I recently bought the documentary “Free Solo” and have been thinking about it for more than a month now.
The documentary, which won the Oscar for best documentary last month, features rock climber Alex Honnold as he looks to become the first human to free solo climb El Capitan, a 3,000 foot granite monolith in Yosemite National Park.
For those who do not know rock climbing terms, free solo is a climb where the person uses no safety ropes and is done alone. The only thing they usually have is a bag of chalk to help for grip.
If that sounds crazy, it’s because it is. Less than one percent of all rock climbers regularly make a habit of free soloing. You learn many of the ones who have are dead.
This fact weirdly does not bother Honnold who is the focus of the documentary. The 33-year-old is not what you would expect the Michael Jordan of rock climbing and free soloing to look like.
Long limbed, lean and baby-faced, he usually wears the same blank expression he has climbing without a rope into his every day life. It serves him well in climbing when he is thousands of feet up to stay relaxed. As he puts it, getting scared up there does him no good, so he learned to not worry about it.
I first came across Honnold in 2012 when “60 Minutes” did a feature on him. It seems like climbing is about the only thing he has been interested in since he was a pre-teen. Despite being the most well known climber in the world for his feats free-soloing, he lived in his van for 10 years so he could go climbing around the country depending on good weather conditions.
His attitude towards the risk of death is just another level of the challenge, it’s not because he is a thrill seeker with a death wish. As he explains in interviews, people are likely to die every day driving to work more randomly than he is rock climbing without a rope.
What he means is the amount of prep he usually puts into free soloing a route makes it so when he eventually climbs it without a rope, it no longer feels dangerous to him.
In the documentary, we see Honnold keep a detailed climbing journal of every sequence he will have to do in his climb up El Capitan and notes to himself on how to execute each one. He knows free soloing is more about the mental part of himself than the physical.
The documentary takes place from place from some time in 2016 until June 3 2017, when he completed the climb. It has been a goal of his for eight years since there are no other “holy grail” routes he hasn’t free soloed.
He talks the viewer through the difficult sections he is worried about and what each will take to complete. We see him in the beginning fail as he falls off on these sections as he practices them with a rope.
Also different in his life is for the first time he has a serious girl friend, who is obviously worried about the consequences; but knows there is no way she can keep him from his dream.
Honnold suffers two separate minor injuries while climbing with his new girlfriend after years of avoiding injuries and wonders if she is a distraction while he is preparing for his ultimate climb.
Another factor are the documentary filmmakers, most of whom are professional climbers themselves and are friends of Honnold. The stress of possibly seeing their friend die while they are filming, or worse possibly distracting him and causing him to fall, weighs on all their minds.
Honnold makes an attempt halfway through the film, but bails early enough in the climb to get back down. It is the first time he says he has ever quit a climb and says it just did not seem right with all the cameras around.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.