What it took to free solo El Capitan
“SO STOKED. I just sent the proj!” Alex Honnold said in a voicemail from El Capitan on June 3. “Hiking down the East Ledges. Thanks for the support up here this season and, you know, just in general. I’m feeling pretty stoked out of my gourd.”
That day, Honnold, 31, made the first free solo of a VI on El Capitan. At 5:32 a.m., Honnold pulled on a pair of TC Pros and began up Free rider, a 2,900-foot 5.13a on the southwest face. Honnold navigated 10 pitches of slab on Free blast to Mammoth Terraces, where he down climbed 190 feet to Heart Ledges. From Heart, he deviated onto an unbolted 5.10 face to avoid a 5.11c slab move. Higher, he stepped away from the standard line and entered the 200-foot 5.10d Monster Off width lower than normal to avoid an exposed 5.11d down climb traverse. Honnold continued on Free rider, climbing the Huber Boulder Problem pitch, a delicate V7 slab at 1,700 feet. With nowhere to stop, Honnold linked the two 5.12b Enduro Corner pitches into the Free rider Traverse (5.12b), a 150-foot section usually broken up into three pitches with hanging belays. From Roundtable Ledge, at the end of the Free rider Traverse, Honnold climbed the last 600 feet of 5.11+ crack and off width in 20 minutes, topping out at 9:28 a.m. He’d been on the wall for 3:56.
This story is from the Issue 155 edition of Climbing.
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This story is from the Issue 155 edition of Climbing.
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New Dawn
On November 21, 2016, after an eight-day push, 23-year-old Czech climber Adam Ondra topped out the 32-pitch Dawn Wall (VI 5.14d) on Yosemite’s El Capitan, a line many consider the hardest free big wall on the planet. With eight pitches of 5.14 and 12 pitches of 5.13, the route garnered mainstream-media attention in January 2015 when Tommy Caldwell, who had put seven years of work into exploring and freeing the route, and Kevin Jorgeson nabbed the first free ascent after 19 days on the wall. Ondra, who had never been to the Valley, trad climbed, or been on a big wall before, nabbed the second ascent, thanks in part to his support team of Pavel Blazek and Heinz Zak.Although Ondra has ticked some of the planet’s hardest sport climbs and boulder problems, critics assumed the experience-driven discipline of big wall free climbing would shut him down. Despite success that seemingly came easy, conditions, skin, and the route’s pure technical difficulty posed challenges along the way. Caldwell, Jorgeson, and Ondra spoke to us about the nuts, bolts, and near-invisible micro-crimps of this historic ascent.
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