‘It’s no fun if you’re scared’: Alex Honnold reflects on his historic free solo climb of El Capitan

Stephen Applebaum meets the audacious free climber who last year became the first to scale Yosemite’s towering El Capitan with nothing but chalk and his rubber-soled rock shoes

Honnold making the first free-solo ascent of El Capitan (National Geographic/Jimmy Chin)

I just love frickin’ climbing,” exclaims Alex Honnold, smiling broadly. Sitting in a hotel room dressed in a baggy black hoodie, walking boots and jogging bottoms, the lean 33-year-old is itching to head out into the chilly London rain and walk to a nearby climbing gym. First, though, we have to talk about Free Solo, which despite sounding like another entry in the interminable Star Wars franchise is in fact an intimate, occasionally hair-raising documentary, showing why Honnold is a man in a class of his own when it comes to climbing rock faces without equipment.

Free solo climbing, or soloing, eschews ropes and all the other paraphernalia one normally associates with safety, and leaves just the climber alone on a wall, with nothing but a pair of rubber-soled rock shoes, and chalk for his or her fingertips. As such, it is climbing in its purest and most dangerous form, where one small slip or moment of distraction can be lethal. It’s like an Olympic sport where if you don’t get gold you die, offers expert climber Tommy Caldwell in the film.

“I think that’s a little hyperbolic,” muses Honnold. But aren’t the stakes so high, you have to be perfect, I ask? “Not perfect, but you have to perform well. It really draws the best out of you. To me, free soloing has definitely always felt like a skills test where you’re like, ‘OK, have I progressed enough as a climber to feel comfortable doing this thing that otherwise could seem impossible?’”