Alex Honnold is an American climbing legend and perhaps the most famous rock climber in history. He’s best known for his daring free solo climbs on the big walls of Yosemite and beyond. For the uninitiated, free soloing is a dangerous form of rock climbing where the climber ascends without protective gear or a rope. For many, it's the purest form of climbing, though the consequences of a fall are often fatal.
Honnold’s exceedingly bold 2017 free solo of the Freerider route on El Capitan was a seismic moment in climbing’s history, while the resulting Free Solo documentary film made Honnold a global superstar. However, Honnold’s achievements go way beyond his daring free solos. He’s set many speed records and even achieved dazzling firsts in the world of mountaineering, as well as being an environmental activist, doing important work in the fight against climate change.
We asked one of our mountaineering experts to take a look at his incredible life and to attempt to put his achievements into some form of context that not just the world’s elite climbers and Spider-Man can understand.
Early life
Honnold was born and raised in Sacramento, California and caught the climbing bug early, aged five, often attending the local gym. He soon progressed and as a teenager he competed in indoor climbing competitions. He’d also often climb outdoors alone, expanding his comfort zone and giving him a first taste of free soloing.
He was enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, studying Civil Engineering, when his parents divorced in 2003. Then, his father died of a heart attack in 2004 and Honnold dropped out of college. With his mother’s blessing, he pursued his dream of a career in climbing, driving around California and developing his skills.
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Ascending to stardom
Peter Croft’s 1987 free solos of Yosemite’s Astroman (5.12c) and the Rostrum (5.11c), climbed on the same day, are the stuff of rock-climbing legend. So, when the relatively unknown, 23-year-old Honnold rocked up in September 2007 and repeated this feat, he was suddenly on the climbing world’s radar. That year he’d purchased a Ford Econoline van, which allowed him to travel between climbs, chasing weather windows. Considering his rapid rise to stardom, the van may as well have been a space rocket.
Astroman and the Rostrum were just the beginning. A 2008 free solo on Zion’s Moonlight Buttress (5.12c) was so audacious and unbelievable that many thought it was a joke when the news broke. However, it was Honnold’s free solo ascent of the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome (5.12a) that propelled him into the mainstream's consciousness. He’d free climbed the route several times previously and on September 6, 2008 he set about becoming the first in history to free solo the route. He famously almost grabbed a carabiner, having lost his nerve towards the end of the climb. However, he conquered his fear and made it to the summit. The climb featured in the 2009 film Alone on the Wall.
In June 2012, he achieved the staggering ‘Triple Solo’ of Mt Watkins, Half Dome and El Cap in less than 24 hours. He’d climbed ‘the Triple’ in under 24 hours only weeks before, alongside Tommy Caldwell, and then returned to see if he could pull it off alone. Although he used protective gear on some of the more technical sections, Honnold asserted that he free soloed around 95% of the adventure. Afterwards, the usually self-effacing Honnold admitted that “Okay, that was a big deal” – so it must have been something special.
Despite the accolades and admiration of the climbing community, there was one prize that had yet alluded Honnold, an entirely free solo ascent of El Capitan.
Free soloing El Cap
Honnold’s long-held ambition to become the first person to completely free solo a route on El Capitan came to fruition on June 3, 2017, when he climbed Freerider (5.13a), taking 3 hours and 56 minutes to conquer its 30 pitches.
Putting the climb into context, El Capitan is a vertical granite cliff, 914 meters high. It’s virtually the center of the rock-climbing universe and for many climbers would represent the pinnacle of their career. Indeed, most take between 4 to 6 days to climb it. For another way to sum it up, Tommy Caldwell put it like this: “Imagine an Olympic-gold-medal-level athletic achievement that, if you don’t get that gold medal, you’re gonna die. That’s pretty much what free soloing El Cap is like.”
It was the culmination of years of effort. Honnold applied himself obsessively to solving the problem of climbing El Cap, rehearsing crux sections, such as the Boulder Problem, countless times with a rope before committing to the free solo. He took assiduous notes, memorizing every move, every foot placement, in order to achieve his goal. It wasn’t all plain sailing either; in the autumn of 2016, Honnold made an initial attempt to climb the route but bailed on the Freeblast Slab, a particularly scary section 600 feet into the route. The almost featureless slab provides only tiny holds, requiring climbers to precariously smear their way upwards.
His achievement was documented in the Oscar-winning documentary film Free Solo, bringing Honnold and Yosemite to a massive global audience who were enthralled by the vertigo-inducing footage. Worldwide, the film grossed $28.6 million, making it one of the most successful climbing films in history.
Honnold and fear
Given his penchant for ropeless climbing on routes many of us would find terrifying even with the security of a rope, many have questioned whether Honnold is simply wired differently to most people. Interviews with him often focus on the death-defying nature of his climbs and this is a common theme in Free Solo. A 2016 MRI scan revealed that Honnold’s amygdala responded less to certain distressing images than other people’s. The theory is that he’s desensitized himself from the fear of free soloing by normalizing it.
It’s clear Honnold has a higher fear threshold than most, or maybe it’s that, as he put it in Free Solo: “Maybe my amygdala is just tired, you know, from too many years of being all gripped.”
Other adventures
It’s Honnold’s free solo Yosemite climbs that have garnered the most attention, yet his career has taken him around the globe, climbing in places like Alaska, Patagonia, China, Greenland and Morocco.
In 2014, he and Tommy Caldwell pulled off an audacious, seven-peak traverse of the Fitz Roy massif in Patagonia. They were the first in history to achieve this and the feat earned them a prestigious Piolet d’Or award. The climb featured in Red Bull TV’s A Line Across the Sky.
Honnold was back in Patagonia in 2016, setting a record time on the Torre Traverse alongside Colin Haley, who brought valuable experience of the region. The effort entailed a north-to-south traverse of the iconic granite towers of Cerro Standhardt, Punta Herron, Torre Egger and Cerro Torre. Despite all these successes, Honnold is characteristically self-deprecating about his ability as an alpinist, saying: “I’m definitely still a rock climber fumbling along.”
In June 2018, Honnold was back in Yosemite with Caldwell for a blistering speed record up El Cap’s The Nose, a route that was famously first free climbed by Lynn Hill in 1993. The pair managed the climb in just 1 hour, 58 minutes and 7 seconds, breaking the magical 2-hour barrier. One way of putting this achievement into context is that most climbers would spend a day getting to a feature named Sickle Ledge. With Caldwell leading, they were there in just over 11 minutes. The fascinating timelapse below shows this climb in fast forward.
In his latest adventure, Honnold teamed up with Caldwell once again to cycle, sail and hike 2,600 miles from Colorado to the Devil’s Thumb on the Canada-Alaska border. The idea behind the self-propelled journey – the subject of National Geographic/Disney Plus documentary The Devil’s Climb – was to champion environmental causes.
Honnold noted how depressing much of the bike ride was in terms of the human impact along much of the route, in stark contrast to the protected, natural beauty of the national park regions. After arriving at the Devil’s Thumb, they completed the first single-day traverse of the massif’s five peaks, taking under 12 hours.
Personal life and the Honnold Foundation
Honnold is married to Sanni McCandless, who he met in 2015 at a book signing. Their relationship was a key driver of the narrative in Free Solo, which put the spotlight on McCandless’ efforts to balance her worry for Honnold with her desire to support him in his endeavors. They married in September 2020 and have since had two children, June and Alice.
Honnold has long been an advocate of environmental sustainability and founded the Honnold Foundation in 2012. This non-profit provides grants to organizations striving to advance clean, solar energy around the world.
