Alex Honnold

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Alexander Honnold (born August 17, 1985) is an American rock climber best known for his free solo ascent of Big Walls in Yosemite National Park and the fastest ascent of the Yosemite Triple Crown, which includes an 18-hour, 50-minute climb, and the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome.

Honnold says he likes long, straight routes and that he does them quickly.

He is the author (with David Roberts) of the memoir Alone on the Wall (2017), as well as the subject of the 2018 biographical documentary Free Solo, which received a BAFTA and an Academy Award. Honnold claims he is inspired by such climbers as Peter Croft, John Bachar, and Tommy Caldwell, as well as beautiful spots like El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

Life and work

Honnold was born in Sacramento, California, and the son of community college professors Dierdre Wolownick (b. (1949–2004), 1953) and Charles Honnold (1949–2004). His paternal roots are German, and his maternal roots are Polish. By age 5, he was climbed "many times a week" and was climbing "many times a week." As an adolescent, he competed in numerous national and international youth climbing championships.

"I was never, like, a bad climber [as a youth], but he claims he had never been a great climber." "There were a lot of other climbers who were much, much faster than me, who started as teenagers and became, like, a natural gift." And that was never me. I just love climbing, and I've been climbing for the first time ever since, so I've obviously become better at it, but I've never been gifted."

He enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, after graduating from Mira Loma High School as part of the International Baccalaureate Programme in 2003. During his first year of college, his maternal grandfather died and his parents were divorced, and Honnold skipped several of his classes to boulder by himself at Indian Rock.

To go up, he dropped out of Berkeley and spent time at home and driving around California. "I'd wound up with my mother's old minivan, and that was my base," he said. "I'd use it to scale Joshua Tree to scale if I could climb, or I'd drive to Los Angeles to visit my girlfriend." I smashed the van quickly; it died on me one day; and for the next year, I was just riding my bike and in a tent."

He bought a 2002 Ford Econoline E150 van in 2007, which enabled him to concentrate on climbing and watching the weather.

According to a 2011 Alpinist profile:

He gained mainstream prominence after his solo of the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome appeared in the film Alone on the Wall and a subsequent 60 Minutes interview.

Honnold and Hans Florine on Yosemite's El Capitan in November 2011 set a new record time on the Nose route in an unprecedented time. The record stood at 2:36:45, as set by Dean Potter & Sean Leary in November 2010. Honnold and Florine set a new record of 2:23:46 (or 2:23:51) on the same route on June 17, 2012.

Clif Bar, Dean Potter, Steph Davis, Timmy O'Neill, and Cedar Wright announced in November 2014 that they would no longer be funded Honnold. In an open letter, the company said, "We found that these types of sports are pushing boundaries and adding the element of danger to a position where we as a business are no longer able to go."

He was exposed to functional magnetic resonance imaging scans in 2016 and discovered that, unlike many high sensation seekers, his amygdala barely responds after viewing troubling images. He does however admit to being afraid at times. He has desensitized himself to the most frightening situations by imagination and practice.

He made the first solo ascent of El Capitan on June 3, 2017, completing the 2,900-foot (784 meters) Freerider route (5.12d VI) in 3 hours and 56 minutes. The feat, which was dubbed "one of the greatest athletic feats of any kind, ever," by climber and photographer Jimmy Chin and documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi, as the subject of the film Free Solo. The film received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (2018), among other prestigious honors.

Honnold teamed up with Tommy Caldwell in Yosemite on June 6, 2018. They completed the route in 1:58:07, becoming the first climbers to complete the route in less than two hours.

National Geographic acquired Honnold in 2021 for a unique docuseries about his attempt to scale the peaks of Greenland. Honnold introduced a podcast about ascension in 2021.

Personal life

Honnold lived in a van for more than a decade. "I don't think 'van life' is particularly appealing," he says. "It's not like I love being in a car, but I love being in all these places." I love being in Yosemite; I love being where the weather is good; and I love being able to travel in all weather. And be able to do it in a manner that I am not. And because of this, it's unlikely that living in a car is really necessary. I'd like to teleport a house from place to place if I could, as I could, to live in a nice comfortable house. Well, the van is actually quite nice. I like having everything within arm's reach. If I'm staying in a hotel room – like, sometimes you're put up in a really nice hotel room – and you're like, 'Man, I wish I had my [pee] bottle.' Why would you walk all the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night when you could just lean over and grab your bottle and go? The van he slept in was custom-outfitted with a kitchenette and cabinets.

Honnold bought a house in the Las Vegas area in 2017. "I didn't have furniture at first, so I spent the first two weeks in the van in the driveway." It seemed more like home than a deserted house." He updated the Ford Econoline van he had lived in since 2007 and installed 200,000 miles on a new 2016 Ram ProMaster, which he still lives and travels in for the majority of the year.

Honnold is a vegetarian, and he does not drink alcohol or use opioids. He is an anti-religion atheist and a feminist, and he is an avid reader with an interest in classical literature, environmentalism, and economics.

He runs or hikes to maintain fitness as the ascensions.

Honnold met Sanni McCandless at a book signing in 2015; the two became a couple soon after. In Free Solo, Sanni and her friendship with Honnold appear prominently. Honnold revealed that he and McCandless were involved on December 25, 2019. He revealed it on social media. Honnold revealed that he and McCandless had married on September 13, 2020, posting it on Instagram. Dierdre Wolownick, Alex Honnold's mother, began climbing El Capitan at the age of 60 and later set a new record at the age of 70.

Source

Awards

• 2010: Golden Piton award from Climbing magazine, for endurance climbing
• 2015: Honnold together with Tommy Caldwell was awarded the Piolets d'Or, for the first full traverse of the Fitz Roy Range in Patagonia, Argentina.
• 2018: Robert and Miriam Underhill Award from American Alpine Club, for excellence in various fields of climbing
• 2018: Special mention of Piolets d'Or for his outstanding contribution to climbing during 2017