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

by Alex Honnold

  Our big enemy was fatigue, and it really hit us on Half Dome. Having to free climb 5.12+ after twenty-one straight hours on the walls takes it out of you. It’s really hard, and the prospect of failure—even if it meant “cheating” and using aid or grabbing fixed gear—is always there. The 5.12c variations on the Regular Northwest Face gave us all we could handle.

  Each of the three routes has a specific crux. When we got to them we would get all psyched up, but they were all reasonable. The real trial is an overall, cumulative ordeal. Your feet hurt more and more and you get more and more tired. Linkups aren’t super fun. Once you hit hour twelve or fourteen, you aren’t really thinking, “Oh! What a great time we’re having!” You think it will be cool until it isn’t fun anymore.

  It was 2:00 p.m. on May 19 when we topped out on Half Dome. Our elapsed time was twenty-one hours and fifteen minutes. Not only a new speed record but also the first free linkup of the three great Yosemite faces.

  I was pretty pleased that I had managed to climb 7,000 feet of steep granite—seventy guidebook pitches—without falling once. And I’m equally gratified that, as of 2015, nobody else had duplicated our free linkup, no matter how long they took to do it.

  AS MONUMENTAL AN ACHIEVEMENT as Yosemite’s Triple Crown with Caldwell was, Alex regarded it in some sense as a warm-up. His goal for months had been to try the Triple solo—not free climbing every pitch, but rope soloing and daisy soloing. As he would later claim, “Doing the Triple with Tommy, I knew, would actually be physically harder than daisy soloing it. After all, climbing 5.12+ when you’re tired is way harder than French freeing the same pitch. By doing it free with Tommy, I learned just how tired I’d be when I got to Half Dome on a solo linkup.”

  After the success of Alone on the Wall, Peter Mortimer and Sender Films had stayed in close touch with Alex. Now, for a new film, to be titled Honnold 3.0, the filmmakers offered to shoot Alex’s attempt on the solo Triple. For Mortimer and company, it would present a new kind of challenge. They would capture Alex’s climb not in staged reenactments, as they had his free solos of Moonlight Buttress and Half Dome, but “in real time,” as he attempted the linkup through a very long day and night. There would be no second takes, no rehearsals. If the camera missed a crucial bit of action, that would be too bad.

  Logistically, such a shoot posed a fiendish challenge. The cameramen would have to rappel into positions on the three walls well before Alex got there, then simply hang out and wait for his arrival. To ensure Alex’s comfort level, Mortimer chose shooters who not only were top-notch climbers but also were good friends with Alex. They included Ben Ditto, Cheyne Lempe, Mikey Schaefer, Sean Leary, and Mortimer himself.

  Yet in Mortimer’s view, such a project was actually less stressful than the shooting of Alone on the Wall had been. As he reflects today, “There was a cleaner ethical boundary for me. Worst-case scenario: If Alex wants to climb something and he falls off and dies, that’s still his choice. But if he dies during a reenactment, then in some way I’d feel that I killed Alex. I’d have to live with that.”

  Even so, every shoot with Alex took its toll on the filmmakers. In June 2011, to provide footage for the 60 Minutes interview with Alex, Mortimer had agreed to film another free solo in Yosemite. As a side project, the day before the big show, Alex chose to go after the Phoenix, a single 130-foot pitch, but one rated a solid 5.13a. It’s a climb you have to rappel to reach the start, since it hangs over a sheer precipice looming more than 500 feet above the valley floor.

  Mortimer had misgivings. As he recalls, “I was almost at the point of telling Alex, ‘No more reenactments.’ But he said, ‘I’m gonna fucking do the Phoenix tomorrow morning. You wanna come?’

  “ ‘Do you want me there?’

  “ ‘Sure.’ ”

  The next day, Mortimer got in position. “I zoomed in on him with my camera,” he remembers. “What I saw brought home the reality of what he was holding onto. It was incredibly stark. The rock was overhanging, his feet were on nothing. The granite looked slippery from spray from a nearby waterfall. He had only three fingertips in shallow cracks.

  “I was terrified. It was the scariest thing in my life. I couldn’t handle watching up close, so I had to zoom out.”

  Alex cruised up the Phoenix in eight minutes flat. It was the first 5.13 route ever free soloed in Yosemite.

  Mortimer tells another story, this time about cameraman Brett Lowell shooting Alex on a free solo on a route on Liberty Cap, a dome also in the Valley, for Sender’s film Valley Uprising. “Brett had a fancy new camera. He was all set in position. Alex climbed up to him, then, only a few feet away from the camera, he set out from a locker crack onto a steep slab. Normally child’s play for Alex. But he botched the sequence. Went up, downclimbed, went back up.

  “Brett came close to losing it. He thought, I’m going to film this guy falling to his death. He turned white as a ghost. Alex noticed Brett’s distress, and, in the middle of sorting out the moves, said, ‘Hey, no big deal. This is what you do when you’re climbing.’”

  Yes, the logistics of filming my Triple solo for the Sender guys were supercomplicated. But their presence actually made it easier and more pleasant for me. Daisy soloing requires a way lower commitment than free soloing, so it didn’t really matter to me if other people were around, because I have a harness and a rope and I can just hang out. If I was free soloing and there was a cameraman next to me, it would be harder to focus. But it’s nice to have friends around when you’re climbing through the night.

  Also, the crew made my own logistics a lot easier. If I was alone, I’d have to figure out car shuttles between the climbs—a big hassle. But with the filmmakers, I had rides already set up. And they could give me food and water on the summits. If I was doing it alone, I would have pre-stashed food and water at various places along the route.

  I started up the south face of Mount Watkins at 4:00 p.m. on June 5, 2012. The first pitches were a little wet and buggy, because it had rained the day before, but I felt pretty smooth. Finished the wall in 2:20, twenty minutes faster than Tommy and I had done it two weeks earlier.

  It was kind of chaotic driving down to the start of El Cap. There was all this shit on the floor of the van—the filmmakers’ Pelican cases, assorted gear of my own, since I’d use a different rack for El Cap, and I’m trying to eat and hydrate. And it was dark by now. I started up the Nose at 9:30 p.m. I got 150 feet up and realized I’d forgotten my chalk bag. Must have left it among the debris on the floor of the van. Oh, shit, I said to myself. I considered scrambling back down to get the bag, but by then the van had left. So I just climbed on without chalk. The lower pitches were wet, so I found it a little bit hard and weird.

  Climbing in the dark is quieter and lonelier than in the daylight. In some ways, there’s no exposure. You’re inside this little bubble with your headlamp. A fifteen-foot beam of light is the whole universe. There was no danger I’d get off-route, since I knew the sequences so well by now. And yet, you still sense that there’s this void below you, somewhere in the darkness. It’s like swimming in the ocean and realizing there’s a bottomless abyss below you.

  When I got to the Dolt Tower, about a thousand feet up, I met two parties: one was a pair of guys bivouacking, the other two were cooking a meal. We exchanged pleasantries, then I asked, a bit sheepishly, “Do you guys have a chalk bag I could borrow?” This guy named Steve Denny unhesitatingly handed over his. It was a new felt bag, and it was full of chalk. Putting my hand into it felt orgasmic. I thanked Steve and told him I’d tie the bag to a tree on the summit, so he could retrieve it later. Then I headed on.

  A strange thing about climbing in the dark is that all these creatures come out. Bugs, mice, bats, even frogs that live in the cracks. And these giant centipedelike insects. I’ve always worried that I’d step on one and splooge off. Then, all of a sudden, I heard this loud “whoosh!” and a scream. I nearly peed my pants. It took a moment to realize it had to be a BASE jumper. In fact
, it was a friend of mine—I won’t name him here, since BASE jumping is illegal in the park, which was why he flew at night.

  At the Great Roof, I met up with Stanley—Sean Leary is his real name, but everybody calls him Stanley. After filming me on the roof, he climbed with me the rest of the way up the Nose, Jumaring next to me as I daisy soloed. We actually chatted about other things, such as the speed record on the Nose, which he was keen to go after. I didn’t have to concentrate too hard, except for spots here and there where I’d say, “Hold on a moment. I need to focus.”

  Finished the Nose at 3:30 a.m., still in pitch dark. Six hours for the climb, fifteen minutes faster than Tommy and I had climbed Freerider.

  The psychological crux of the whole linkup was actually on the grueling hike up to Half Dome, where I started to bonk. I felt agonizingly slow on the route, but I knew I was in the home stretch. Near the top, I ran into Mike Gauthier, who was chief of staff in the park and, unlike most of the rangers, a good climber. (Traditionally, in Yosemite there’s been a constant antagonism between rangers and climbers.) He was roped up with a guy from the Access Fund—a nonprofit devoted to preserving access to climbing areas across America. We sort of climbed side by side a couple of pitches together. I hadn’t met Mike before, but he seemed like a really nice dude. I thought it was cool—an NPS bigshot who was a serious climber, an Access Fund partner, and all that. Then I pushed on.

  I topped out at 10:55 a.m. to a whole gong show of hikers on the summit. I was really tired, and the scene felt weird, out of control. My total time was 18:55. It was another speed record, but mainly I just felt psyched to have done it.

  Four days later, when he topped out, Steve Denny recovered his chalk bag, which I’d tied to a tree.

  HONNOLD 3.0, WHICH SENDER packaged with four other films for its Reel Rock 7 anthology, released in 2012, is every bit as skillful and impressive as Alone on the Wall. The Yosemite Triple solo takes up only a little more than half the film, but it forms its inevitable climax. Picking up where the earlier feature ended, and segueing through Alex’s appearance on 60 Minutes and his role in a clever Citibank commercial, in which he belays Katie Brown (a former infatuation of Alex’s) on a sandstone tower in Utah, the film poses the question of whether fame might corrupt or endanger Alex. As his good friend Cedar Wright puts it, “How do you do this when it becomes a public spectacle?”

  The footage covering the Triple solo smoothly intercuts action sequences with friends as talking heads and Alex’s own voice-overs. Anticipating the linkup, Wright pronounces, “If he pulls it off, it’s the most monumental feat of soloing in Yosemite history.”

  On Watkins, the camera powerfully captures the scary dance of switching from daisy solo to free solo, especially where the bolts are far enough apart that Alex must unclip and climb a stretch without a safety net before he can clip in again. The alternation of “Now I’m safe. Now I’m not” comes across vividly. In voice-over, Alex says, “I guess I should have a disclaimer on this, because basically you should not do this, even though I love it and I think it’s so fun.” He grins at the paradox.

  A thousand feet up the south face, there’s a film moment that’s already become as famous as the freakout on Thank God Ledge in Alone on the Wall. Free soloing, Alex traverses toward the camera, which is less than a dozen feet away. There’s a bolt he hopes to clip. In the frame, you can’t see either Alex’s feet or the fingers that clasp a sloping ledge high above his head. He lets go with his left hand and reaches toward the bolt to measure how far away it is. His fingers stop an inch or two short of the bolt, but he knows he can clip it with a daisy. Carefully he reaches back to his harness, seizes the daisy, and puts the middle loops of it between his teeth as he reaches down for the biner.

  All at once Alex’s whole body jerks downward several inches. It’s obvious that his foot has slipped off its hold. How had he kept his purchase on the wall, with only the fingers of his right hand gripping the out-of-sight sloping ledge? How close had he come to the fatal fall everyone worries he’ll someday take?

  Audiences invariably gasp, or even shriek out loud, at this moment. But on film, Alex’s face registers nothing. He reaches down again, clasps the biner, clips it to the bolt, then swings across with his weight on the daisy. Now I’m safe.

  When asked how Alex had felt about that terrifying close call, Mortimer later reported, “He didn’t even remember it. But later, he gave me grief about it. He said, ‘How come with all the great footage you got on the Triple, you put that single clip up on YouTube?’”

  According to Alex, “In that moment, I wasn’t even close to falling off. I had a really good handhold. The foot that slipped was not on a weight-bearing hold. I didn’t want to lurch for the bolt. That wouldn’t look good on camera.”

  Yet in the film, Alex’s voice-over immediately after the slip on Watkins seems to acknowledge a close call. “Having little things go wrong,” he says. “That’s just part of the game. Those kinds of things shake you for a second, but then you just keep climbing.”

  Of necessity, because of the widely scattered positions where the cameramen had stationed themselves on the three walls, the film could not cover all the highlights of the linkup. Because there was no way cinematically to recount the drama of the forgotten chalk bag, Sender simply ignored it—even though there’s footage of Alex gearing up with rack and rope in the dark as he heads toward El Cap.

  Some of the best footage documents Alex climbing up the Nose in the dark, with the cone of his headlamp bathing the microworld of hand- and footholds, the void an inky blackness all around him. And fortuitously, at the Great Roof, the audio captures the “whoosh!” and joyous shout of the BASE jumper. A voice-over about the crux moves on the Great Roof perfectly complements the visuals. “The fixed nuts are hanging half out,” Alex comments, “and they pull straight down, so it looks like it’s all going to fall out. There’s always running water, and slime coming out of [the crack]. It’s a pretty intimidating position.”

  By accompanying Alex not only to the top of El Cap but also on the arduous approach up the “Death Slabs” to the foot of Half Dome, Sean Leary captures the extreme fatigue and dispirited mood of Alex as he gets ready for the last wall. He complains about the cold and looks as though all he wants to do is go to sleep. In voice-over, Alex admits feeling out of it on the “trudge” up the first half of the route. Then, miraculously, he finds his groove again. The last few hundred feet of climbing look effortless and triumphant.

  The film ends with the “gong show” on top. Dozens of hikers, knowing he’s near the top, lean over the edge of the precipice. “He’s coming,” one voice intones, and another, “That’s so sick.”

  As Alex sits exhausted on the flat bedrock summit, hikers ask to take his picture and shake his hand. If he thinks the scene is weird, it doesn’t show. Gracefully, he assents to their requests, shakes their hands, poses for a group photo with four awestruck teenage girls.

  The final voice-over is a winning one. “I think of all the people who inspired me as a kid,” Alex reflects, “and I sort of realize they were all normal people, too. I just do my normal life, and if people choose to be inspired by the things I’m doing, then I’m glad they’re getting something out of it.”

  • • • •

  In the short span of two months, 2012 had already become a breakthrough year for Alex. But even after the Triple Crown solo, he still had one more project in his sights for Yosemite that season. Less than two weeks after topping out on Half Dome, Alex would enter the fiercest Valley competition of all—the race to set a new speed record on the Nose.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SPEED RECORD

  THE ONE-DAY ASCENT OF THE NOSE in 1975 by Jim Bridwell, John Long, and Billy Westbay dazzled the climbing world. Their time on the wall—a shade under fifteen hours—shaved an astounding twenty hours off the previous record, set just the year before.

  It was inevitable that someone would show up and climb the Nose even faste
r than the trio of legendary Stonemasters. In 1979, a French ace, Thierry Renault, came to the Valley and surged up the route in under thirteen hours. His ascent was notable in view of the fact that most European climbers get shut down cold on their first visits to Yosemite, either because they’re unused to severe crack climbing or because they’re simply intimidated by the sheer, sweeping granite walls. Renault made so little fuss about his deed that the name of his climbing partner seems lost to history (the compendia of speed climbs simply cite “Thierry ‘Turbo’ Renault + other”).

  Five more years passed before Renault’s time was bettered. Again, the new record was claimed by climbers from abroad. On the summer solstice in 1984, the Brit Duncan Critchley and the Swiss Romain Vogler pulled off the ascent in the remarkable time of nine and a half hours.

  Then along came Hans Florine.

  An All-American pole vaulter in college, Florine started climbing in his native California at the age of nineteen and almost at once realized that his forte was speed. Early on, he won virtually every speed competition on artificial walls that he entered, including three gold medals in the X Games. It was logical that Florine would turn his attention to the Nose.

  In 1990, at the age of twenty-five, Hans paired up with Steve Schneider to lop nearly an hour and a half off the Critchley-Vogler record. Their time on El Cap, from base to summit, was eight hours and six minutes. But the new record didn’t last long, as Peter Croft and Dave Schultz cut the mark to 6:40.

  As mentioned in previous chapters, Peter Croft was one of the climbers a young Alex Honnold most admired, because of the bar he set with his solo climbs. Alex’s free solos of Astroman and the Rostrum in a single day in 2007 gained him his first fame in the Valley, since no one had dared to try to repeat Croft’s blazing feat during the previous twenty years. Six years older than Florine, Croft was a creaky thirty-two when he set the new record on the Nose.