Read Online Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure by David Roberts, Alex Honnold - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Roberts, Alex Honnold
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of young aspirants worldwide. In 2014, the Ball Watch company, whose wristwatches fetch prices upwards of $2,500, ran full-page ads in the
New York Times Magazine
featuring a photo of Alex standing on Half Dome’s Thank God Ledge, accompanied by the claim, “With no ropes and no protective gear, there is simply no room for error. That’s why a dependable timepiece like Ball Watch is important in an environment with truly adverse conditions.” Alex endorsed the product with the pithy phrase, “Thewatch that rocks,” even though he never wears a watch of any kind on his wrist when he climbs.
In 2008, Boulder-based Sender Films, founded nine years earlier by Peter Mortimer as a bare-bones do-it-yourself video company, took notice of Alex. By then, Sender was putting out adventure films that were as well crafted and authentic as anything of their kind produced in this country or abroad. As Mortimer recalls, “We were hanging out in Yosemite a lot. Alex’s solos of the Rostrum and Astroman were on our radar. We always have our ear to the ground, hoping to find the next hot young climber. Then when he soloed Moonlight Buttress, he really got our attention.”
Mortimer adds, “Everybody else in our business was cranking out films about bouldering and sport climbing. I wasn’t so interested in that. What I wanted to film was ‘danger climbing’—big walls, big-range mountaineering on the cutting edge, and of course free soloing.” For a new film titled
The Sharp End
, Mortimer and partner Nick Rosen enlisted a corps of strong young American rock climbers and set out for the Adršpach, a massif of steep sandstone towers just inside the Czech Republic near the German border, where it merges with the legendary Elbsandsteingebirge. (The “sharp end” is climbing jargon for going first on the rope, as the leader typically takes all the serious risks.)
The Sharp End
is a glorious smorgasbord of wild exploits performed by adventurers in the United States and Europe. The episodes include trad “death routes” (extremely deficient in protection) in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder; long and sketchy aid climbing routes in Yosemite; alpine ventures on untouched spires in the Shafat Fortress of India; wingsuit BASE jumping off precipices in Switzerland; and free soloing, though the star in the film is not Alex but Steph Davis, who solves the 5.10+ Pervertical Sanctuary on the Diamond on Colorado’s Longs Peak. Alex’s role in the film is little more than a cameo appearance, but it dramatically foreshadows thestardom toward which he was headed. In fact, Sender chose for its movie jacket a still photo of Alex leading a desperate-looking pitch.
The Adršpach and Elbsandsteingebirge thrust out of the forest along the river Elbe, southeast of Dresden, in a wild burst of dark gray pinnacles. There, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, a cadre of hard men whose climbing culture was utterly insulated even from their peers in the Alps put up the most difficult rock routes anywhere in the world. As they did so, they developed a local style bound by ironclad “ethics” unlike that of any other scene.
Americans and Western Europeans discovered the Dresden arena only in the late 1960s, and when some of the best outsiders ventured there to sample that scene, they were uniformly impressed—and intimidated. By 2008, some forty years later, the purism of the eastern German and Czech locals still ruled the crags. In the Elbsandsteingebirge, big ring bolts, drilled frighteningly far apart (as much as twenty or thirty meters), form the only fixed anchors and protection. Pitons, nuts, and cams are not allowed. The only removable protection a climber is allowed to place is knotted nylon slings jammed into cracks—a practice with which American, French, and Swiss climbers were wholly unfamiliar. To make matters worse—or purer—chalk for the fingers is not allowed. Lacking decent rock shoes, the Dresden climbers put up many
New York Times Magazine
featuring a photo of Alex standing on Half Dome’s Thank God Ledge, accompanied by the claim, “With no ropes and no protective gear, there is simply no room for error. That’s why a dependable timepiece like Ball Watch is important in an environment with truly adverse conditions.” Alex endorsed the product with the pithy phrase, “Thewatch that rocks,” even though he never wears a watch of any kind on his wrist when he climbs.
In 2008, Boulder-based Sender Films, founded nine years earlier by Peter Mortimer as a bare-bones do-it-yourself video company, took notice of Alex. By then, Sender was putting out adventure films that were as well crafted and authentic as anything of their kind produced in this country or abroad. As Mortimer recalls, “We were hanging out in Yosemite a lot. Alex’s solos of the Rostrum and Astroman were on our radar. We always have our ear to the ground, hoping to find the next hot young climber. Then when he soloed Moonlight Buttress, he really got our attention.”
Mortimer adds, “Everybody else in our business was cranking out films about bouldering and sport climbing. I wasn’t so interested in that. What I wanted to film was ‘danger climbing’—big walls, big-range mountaineering on the cutting edge, and of course free soloing.” For a new film titled
The Sharp End
, Mortimer and partner Nick Rosen enlisted a corps of strong young American rock climbers and set out for the Adršpach, a massif of steep sandstone towers just inside the Czech Republic near the German border, where it merges with the legendary Elbsandsteingebirge. (The “sharp end” is climbing jargon for going first on the rope, as the leader typically takes all the serious risks.)
The Sharp End
is a glorious smorgasbord of wild exploits performed by adventurers in the United States and Europe. The episodes include trad “death routes” (extremely deficient in protection) in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder; long and sketchy aid climbing routes in Yosemite; alpine ventures on untouched spires in the Shafat Fortress of India; wingsuit BASE jumping off precipices in Switzerland; and free soloing, though the star in the film is not Alex but Steph Davis, who solves the 5.10+ Pervertical Sanctuary on the Diamond on Colorado’s Longs Peak. Alex’s role in the film is little more than a cameo appearance, but it dramatically foreshadows thestardom toward which he was headed. In fact, Sender chose for its movie jacket a still photo of Alex leading a desperate-looking pitch.
The Adršpach and Elbsandsteingebirge thrust out of the forest along the river Elbe, southeast of Dresden, in a wild burst of dark gray pinnacles. There, during the first two decades of the twentieth century, a cadre of hard men whose climbing culture was utterly insulated even from their peers in the Alps put up the most difficult rock routes anywhere in the world. As they did so, they developed a local style bound by ironclad “ethics” unlike that of any other scene.
Americans and Western Europeans discovered the Dresden arena only in the late 1960s, and when some of the best outsiders ventured there to sample that scene, they were uniformly impressed—and intimidated. By 2008, some forty years later, the purism of the eastern German and Czech locals still ruled the crags. In the Elbsandsteingebirge, big ring bolts, drilled frighteningly far apart (as much as twenty or thirty meters), form the only fixed anchors and protection. Pitons, nuts, and cams are not allowed. The only removable protection a climber is allowed to place is knotted nylon slings jammed into cracks—a practice with which American, French, and Swiss climbers were wholly unfamiliar. To make matters worse—or purer—chalk for the fingers is not allowed. Lacking decent rock shoes, the Dresden climbers put up many
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