Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure (28 page)

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As the milestone of turning thirty fast approaches, I’ve had to think long and hard about my personal life. In the end, do I want to “settle down,” move into an apartment and stop living in my van, get married, have kids, and inevitably scale down my ambition—and if so, when? How soon?

Whatever the statistics are about athletes being past their prime at thirty, in climbing there are stellar counterexamples. At thirty-seven, Tommy Caldwell is still cranking as hard as he ever did. Whether or not little Fitz convinces him to cut back on his risk-taking—and so far, there’s little evidence of that—I remain in awe of his accomplishments, his determination, and his talent. Peter Croft is another climber I deeply admire. At fifty-seven, he’s still climbing nearly as hard as he did in his late twenties, when he free soloed Astroman and the Rostrum in a single day. He has a circuit of 5.13 sport routes that he does in the Owens River Gorge every week. He’s still shockingly fit. When I was an up-and-coming young climber, Peter seemed like a rock god—he was “the Man.” Now I respect him not so much as a hero as for his whole climbing career. He’s still passionate, but he only climbs what he cares about. I hope I can be like him when I get to that age.

In the fall of 2014, Stacey and I had another one of our periodic spats. The same old issues reared their heads—the questions of marriage, of kids down the line, of where and how to live. She really wanted to get on with her career as a nurse, not just follow me around from crag to crag or country to country. Our
quarrel basically revolved around the idea of commitment. She wanted more commitment to the relationship on my part, while I still cherished the freedom to roam and see where things might take me.

So I sat down and made two separate plans for 2015. One was a program of traveling and climbing, tempered with Stacey time. The other was a program of pure climbing.

Stacey finally pulled the plug for good in December 2014, though we’d been talking about the issues for weeks and her decision came as no surprise. Having completed a graduate program in nursing the previous summer, she now moved to Salt Lake City and got a full-time job. And this time, when she said it was over, it felt final in a way it never had before.

Thank God it wasn’t a bitter breakup. We didn’t scream at each other. There was no major drama. We parted because in the long run what each of us wanted out of life was incompatible with the other’s plans. We’ll still be friends, eventually.

There was a lot of sadness on both sides. I felt the loss of something I might never find again. I had felt for years that I wanted to be with Stacey for a very long time, and she was the one woman I could imagine having kids with some day. I’ve never had a girlfriend I was half so serious about. I continue to admire and respect her as a person.

At the same time, I felt an unexpected surge of liberation. Ahead of me stretched another full year of great adventures and new climbs. Patagonia, Australia, maybe Pakistan. . . . I used to say that I couldn’t think six months ahead, let alone five years. For the first time ever, I can now see five years into the future. I’ve got at least five years of climbing and exploring at my highest level ahead of me. Maybe more.

A shrink might accuse me of clinging to my boyhood, of refusing to grow up. But boyhood, in the best sense, is all tied up with
adventure. Climbing as well as you can for as long as you can is a boyhood dream, even if you’re about to turn thirty.

What matters most to me right now is that climbing is still totally involving. I’m still learning new tricks of the trade, from direct aid to mixed rock and ice in the great ranges. I’m still exploring my limits. I may talk about what it would mean to free solo El Cap, but I also have a whole notebook in my head of potential projects on my tick list. I generally don’t like to share these publicly—not because I’m being coy, or because I’m afraid somebody else might poach them, but simply because I don’t like to create expectations. I don’t want to feel obligated to climb in any way, and I worry that creating expectations ahead of time would add external pressure.

What keeps me motivated is an insatiable hunger and curiosity. The best way I can sum it up is to paraphrase the ending of my op-ed piece for the
New York Times.

The mountains are calling, and I must go.

Author’s Note

On May 16, 2015, as this book was headed to press, Dean Potter and his partner, Graham Hunt, died in a BASE jumping accident in Yosemite.

Though we were never close friends, news of Dean’s death shook me in a profound way. Especially when I was younger, Dean had a powerful influence on my own climbing, and I looked up to him as a role model. I’d always thought that he would live to an old age because, despite how his deeds may have looked to others, he was actually fairly conservative. But accidents happen, especially in BASE jumping, and although I was shocked I couldn’t say I was completely surprised.

The most striking thing about Dean was his uncompromising approach to his arts: climbing, BASE jumping, and highlining. He devoted himself to the perfection of his craft, pursuing each aspect with limitless passion. Never one to follow the herd, Dean was always out in front, forging a new path. His vision took the sport of climbing in entirely new directions, from speed soloing in the 1990s to freeBASE a decade later. He was the true nonconformist, devoted to his art but unconcerned about legality or other people’s opinions.

Dean Potter will live on through all of us whom he inspired.

Acknowledgments

From Alex Honnold

My biggest thanks must go to David Roberts, without whom this book would not exist. He did all the heavy lifting in trying to shape my climbing trips into a readable form. I wouldn’t have trusted anyone else with the job, and I appreciate how much he helped me throughout the whole process.

My sister, Stasia Honnold, also helped me immensely with the editing process. I’m very lucky to have a sister who knows me so well and is always willing to help. And, most important, she’s always inspiring me to try to live a better life.

The climbing and travel in this book wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my entire extended family. I’m grateful that everyone has always encouraged my adventures and not questioned my decision to take a different path.

Thanks also to my sponsors—The North Face, Goal Zero, Black Diamond, La Sportiva, and Maxim Ropes—for providing me with the opportunities to push my climbing all over the world. Without sponsorship, I would just be a dirtbag climber living in a van. Oh, wait. . . .

The guys at Sender Films and Big UP Productions deserve thanks for so well documenting my climbing. Without their storytelling, I would not be on the same path.

And, of course, thanks to all my climbing partners over the years. I feel uncomfortable singling anyone out, since I’ve climbed with so many people over the years and learned something different from each of them. But a few partners have been formative to my climbing:

And finally, thanks to the general climbing community, which makes this entire life possible. I’m grateful to be part of such a big and inclusive family.

From David Roberts

I’d like to acknowledge a number of people who contributed vitally to
Alone on the Wall
. Our editor at W. W. Norton & Company, Starling Lawrence, not only saw the potential appeal of the book at once, but skillfully guided it through the many bumps from proposal to finished text with his usual deft erudition and wry commentary. This is Alex’s first but my third book with Star, and I couldn’t be happier in our teamwork or more confident of his wisdom as editor. Star’s assistant, Ryan Harrington, got deeply involved in the gestation of our book, and went out of his way to fix more potential snags
than most books run into. Thanks, Ryan, for your calm and canny work. Our copy editor, Kathleen Brandes, performed a careful and intelligent job of catching the typos, redundancies, contradictions, and omissions in our text.

We’re grateful to the several photographers whose excellent images grace the two photo inserts in this book, capturing Alex’s genius in a way that words are often incapable of. They include Jimmy Chin, Ben Moon, Andrew Burr, Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen at Sender Films, Renan Ozturk, Tommy Caldwell, Cedar Wright, Rolando Garibotti, and Alex’s mother, Dierdre Wolownick.

The parts of the book written in my voice depended crucially on the commentary of others. For their insights into what makes Alex tick, I thus salute Chris Weidner, Tommy Caldwell, Cedar Wright, Renan Ozturk, Alex Lowther, Peter Mortimer, Mark Synnott, Jimmy Chin, Freddie Wilkinson, and Stacey Pearson.

Our literary agent, Stuart Krichevsky, contributed an extraordinary range of judgments, negotiations, and even interventions to make this book better than it otherwise might have been. In a professional life as busy as Stuart’s, it’s almost a luxury to lavish such care and affection on a single project. This is my fourteenth book with Stuart, and it not only never gets old—I often pinch myself in gratitude to have such a stalwart and
engagé
manager and pinch hitter in my lineup. The same goes for Stuart’s tireless and always accessible colleagues, Shana Cohen and Ross Harris.

Several friends who read the book in manuscript offered valuable suggestions. For that, I heartily thank Bill Briggs, Ed Ward, Molly Birnbaum, and Matt Hale (who also helped me immensely with the photo selection and procurement).

Finally, I owe my deepest debt and gratitude to Alex Honnold himself. When I first hung out with him at Smith Rock in 2010, as I researched a profile for
Outside
magazine, I was at once taken aback by Alex’s brashness and obsessive focus and charmed by his
wit, intelligence, and compassion. It’s not always a good thing for a feature writer unstintingly to admire his subject’s achievements—the writer’s job, after all, is partly to poke holes in the subject’s persona—but I was blown away by Alex’s climbing.

From that initial week together, a friendship grew. It felt awkward at times, given the age gap between us, and given the fact that my own best climbing lay decades in the rearview mirror while Alex’s gleamed through the windshield ahead of him. But we worked out a kind of teasing camaraderie that would fuel our collaboration.

Alex is a good writer—good enough, as I told him in the early spring of 2014, that he could have written this book by himself. But writing, he confessed, was slow and painful for him—and besides, it threatened to take time away from climbing. I was deeply flattered when he agreed to work on
Alone on the Wall
together. Whatever the virtues of our book, they spring directly from Alex’s character—not only as a climber but also as a human being.

Index

Access Fund,
ref1

Adršpach, Czech Republic,
ref1
,
ref2

Africa Fusion
(documentary),
ref1

Aguja de l’S, Patagonia,
ref1
,
ref2

Aguja Guillaumet, Patagonia,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3

Aguja Kakito, Patagonia,
ref1

Aguja Mermoz, Patagonia,
ref1
,
ref2

Aguja Poincenot, Patagonia,
ref1
,
ref2

Aguja Rafael Juárez, Patagonia,
ref1

Aguja Saint-Exupéry, Patagonia,
ref1

Aguja Val Biois, Patagonia,
ref1
,
ref2

aid climbing

equipment for,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

of Moonlight Buttress,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3

of Mount Dickey,
ref1
,
ref2

of Nose route, El Capitan,
ref1

of Rainbow Wall,
ref1

of Regular Northwest Face route,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

Alaska

Mooses Tooth,
ref1
,
ref2

Mount Barrille,
ref1
,
ref2

Mount Bradley,
ref1
,
ref2

Mount Dickey,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

Ruth Glacier, Great Gorge,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

Tooth Traverse,
ref1
,
ref2

Alaska Range,
ref1

Albert, Kurt,
ref1

Allfrey, Dave,
ref1

Alone on the Wall
(documentary)

Honnold 3.0
compared to,
ref1

Honnold’s notoriety from,
ref1

as inspiration to climbers,
ref1

Long’s comments in,
ref1

Mortimer’s filming of,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3

reenactments of,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
,
ref6
,
ref7
,
ref8

screenings of,
ref1

60 Minutes
episode compared to,
ref1
,
ref2

Taipei 101 filming compared to,
ref1

alpine style,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4

Alpinist

Allfrey’s article on “7 by 7” challenge,
ref1

Caldwell’s article on Fitz Traverse,
ref1
,
ref2
,
ref3
,
ref4
,
ref5
,
ref6