Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure (20 page)

I’ve tried to approach environmentalism the same way I do my climbing: by setting small, concrete goals that build on each other. That was the idea behind starting the Honnold Foundation. I also worked on smaller projects, such as setting up my mom’s house with solar panels and giving up meat in an effort to eat lower on the food chain. In some ways it might seem silly even to make the effort, since the environmental problems facing our world are so much bigger than any one person’s actions. But some walls also seem so huge and impossible that it appears pointless to work toward them. The beauty of climbing has always been the reward of the process itself.

While Cedar struggled through the intricate slabs, I couldn’t help wondering whether making a whole production out of climbing went against all the environmental principles I wanted to stand for. Could radio-controlled heli shots and minimalism really go together? Was it worth the impact of flying a whole crew down to Mexico for me to enjoy one three-hour climb? Or could I possibly use the climbing to do more good than harm? Might the platform I’ve gained through climbing be harnessed toward more useful things?

The problem with worrying too much is that it can be crippling.
Somehow, I thought, it must all come down to balance—finding that line between minimizing impact but still maintaining an acceptable quality of life. But who’s to judge an acceptable life? I don’t even know what I truly require to be happy. Do I have to be traveling all the time? Or soloing walls? The circle of Cedar’s headlamp drifted slowly away, leaving me alone in the moonlight to swim with my questions.

Then, when we were halfway up the wall, a mariachi band started playing loudly just down the road from the cliff, filling the still desert night with the blaring sounds of horns and accordions. We couldn’t help laughing. I told Cedar they were rooting for him. The moon tracked across the sky as I jugged to the rhythm of live music. At the belay, I pulled my hood closer against the cool night air. The summit loomed hundreds of feet above, silhouetted against the starry blackness. Though it seemed impossibly far off, there was nothing to do but carry on. Cedar continued tiptoeing up into the night, savoring the voyage.

T
HE CAMP 4 COLLECTIVE FILM
that Renan Ozturk crafted to feature Alex’s solo of El Sendero Luminoso, a mere six minutes and twelve seconds long, is a minor masterpiece. If it lacks the gonzo zaniness of the Sender Films celebrations of Alex’s deeds, as well as the humorous riffs in van or campground, it captures the grace of Alex’s movement on rock better than any previous footage has. The camera work, zooming fluidly in and out, or floating gently through space (thanks to the SkySight drones), paints a lyricism that mirrors Alex’s state of mind and body when he’s doing what he does best.

There are moments in the film that bring home the seriousness of free soloing in novel ways, such as a bit when Cedar Wright, in
the days of cleaning the route before the climb, says, “It’s kind of weird, helping your friend do something that you know could potentially lead to his death”—this, as the camera pans over the graveyard in the nearby town of Hidalgo. But the closing footage captures Alex standing on what look like “nothing” holds, his hands dangling free at his sides, as a slow grin takes over his face.

Shortly after the climb, Mary Anne Potts of
National Geographic Adventure Online
interviewed Alex. She asked, “Why did you smile at that moment on the wall?”

Alex’s characteristic answer: “I have no idea since I haven’t seen the film, but I’d assume because I was happy.” To underline the point, he appended a happy face.

Indeed, in the makeshift register on the summit of El Toro, with a pencil stub Alex scribbled a note that a later visitor photographed. It read:

(Two hours on the fifteen-pitch climb, another hour to scramble to the summit of El Toro.)

The Camp 4 film closes with the bald statement: “It could be the most difficult rope-less climb in history.” Almost two years later, no one has come forth to dispute that claim—except Alex. In outtakes filmed by Renan just after the ascent, he insisted, “It’s not like this is the physical limit of my climbing. Not like the hardest thing I could do. It was well within my comfort zone.” (“No Big Deal” Honnold at his deadpan best!)

Others weighed in less equivocally. On Supertopo.com, posters
expressed their awe. Wrote one, “The dude is so scary good. . . . All you can do is shake your head in wonderment and amazement.” Another: “Compartmentalizing fear is a very real thing, and he excels at it. Or is he just so good that he’s not afraid?” Yet another, tongue in cheek: “I’d be way more impressed if he was human.”

Jeff Jackson, editor of
Rock and Ice
and the author of the first (roped) free ascent of El Sendero Luminoso in 1994, editorialized, “What do I think? Well, honestly, I try not to think about it. . . . The
Sendero
free solo is a different realm entirely—so bad it makes me wonder if Honnold will ever get another visit from Santa.”

Less ironically, Jackson—one of the strongest rock climbers of his generation—analyzed the feat by comparing it to his own experience on the route. “To my knowledge,” he wrote,

Alex was not about to rest on his laurels. Less than a month after his Mexican triumph, he was off to a part of the world he had never visited, to try a climb of the sort he’d never before attempted.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

FITZ

The Fitz Traverse was
Tommy Caldwell’s idea. As soon as he mentioned it, I said, “That sounds rad! Let’s do it!” I was on board, even though I’d never been to Patagonia. I didn’t even know anything about Patagonia.

Though it stands only 11,168 feet above sea level, Fitz Roy is the tallest peak in a tight cluster of amazing granite spires in southern Patagonia, on the border between Chile and Argentina. It’s named after Robert Fitzroy, the captain of the Beagle on the famous 1830s voyage that gave Charles Darwin his first inklings about the theory of evolution. The first ascent, by the great French mountaineers Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone in 1952, may have been the most technical big-range climb performed up to that date anywhere in the world.

That cluster of peaks, which also includes Cerro Torre, Torre Egger, Aguja Poincenot, and many other agujas (Spanish for “needles”), probably comprises the ultimate collection anywhere on earth of steep, soaring, and breathtakingly beautiful mountains. The granite is shockingly good—as good as Yosemite—but Patagonia
is notorious for bad weather, for shrieking winds that don’t let up for weeks, and for humongous mushrooms of rime ice plating nearly vertical slabs and cracks.

Tommy first climbed in Patagonia in 2006. Even though most of his prior experience had been on rock, he put up some formidable lines that season. As mentioned in chapter five, Tommy, with Topher Donahue and Erik Roed, freed the Línea de Eleganza on Fitz Roy. Tommy and Topher also tried another massive route, Royal Flush, on the east face of Fitz Roy. The peak was pissing wet that February, and other climbers gave up on the climb, declaring it hopeless, but Tommy went up there in the same conditions and damn near freed the route onsight (on his first time on the route) before he and Topher had to back off.

By 2014, Fitz Roy had really gotten under Tommy’s skin—so much so that the year before, when his wife, Becca, gave birth to a boy, they named him Fitz.

Though a formidable peak in its own right, Fitz Roy doesn’t stand alone. It’s the centerpiece of a chain of seven connected towers, starting on the north with the Aguja Guillaumet and ending on the south with the Aguja de l’S. The obvious challenge was to connect them all in a single continuous ridge climb—the Fitz Traverse.

In 2008, Freddie Wilkinson, who would be my partner five years later in the Ruth Gorge, and Dana Drummond completed the first half of the traverse, linking Guillaumet, Mermoz, Val Biois, and Fitz Roy, but then rapping off Fitz Roy and hiking out. They called their half-traverse the Care Bear Traverse, because they were stuck in the clouds so much of the time that they started joking with each other, “I bet all those other climbers are thinking, ‘Those stupid Americans are up in the clouds!’” (In the children’s cartoon series Care Bears, the ursine heroes live in lairs among the clouds.)

Freddie and Dana took three days for the traverse, with two exposed bivouacs. The Care Bear was repeated numerous times
after 2008, but nobody had gotten beyond Fitz Roy. The problem for all those teams was that because the second guy did so much jugging, by the time they got up Fitz Roy their ropes were pretty core-shot from rubbing against the rock.

Tommy and I arrived in El Chaltén, the gateway town to climbing in the Fitz Roy region, on February 1, 2014. For the first nine days, the weather on the peaks was horrendous, so we climbed down low, bouldering and doing sport climbs on small crags. There’s a ton of good climbing all around El Chaltén. Sweet! I thought. I’m gonna get strong! But I also thought
, Wow, these peaks are so intimidating, I’m not sure I’d really mind if the weather never gets good.

We climbed every day, and ate out every night in El Chaltén. It was a pretty nice lifestyle.

C
ALDWELL WOULD LATER WRITE
about the Patagonia adventure for
Alpinist
in the winter 2014 issue. In his thoughtful piece, he talked about how much harder it was to climb with all-out commitment once he had become a father. “I’d had this Romantic idea,” he wrote, “of pulling my family into my life of constant travel. So they followed me from Colorado to Argentina. Then, after two blissful weeks together in El Chaltén, the wind had calmed, and I’d packed.”

Saying good-bye to Becca as he headed for the Fitz Traverse, Tommy minimized the danger. “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll be careful,” he told her. “It’s just a rock climb.”

But privately, “I remembered that I wanted nothing more than to live to be an old man.”

In the same essay, Tommy recalled meeting up with Alex in the Valley in the spring of 2012 and being taken aback by his nonchalance.
“Anyone could daisy-solo the Regular Route of Half Dome,” Alex claimed. “It’s not that big of a deal. . . . You know you’re not going to fall on 5.11.”

Drawn to Alex by his skill and amiability, Tommy puzzled over his friend’s almost blasé attitude about risk.

Whatever Tommy’s doubts, he soon realized that he and Alex made a superb two-man team. On their Triple Crown linkup in 2012, in the middle of the night on Freerider on El Cap, Alex had been deeply impressed by Tommy’s stemming a pitch in the dark that he normally would have liebacked. But Tommy was equally impressed by Alex’s nerve and aplomb.

Even while they simul-climbed at a nearly perfect level together, Tommy and Alex engaged in a friendly debate about free soloing, with Tommy voicing his doubts. As Tommy would later comment, “Alex is as solid as anybody I’ve ever met on technical rock. But I worry about him. I’ve never tried to talk him out of free soloing—I just express my doubts. But he’ll turn around and try to talk me
into
free soloing.

“We climbed Velvet Tongue at Red Rocks together, roped. Leading the 5.12+ crux, Alex slipped. But he hung on by one finger. Anybody else would have fallen off. I said, ‘Wow, that was impressive!’ But of course I was thinking,
What if he were soloing when that happened?
”

In the
Alpinist
piece, Caldwell explains how completing the Triple Crown with Alex gave him the idea for teaming up to attempt the Fitz Traverse. On the summit of Half Dome, after climbing some eighty pitches in twenty-one hours,