.

  I took the final 5.7 slab to the summit at a near run. Twenty or more hikers sat on the edge of the precipice, witnessing my final charge. But no one said a word. No yells, no pictures, nothing. Maybe they thought I was a lost hiker. Maybe they couldn’t conceive of where I’d come from, or maybe they just didn’t give a shit. When I mantled onto the actual top, I was met with a flood of humanity, a hundred-odd people spread across the summit plateau. Tourists ate lunch next to me. They made out, took scenic photos. People everywhere.

  It was so weird. Like parachuting out of Vietnam into a shopping mall.

  I was shirtless, pumped, panting. Psyched out of my mind. Flooded with conflicting emotions. I was embarrassed that I’d gotten scared on the slab. But I was thrilled beyond words to have finally done something that I’d been thinking about for months. Ashamed of myself for maybe pushing it a little further than I’d planned. Yet still proud of myself.

  On the summit, part of me wished that someone, anyone, had noticed that I’d just done something noteworthy—though maybe it was better that I didn’t have to talk to anybody. How could I have expressed what my last few hours had been like? It was enough that I knew.

  I didn’t make a sound. I took off my shoes and started hiking down the Cable route. It was only then that someone noticed. “Oh, my God,” this dude blurted out. “You’re hiking barefoot! You’re so tough!”

  DESPITE ASCENDING AT A “SLOW JOG” rather than a “sprint,” Alex completed the 2,000-foot climb, which spans twenty-three pitches for roped climbers, in the unthinkably short time of two hours and fifty minutes. Seven years later, no one else has seriously contemplated, let alone attempted, a free solo of the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome.