Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure (4 page)

The Regular Northwest Face route takes a pure line up the left-hand side of the nearly vertical wall. That summer as I got in shape making loops and traverses in the High Sierra, Half Dome became my muse, a random source of motivation that drifted through my thoughts while I strolled along one ridge after another. The notion of trying to free solo the route was intimidating, yet irresistible at the same time. In terms of sheer grandness, it would be a big step up for me—an even greater challenge than Moonlight Buttress.

T
HE REGULAR NORTHWEST FACE ROUTE
was pioneered in 1957 by Royal Robbins, the finest American rock climber of his day, and two partners, Jerry Gallwas and Mike Sherrick. Two previous attempts, including one by Robbins, had gotten no higher than a quarter of the way up the 2,000-foot wall. The face, which inclines at an average pitch of eighty-five degrees, is intimidating in the extreme. As Steve Roper writes in
Camp 4
, the definitive history of early climbing in Yosemite, “The view upward [from the base] is overpowering. It doesn’t seem possible that humans can climb such an enormous cliff with normal techniques”—i.e., ropes, pitons, and bolts.

It took the 1957 trio five days to complete the ascent, during which they pulled out all the stops: using their newly invented chrome-molybdenum pitons and expansion bolts for direct aid, lowering Robbins fifty feet so he could “pendulum” sideways across the blank granite to reach a chimney system, and enduring four bivouacs as they hung from slings and stirrups. The key pitch, led by Gallwas, involved strenuous aid on pitons and bolts that reached a “disturbingly narrow” ledge stretching across the face only 200
feet below the summit. Thank God Ledge today is one of the most famous features anywhere on American rock.

The YDS scale from 5.1 to 5.15 measures only pure difficulty, with no regard to danger. Another scale within the YDS, however, is grade ratings, which indicate the overall difficulty, danger, and required commitment of a long route on a big wall or a mountain—in short, the “seriousness” of a major ascent. Until very recently, the system ranged only from Grade I to Grade VI. A few landmark ascents in the last decade—nearly all of them in the remote ranges—have been tentatively rated as Grade VII, but by and large the pinnacle of the scale remains Grade VI.

The first Grade VI ever climbed in the United States was Robbins, Gallwas, and Sherrick’s 1957 ascent of the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome. At the time, it was matched only by a few routes in Europe.

In 1976, nineteen years after Robbins’s team climbed the wall, Colorado-based climbers Art Higbee and Jim Erickson made the first free ascent of the Regular Northwest Face route, eliminating all the aid moves—almost. (It was Erickson’s tenth try to free climb the route.) Roped together, belaying every pitch, using pitons, nuts, and bolts for protection, the duo required thirty-four hours of extreme climbing to reach a point only one hundred feet short of the summit. There, to their chagrin, they had to resort to aid to surmount the final obstacle. That glitch rendered the deed a “magnificent failure” in Higbee’s and Erickson’s eyes, but subsequent climbers, impressed by the achievement, have granted them the first free ascent. Higbee and Erickson rated the climb solid 5.12—close to the highest level of technical difficulty accomplished at the time anywhere in the world. The single passage on which they had to resort to aid would also prove to be the dramatic crux of Alex’s 2008 climb.

By 2008, no one had ever attempted to free solo a Grade VI climb, let alone succeeded on one.

That September,
my elbow seemed healed, and I was in top shape from all that cruising around the High Sierra. Dwelling on Half Dome for months had put me in a mental state where I felt I had to do it. Maybe I’d just spent so much time thinking about it that now I had to clear it from my mind.

I’d climbed the route five or six times before with different partners, but I’d freed all the moves, roped up and clipping pro in case I fell, only twice—most recently two days before my solo attempt, when I’d gone up there with Brad Barlage. There are three completely blank sections on the route that Robbins’s team solved by going on aid as they drilled bolt ladders through the impasses. Almost everybody climbs the bolt ladders today—they’re secure, and relatively easy for aid. But free variations have been worked out that bypass those blank sections. That’s why it’s possible to climb the whole route free, as Higbee and Erickson (almost) did, though they were roped up and using pro.

After Brad and I climbed the route on September 4, I spent the whole next day resting, sitting by myself in my van, thinking about the route. I was still somewhat conflicted about going up there alone: Do I really want to do this? I’d already made plans with different friends to climb a few days later in the Valley, so I felt some pressure to get my soloing done before any of them showed up. Ultimately I decided to go back up to the base of Half Dome the next day. I told myself that I could just hike back down if I wasn’t psyched. I’ve done that a few times, or even started a route and then backed off. In 2006, on Royal Arches Terrace, a long climb in the Valley but technically a pretty easy one, I climbed a pitch and a half up the friction slab at the start of the route, then realized I just wasn’t into it. I downclimbed, hiked back to the road, and hitchhiked out of Yosemite. I was done for the season.

This time, though, I knew that once I got up to the base of Half Dome, there was no way I was going to bail.

I didn’t want to make a big fuss about my project, so I told only two people about it, Brad and Chris Weidner. Brad said, “What the fuck?” But then, “Okay, be safe. Text me when you’re done.” He was being a bro.

Chris tried to talk me out of it. “Dude, that’s crazy,” he said. “You should rehearse the hell out of it on a toprope before you try to solo it.”

“Nah,” I answered. “I want to keep it sporting.”

“Are you crazy?”

When I look back on those exchanges, it sounds as though I was being flippant or arrogant. That’s not what was going on. I just didn’t want to make too big a deal about the attempt—especially in case I backed off low on the route. It’s bad form to brag about a climb before you do it. And I didn’t want my good buddies to get too alarmed—then I might start worrying about them worrying about me! I guess I was just trying to reassure them
: Hey, guys, I think I can handle this. I’ll be safe.

There was something else going on as well. Despite my emphasis on methodical preparation, I’d begun to think that maybe I’d rehearsed the moves on Moonlight Buttress so thoroughly that I actually took some of the challenge out of the climb. Half Dome was so much bigger than Moonlight that it would take forever to get all the moves dialed. I decided to head up the wall with a little less preparation—that’s what I meant by “keeping it sporting.”

As it would turn out, maybe too sporting. . . .

In September it’s still pretty hot in the Valley. That meant there weren’t likely to be many other climbers on the face, which is what I was hoping for. But because the wall faces northwest, in September it stays in shade the whole day, which meant I could climb without getting too sweaty or dehydrated. Sweaty hands make
smooth climbing pretty dicey, no matter how much you chalk up, and dehydration not only saps your strength but also can interfere with your judgment.

So on September 6, I found myself at the base of the route again. With a much lighter load than I’d carried with Brad two days before, the approach hike had taken far less time, but the whole way I felt the face looming over me. I tried not to think about it too much. It was a bluebird day, a perfect, clear morning. Resting at the base, I felt completely detached from the rest of the Valley glowing in the morning sun below me. As I had hoped, I had the whole wall entirely to myself. For the next few hours I would be alone in a unique way, locked in a high-stakes game of solitude.

It’s not much trouble to climb through a roped party when you’re soloing—I’d done it before, and I’d do it again. But encountering others on the wall, especially if they express their incredulity that you’re climbing without a rope, can make you self-conscious. And that can interfere with the absolute concentration you need to pull off a big free solo. Before such a climb, I have to get really psyched up. And once I’m off the ground, I’m totally fixated. I’m going to do this. It’s the most important thing in life right now. That’s not the kind of mental state I can share with random strangers.

I was wearing only shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt. I had my Miura rock shoes on my feet, and my chalk bag dangling at my back, but no harness, and not even a single carabiner. In one pocket I put a few Clif Kid Zbars, my favorite multi-pitch snack, and I filled a collapsible flask with about a third of a liter of water. I put that in my other pocket, though it pulled my shorts down a little. But I knew it would take me a few hours to climb the route, and I didn’t want to be parched by the time I reached the hard pitches up high. A pack was out of the question, partly because of all the chimneys in the middle of the route (it’s almost impossible
to chimney wearing a pack), but mainly because the climbing was hard enough that I didn’t want any extra weight on my body.

Finally, there was nothing else for me to do but quit procrastinating and climb. I started up the first pitch.

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For years, the great Yosemite pioneers had been heroes of a sort to me. The guys from the “golden age” of the 1960s—Royal Robbins, Warren Harding, Yvon Chouinard, Tom Frost, Chuck Pratt, and the like—were almost too remote in history for me to appreciate, even though I’d read stories about their memorable antics. It was the self-described Stonemasters of the next generation, in the 1970s and ’80s, that I most admired. John Long, Jim Bridwell, Billy Westbay, Tobin Sorenson, and their buddies. . . . But especially John Bachar and Peter Croft, because of their soloing and free climbing at the highest level. And Lynn Hill, the first person, male or female, to climb the Nose route on El Capitan completely free, in 1993. A year later, she freed the route in a single day. Those are still two of the greatest feats ever pulled off in the Valley. I was also fascinated by John “Yabo” Yablonski, to whom so many wild and crazy stories clung—about him falling off a free solo and saving himself by catching a tree branch, about his nude ascent of North Overhang, about his infamous “screamers” when he fell (roped) as far as a hundred feet, only to be caught by miracle belays. Yabo was evidently a tortured soul, for he committed suicide in the early 1990s.

A lot of the Stonemasters, though, were into drugs. Some of them even bragged about doing serious climbs in Yosemite while they were tripping their brains out on LSD. Their style was part of the counterculture movement of the day, but I just couldn’t relate to it. I’ve never done drugs, and though I’ve tasted alcohol, I’ve never had a whole drink. I don’t even drink coffee. I had a small cup once—it was like drinking battery acid. I had to poop all morning. I once had
a sniff of Scotch. I thought, I should be cleaning my sink with this stuff. It’s not some moral objection—drugs and booze and caffeine just have no appeal to me.

I grew up in Sacramento, California. Both my parents taught English as a Second Language (ESL) at a series of institutions in the United States and abroad. Eventually they landed more permanent jobs at American River College in Sacramento. My mom, Dierdre Wolownick, taught ESL, Spanish, and French at the college. Today she constitutes the entire French department for the school. She’s a gifted linguist, fluent in three foreign languages (French, Spanish, and Italian) and competent in German, Polish, Japanese, and a bit of American Sign Language.

My dad, Charles Honnold, got a full-time job teaching ESL at American River College before my mom did. So I grew up in an intellectual, academic climate—for whatever good that did me.

Mom likes to tell people that on the day I was born, August 17, 1985, I could stand up, holding onto her fingers. Like a lot of her stories about me as a kid, I tend to think she made that up—or at least stretched the truth pretty far. She’s told journalists that from the time I was two years old, she knew I’d become a climber. She also relates a story about taking me to a climbing gym when I was only five. According to Mom, she was talking to the supervisor, turned around, and found me thirty feet up in only a minute or two. She says she was scared to death I’d kill myself.

My sister, Stasia, was born two years before me. From our infancy on, Mom spoke only French to us. Her idea was to make us bilingual. She still speaks only French to us when we visit. But Stasia and I rebelled from the start—we’d answer her in English. Even so, I’ll have to give Mom the credit for making me pretty fluent in French. My grasp of the language has come in handy on many trips to France and three to North Africa.

Mom may be right about me being an uncontrollable, hyper
little monster. At age five or six, I broke my arm for the first time. I’d decided it would be fun to run down the slide at Carl’s Jr.—my favorite restaurant. I went over the edge. The docs called it a green twig radius fracture, whatever that is.

I broke my arm a second time at age seven or eight. This was a really pitiful accident—in fact, it’s hard to describe how I fucked up. There was a big rope that was part of a play structure in our backyard. It was meant be a rope swing, but I rigged it as a tightrope, then lay down on it as if it were a hammock. Fell off and broke my arm.

Dad took me to the local climbing gym when I was ten. It was just a random stab at another kind of recreation, but it “took” from the first day. For years thereafter, he would drive me to the gym and spend the whole afternoon belaying me—he wasn’t interested in climbing himself. Later he even drove me to other gyms around California where I’d enter competitions.