BY PETER GWIN
This story appears in the November 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Watch Alex Honnold’s journey toward his rope-free climb of the world’s most famous rock wall—Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan—in Free Solo, a stunning, intimate, unflinching film by E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin. Find the film in theaters starting September 28, 2018.
When you are Jimmy Chin, you make a long list of rules for filming your friend Alex Honnold’s historic attempt to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan without using any ropes. First you will hire a team of world-class climber-cinematographers to rappel beside him as he climbs the nearly 3,000-foot granite face. No one is allowed to whisper, sneeze, drop a lens cap, dislodge a pebble—any of which might create the distraction that sends him hurtling to his death. Most important, no one is allowed to talk to Honnold about the epic climb, at least not directly. This is to avoid putting any pressure on him but also to keep from upsetting his precisely calibrated mind-set, a mixture of acute concentration, bulletproof confidence, and deep Zen calm. Instead of using the term “free soloing,” which means climbing without ropes or safety gear, you use his preferred euphemism—“scrambling.”
360 VIDEO
Immerse yourself in the experience of free solo climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan alongside Alex Honnold in this 360 video.
You follow these rules knowing that any notion of rules is contradictory to the very idea of free soloing, because in this ruthlessly unforgiving sport there really aren’t any rules, at least no written ones. That’s much of the point. Climbing without ropes is decidedly against all the rules, especially the rules of mountain safety, not to mention human logic. But if a free soloist falls, there is no denying the immutable, unyielding rule of gravity.
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