A View From The Top

Alex Honnold on what’s next, that Heaven solo, and why people who criticize soloing are right.

- Seth Heller

On a mid-October night in Yosemite Village, Alex Honnold sat on his bed with his back pressed against the concave wall of the parked van, his sprained right ankle kicked up, toes touching the low ceiling. Across from him, shelves with cam-lobe latches lined the wall, stocked with guidebooks and environmental non-fiction. An outline of El Capitan was etched into the interior of the sliding side door, a wooden hangboard, dusty with chalk, bolted just above it. It was close to midnight, and an interview—the second of two three-hour sessions that day—was nearly finished, but Honnold, 31, thumbed excitedly through a topo book of Yosemite walls, pointing out his favorite routes.

“Oh, rad, Tommy and I [were] climbing the Triple,” he said, tapping a photo of himself and Tommy Caldwell. “I used to flip through guides and get so stoked, and now I get to contribute to that. I like looking at these and seeing photos of my friends, or remembering a route I did and the photographer who took the pics.”

It was a surreal moment, like watching Muhammad Ali narrate his highlight reel. Honnold is the most prolific big-wall free soloist in history, often linking several exposed, committing lines in a single outing. YouTube videos of his solos are the stuff of sympathetic palm sweats, and they usually go viral, even shared among non-climbers. True to his nickname, “No Big Deal” Honnold shrugged that last bit off: “Soloing is just the easiest type of climbing for the general public to understand.”