How old were you the first time that you saw El Capitan?
Alex Honnold: I did family camping trips in Yosemite as early as six. The first time I climbed in Yosemite as an actual rock climber, I think I was nineteen. I climbed El Capitan for the first time in 2005, so when I was twenty or twenty-one.
What was it like, the first time you climbed El Capitan?
AH: Completely outrageous. My partner and I had the big goal for the season to climb El Capitan in a day—by any means, not free climbing, just doing anything we could to get to the top. We built up for it the whole season. It was a big adventure, a big challenge. We climbed the easiest route in twenty-three hours. Doing it represented a whole other world of climbing.
You’ve said that free soloing El Capitan was the ultimate climb you’d been working toward, the pinnacle achievement. What were your thoughts when you walked up to El Capitan the morning you were going to free solo it?
AH: Not really anything. The whole point of all the preparation was to ensure that on the day of I wasn’t thinking anything through. I’d been doing a ton of thinking beforehand. The morning of, I was just on auto-pilot, executing. I did park in a slightly different parking place because I didn’t want to see anybody in the meadow. It meant that I was walking a trail that goes past the length of El Cap. I was walking along the entire east wall and did think, “This sure is a big piece of rock.” I knew that I was ready and that it was all happening.
Can you talk a little bit about the preparation? How does one prepare for that?
AH: I’ve climbed El Cap with a rope between forty and sixty times, enough that I don’t know how to keep track any more. So all that—even if it wasn’t overt preparation and I wasn’t exactly thinking about the free solo—that’s still a lot of time on El Cap getting used to the climbing and learning what it feels like and how it would play out. And over the last year and a half, there’s been all of the actual direct preparation: going up and down, working on the moves, rehearsing. That’s just the physical side, the actual time spent on the route. Then there’s the other side of it: thinking about it, visualizing, trying to wrap my head around what it would mean to be up there.
Did you feel any added pressure because there was a movie being made of it?
AH: Not really. In a lot of ways I actually wanted the movie project. It put slightly more time pressure on it so that I would be motivated enough to get out there and start working. Climbing El Cap is something I’d been dreaming about for years but had not actually acted on because it seemed a little too daunting or a little too big. So I wanted an extra push to get me started and putting in the work. My big fear was that I would go my whole life without actually trying. There had been six or seven years that I’d said, “This is the year I’m going to solo El Cap,” and then gone to Yosemite and said, “Nope, this isn’t the year and I’m not even going to try.” I needed a reason to start putting the effort in and see if it was possible.
When you embarked on the climb itself, what was the hairiest moment?
AH: There was one moment down low on the Freeblast slab that I knew would be quite scary—it was a single foot movement. When I did it, I was like, “Yup, that’s the scary move.” But I knew it would be, so it wasn’t scary in an unexpected way. The Crux, the most difficult part up high, is the hardest part of the route and I’d been thinking about it the whole time I rehearsed.
How do you get ready for something that you know is going to be scary?
AH: In that exact moment, on that specific move, I got there and thought, “This is the scary part because it feels insecure.” The movement itself was a step down with my left foot to a tiny edge and what made it scary was that it was below me so it was hard to know if my foot was on it perfectly because I couldn’t quite see the foothold because I was stepping down to it. But I executed it exactly the way I’d rehearsed. Basically I didn’t allow my mind to spin out of control and think, “What if my foot’s not on it perfectly? What if I’m doing it wrong? What if my foot slips?” I just did exactly what I knew I had to do and literally four seconds later I was past the move and that was it.
Have you ever had a hold pull off or encountered a bird or an animal that startled you? And if so, how do you center your mind after that?
AH: Definitely those things have happened on various routes in various places. Part of it is that when something like that happens, by the time that you register that it’s happened and you feel fear, that jolt of adrenaline, the situation has already resolved. Like when you have a near miss in your car, by the time you’re feeling fear, you haven’t crashed, the situation’s done. Of course, that’s easier said than actually felt. It still takes a couple of deep breaths to relax and compose myself again. And it gets easier with practice, I think. The more that stuff happens, the better able you are to manage it.
Where’s your orientation when you’re climbing? Do you look down a lot? How aware are you of where you are in relation to the ground?
AH: I’m very aware. A big part of going up on big walls like that is to have the exposure, to have the experience of being way up off the ground. That’s definitely a big part of the appeal to me. In terms of “Do I look down?” Of course I look down. But in the actual movement of climbing, you’re constantly looking down at your feet and your hands and that doesn’t mean that I’m thinking about the exposure. Primarily, I’m just climbing.
What’s the role of trust in your climbing?
AH: I don’t know. That’s an interesting question. Certainly trusting my partner is super-important when I’m climbing with the rope and climbing with friends. When I’m free soloing, I think of it more as self-confidence: knowing what I can and can’t do and then acting with 100 percent confidence: trusting myself to know my limitations and then acting on that. It’s one thing to think, “I can do this” and another to actually fully believe that you can do it and then do it. I think of it as confidence or self-belief.
Where does the confidence and self-belief come from?
AH: I see it all rooted in rationalism, in a basic evaluation of objective reality: Can I do this? And if I can, then I just do it. If I’ve done something on a rope over and over and over, then obviously I can physically do it so there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it without the rope.
What are your thoughts about fate, given what you do? Many people would look at what you do and have a sense that you’re right on the edge between life and death.
AH: I would hope that they’re wrong about that! But who knows? I’ve never been religious or spiritual in any way. I’m not a big subscriber to fate. I see life as probabilities and chance and reality. Fate doesn’t play into my thinking at all. But I definitely do think about mortality and my time being short. I’m very aware that I have a limited time here and I should make the most of it and do what I can. I think that the desire to do my best in climbing does stem in part from knowing that I’ll only be here for a certain amount of time.
Other than climbing, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
AH: I’m not sure if I’ve even done anything else hard. Dealing with my taxes? Real-life stuff. I guess the loss of friends and family, death, is the hardest thing that I’ve had to experience. But I haven’t experienced much great hardship in my life. That’s probably why I’m choosing to seek out such difficulties though climbing. When life is relatively easy, you make it as interesting as you need it. If I was struggling to find food and water, I’m sure I wouldn’t be seeking out challenges like climbing things without a rope.
Do you have a sense of what the next big challenge will be?
AH: I have no idea. In terms of an El Cap type challenge, I think it might be another year or two before I really get inspired by something mega. We’ll see.
People ask you over and over about fear. Is there anything you want to say about fear and how you deal with it?
AH: You could write a whole book about that. There are a lot of different types of fear, and it’s all about how you differentiate them and how you manage them. There’s nothing wrong with fear, it’s a physiological response that your body has under certain conditions and it’s totally normal and natural. Everybody has fear, and I experience it like everyone else. The difference is knowing when and how to choose to ignore it. I think that people in traditional American life don’t experience much fear, so when they do, they feel, “Oh God, I’m so afraid!” I sometimes like to talk about fear like hunger. When you get hungry, your body is giving you a message that it needs to be taken care of in a certain way and you choose to act on it if it seems appropriate. I think fear is the same way, but for a lot of people, it’s so overwhelming because they’re not used to getting that message. The body is like, “I’m afraid. I need to do something immediately.” Well, not necessarily. The body is telling you that it thinks it’s in danger and you can choose to act on that or not.
I think it’s fair to say that you do things that many people would not do because they would be stopped by fear. Where is the difference there? Is it that you’ve learned to manage fear or something innate?
AH: Part of that is that I’ve spent so much time being afraid. I have a lot of experience with fear, probably more than the average person. And I think that allows me to help differentiate when I’m truly in danger and when I should act on it—whether or not this fear that I’m feeling is important or not.
So it’s almost like a practice then?
AH: It’s such an interesting and complicated subject, fear and how the brain works. There was a story in Nautilusmagazine about a study of my amygdyla. One of the things I took away from that article is that my brain seems to light up a bit less than normal to begin with, so I was probably already on the fairly dull end of the spectrum in terms of a fear response. That combined with years and years of exposure to fear, now I think it’s really dulled.
In many ways what you represent for people is a willingness to take risks that seem beyond what it means to be human.
AH: I don’t think of myself in those terms because that would be kind of douche-y. But I recognize how people could, because I’ve always had inspirations so I can understand how people might see that in me. I think it’s rational and healthy and good to have inspirations and role models, in climbing and in general. I use that motivation to push me to do better in my life, so if I’m able to contribute to other people’s lives in some small way like that, that’s great. But it’s certainly not my intention. It’s not why I’m out climbing.
Why are you out climbing?
AH: Because it’s awesome.