Read Online Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure by David Roberts, Alex Honnold - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Roberts, Alex Honnold
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stood silently for a good five minutes. And I hadn’t cheated by grabbing the biner.
I took the final 5.7 slab to the summit at a near run. Twenty or more hikers sat on the edge of the precipice, witnessing my final charge. But no one said a word. No yells, no pictures, nothing. Maybe they thought I was a lost hiker. Maybe they couldn’t conceive of where I’d come from, or maybe they just didn’t give a shit. When I mantled onto the actual top, I was met with a flood of humanity, a hundred-odd people spread across the summit plateau. Tourists ate lunch next to me. They made out, took scenic photos. People everywhere.
It was so weird. Like parachuting out of Vietnam into a shopping mall.
I was shirtless, pumped, panting. Psyched out of my mind. Flooded with conflicting emotions. I was embarrassed that I’d gotten scared on the slab. But I was thrilled beyond words to have finally done something that I’d been thinking about for months. Ashamed of myself for maybe pushing it a little further than I’d planned. Yet still proud of myself.
On the summit, part of me wished that someone, anyone, had noticed that I’d just done something noteworthy—though maybe it was better that I didn’t have to talk to anybody. How could I have expressed what my last few hours had been like? It was enough that I knew.
I didn’t make a sound. I took off my shoes and started hiking down the Cable route. It was only then that someone noticed. “Oh, my God,” this dude blurted out. “You’re hiking barefoot! You’re so tough!”
D ESPITE ASCENDING AT A “ SLOW JOG ” rather than a “sprint,” Alex completed the 2,000-foot climb, which spans twenty-three pitches for roped climbers, in the unthinkably shorttime of two hours and fifty minutes. Seven years later, no one else has seriously contemplated, let alone attempted, a free solo of the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome.
Along with the outpouring of incredulous and wacky shout-outs on sites such as Supertopo.com, there was praise of the highest order from the peers who could best appreciate the magnitude of Alex’s free solo. John Long, one of the original Stonemasters whom a younger Alex had regarded as a hero, commented, “There isn’t anything else I can think of that requires that level of concentration, for that length of time, with the penalty being certain death if you make the tiniest mistake.”
Sender Films got in touch with Alex, proposing to craft a twenty-two-minute film around reenactments of the Moonlight Buttress and Half Dome solos.
Alone on the Wall
would win prizes at mountain festivals all over North America and Europe, and turn Alex from a climbing prodigy into a minor celebrity.
None of this, however, went to Alex’s head. “In the days after Half Dome,” he reported, “any huge sense of gratification eluded me. I felt like I had kind of botched the climb. I’d gotten away with something. It wasn’t a perfect performance.”
In his climbing bible, he jotted his usual laconic entry to document the trailblazing free solo, downgrading the route even as he recorded it.
9-6-08
Reg NW Face—5.11d? solo 2:50 [2 hours 50 minutes] on route.
Higbee, 5.10 bypass. Sketchy on slab.
Alex closed the note with a sad-face emoticon, and the query to himself: “Do better?”
CHAPTER THREE
FEAR AND LOVING IN LAS VEGAS
A S ALEX BEGAN TO WIN a small measure of fame for his bold free solos, he started to taste the rewards of sponsorship. The first company to put him on board, through the championing of his climbing buddy Brad Barlage, was Black Diamond, the Utah-based firm that manufactures high-tech climbing gear as well as ski equipment and outdoor apparel. In the years to follow, Alex would win sponsorship from La Sportiva, Clif Bar, New England Ropes, and, most important, The North Face, whose “dream team” (officially known as the Global Team athletes) constitutes a roster of stellar rock climbers and mountaineers that is the envy
I took the final 5.7 slab to the summit at a near run. Twenty or more hikers sat on the edge of the precipice, witnessing my final charge. But no one said a word. No yells, no pictures, nothing. Maybe they thought I was a lost hiker. Maybe they couldn’t conceive of where I’d come from, or maybe they just didn’t give a shit. When I mantled onto the actual top, I was met with a flood of humanity, a hundred-odd people spread across the summit plateau. Tourists ate lunch next to me. They made out, took scenic photos. People everywhere.
It was so weird. Like parachuting out of Vietnam into a shopping mall.
I was shirtless, pumped, panting. Psyched out of my mind. Flooded with conflicting emotions. I was embarrassed that I’d gotten scared on the slab. But I was thrilled beyond words to have finally done something that I’d been thinking about for months. Ashamed of myself for maybe pushing it a little further than I’d planned. Yet still proud of myself.
On the summit, part of me wished that someone, anyone, had noticed that I’d just done something noteworthy—though maybe it was better that I didn’t have to talk to anybody. How could I have expressed what my last few hours had been like? It was enough that I knew.
I didn’t make a sound. I took off my shoes and started hiking down the Cable route. It was only then that someone noticed. “Oh, my God,” this dude blurted out. “You’re hiking barefoot! You’re so tough!”
D ESPITE ASCENDING AT A “ SLOW JOG ” rather than a “sprint,” Alex completed the 2,000-foot climb, which spans twenty-three pitches for roped climbers, in the unthinkably shorttime of two hours and fifty minutes. Seven years later, no one else has seriously contemplated, let alone attempted, a free solo of the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome.
Along with the outpouring of incredulous and wacky shout-outs on sites such as Supertopo.com, there was praise of the highest order from the peers who could best appreciate the magnitude of Alex’s free solo. John Long, one of the original Stonemasters whom a younger Alex had regarded as a hero, commented, “There isn’t anything else I can think of that requires that level of concentration, for that length of time, with the penalty being certain death if you make the tiniest mistake.”
Sender Films got in touch with Alex, proposing to craft a twenty-two-minute film around reenactments of the Moonlight Buttress and Half Dome solos.
Alone on the Wall
would win prizes at mountain festivals all over North America and Europe, and turn Alex from a climbing prodigy into a minor celebrity.
None of this, however, went to Alex’s head. “In the days after Half Dome,” he reported, “any huge sense of gratification eluded me. I felt like I had kind of botched the climb. I’d gotten away with something. It wasn’t a perfect performance.”
In his climbing bible, he jotted his usual laconic entry to document the trailblazing free solo, downgrading the route even as he recorded it.
9-6-08
Reg NW Face—5.11d? solo 2:50 [2 hours 50 minutes] on route.
Higbee, 5.10 bypass. Sketchy on slab.
Alex closed the note with a sad-face emoticon, and the query to himself: “Do better?”
CHAPTER THREE
FEAR AND LOVING IN LAS VEGAS
A S ALEX BEGAN TO WIN a small measure of fame for his bold free solos, he started to taste the rewards of sponsorship. The first company to put him on board, through the championing of his climbing buddy Brad Barlage, was Black Diamond, the Utah-based firm that manufactures high-tech climbing gear as well as ski equipment and outdoor apparel. In the years to follow, Alex would win sponsorship from La Sportiva, Clif Bar, New England Ropes, and, most important, The North Face, whose “dream team” (officially known as the Global Team athletes) constitutes a roster of stellar rock climbers and mountaineers that is the envy
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