Original subtitles

In the high -stakes game of free solo climbing, Alex Honnold is the best in

world. Free soloing is climbing a route without a rope, no protection, nothing.

There's no room for error.

If you fall, you're going to die.

Now, the Master Free Soloist is after the biggest and scariest game of all,

Yosemite's iconic 2 ,000 -foot wall of Half Dome.

In order for us to basically have them without a rope. There isn't anything

I can think of that requires that kind of concentration for that length of time

with the penalty being certain death if you make any mistake.

Perhaps no sport walks the razor's edge between success and disaster like free

solo climbing.

Free soloing means no rope. It means just you and the rock. It's the

most pure form of rock climbing known to man.

Without a rope, there's nothing to stop a deadly fall, which makes free soloing

the most dangerous way to climb.

There is a...

Pretty strong mental dialogue and a pretty strong engagement with fear and

There's no second chance on soloing. There's no safety net. There's nothing.

If you fall, you fall down the face and you hit the ground and you die.

Given these high stakes,

free soloists are a small, elite group.

And at the forefront of this group, the boldest of the bold, stands one unlikely

hero. Tell us who you are.

How long have you been climbing?

I'm Alex Honnold. I've been climbing maybe 12

years. So when you meet Alex Honnold, you're going to be like, huh, this guy

a bumbling, dorky, awkward kind of goofball.

Is it kind of like this?

Do you have girls in here a lot?

Do I look like I have girls in here a lot?

until he steps on the rock, and then he's literally a whole other person. He

becomes this poised, graceful, calculated, badass dude doing the

biggest free solos in the world.

Honnold's on another level than anyone else out there.

It's like he doesn't even feel fear or feel any of the normal human emotions

that anybody else feels.

He has this ability to just shut his brain off and do the...

sickest things that have ever been done.

There are very few climbers in the pantheon of high -level free soloing.

Probably like 0 .001 % of climbers even try to free solo.

It's just this rarefied air that not many climbers even want to risk

It's intense.

And several of these top soloists have been killed by the sport.

What can people do without a rope? It's a very difficult...

Difficult and dangerous proposition to even consider.

Now Alex has come along, and it's just sort of a natural progression. A little

bit more mental control, a little bit better technically, a little bit better

shape, a little bit bigger plans, you know, more ambitious.

Basically, when I'm soloing, the challenge is being able to execute the

perfectly that you feel 100 % secure.

But I still try to push myself in soloing as much as I can.

Now, today's greatest free soloist is going on a high -stakes mission to take

free soloing to a new level by conquering truly massive walls without a

rope.

The distinctive thing about what I'm doing is that I'm soloing big, big

Like, there's just nobody else doing it.

Soloing, climbing without a rope, when people do do it, it's usually on a

small scale, 80, 100 feet, 200 feet.

So to do it on a 2 ,000 -foot scale is really unprecedented.

Like the ultimate commitment to adventure that I can really think of is

on this huge big wall without a rope, just go for it and give it.

It's super inspiring. It's also a little like, ooh, like, you know, you could

get yourself some chills just thinking about it.

Alex's first stop on its quest for big wall free soloing is Utah,

home to the unique and stunning landscape of the Sandstone Desert.

The desert is an amazing place for climbing.

It's a totally beautiful area.

There are towers, big sandstone walls, a perfect parallel -sided crag.

Of the desert's many proud rock formations, Perhaps none is more revered

climbers than the 1 ,000 -foot Moonlight Buttress.

It would be Alex Honnold's greatest free solo yet.

Honnold's solo on Moonlight Buttress is pretty much the most mind -blowing thing

that's happened in climbing ever.

Moonlight Buttress was inspiring to me because it's such a beautiful, perfect

route. Some of the tallest, most continuous desert features that you can

I think this is about as big as it gets.

Forty years ago, nobody could have imagined that Moonlight Buttress could

be climbed with a rope. He can just go out and do it in an hour and a half with

no rope.

The sitting around reflecting, like, do I want to do this? Do I not want to do

this? You know, is this something I can do? Like, that's the really scary stuff.

It's all just, like, games that you're playing within your head.

That's when I'm committing to the route, you know? Like, on the ground still,

like, in the van, I've committed I'm going to do Moonlight.

The position is amazing. That's half the appeal of the route.

Moonlight is like 700 feet of continuous splitter finger crack.

Just like a one -inch figure up a straight blank wall.

Basically, you just put your fingers straight into the crack and just turn

a little to the side, and they just wedge in there.

Finger locking feels...

Very exposed.

You only have like a tiny amount of skin inside the crack. You know, like half

of two fingers.

And your toes are just pasted against the wall.

So little of your body is actually touching the rocks. And then it's just

air around you.

He fell off that thing, one clean shot to the ground.

To be able to just ignore that 1 ,000 feet of air below you and be able to

perform and focus, no one else out there can really do that the way

that he can.

counting my breaths, making sure I'm not pumped, you know, like getting to

little stances and shaking out for a minute. The little things that you have

think about in order to do it, you know, like left, right, which sequence you're

doing.

But I mean, there's nothing that I'm really thinking about. I'm just doing

So about 750 feet on moonlight, you get to the crux of one of those pitches.

It's an amazing feeling because it's super exposed.

You just have like a cubic inch of finger shoved into the crack.

And then you have both your feet just kind of pasted on little nothings.

Feel like you're stepping into the void.

Like your whole body is in the air.

Sometimes when I'm soloing, I do have those moments of anxiety where you're

totally sure what you've gotten yourself into.

Shake it off and keep climbing.

All the factors are under my control.

That's why moonlight's like the coolest thing ever.

See that? It's like the full, the full freaking, like the one arm off the

pinky's texture. That's so cool.

That was a pleasure.

It's an amazing feeling. The 100 % certainty that you will not fall off it

what keeps you from ever falling off it. Being totally certain.

That's when all of a sudden it just becomes peaceful.

It's so free to climb that way.

Oh, boy.

Oh, boy.

Oh, check out the no -hands knee bar, baby.

The position is amazing.

By the time you get to the top, you're climbing on the very tip of this

that narrows as you get high.

Super exposed to air all around you.

It was awesome.

I mean, you know, how do you think about it? It's like freaking rad.

It's kind of hard for people, I think, to comprehend or wrap their minds around

somebody being able to do what Arnold can do.

I mean, he's such a world -class athlete.

It's up there and comparable with the greatest sports achievements of all

Freaking Honnold's walking on the moon as far as I'm concerned.

But Moonlight Buttress was yesterday for Alex Honnold, who's already looking for

the next big solo climb, looming above California's Yosemite Valley, the iconic

2 ,000 -foot wall of Half Dome.

is a far bigger prize.

Climbing Moonlight was just a little step along this path of soloing.

I knew that Half Dome would be a huge step, miles harder than Moonlight.

And so it's always there, and you're always thinking about it.

Getting psyched up for the free solo challenge of his lifetime,

Alex heads to the place where his climbing adventures began.

We're at my mom's house.

My childhood home.

Hello, Mother.

I brought you a sundae.

Really? Oh, really.

My name is Deirdre Walnick, and I'm Alex Honnold's mom.

I'm a woman.

He could stand up when he was born, which is absolutely ridiculously unheard

and he's been climbing ever since then. We couldn't have him in a crib, couldn't

have him in a playpen, because he'd be out of those things before anybody could

hop up and yell, Watch out!

Yes, I worried about him, but I soon learned that he is very, what's the

controlled. He knows exactly what he's doing, and he knows what he can do, what

he's capable of.

This is the collection of all the magazines that my son is in.

Did you ever imagine your son would be such a star?

I never did, no. But then, way back, I didn't even know that rock climbing

was... Portrait.

Poster of myself on the wall of my room.

Come on. Who would put that up? My mom put that up. She's way into that kind of

thing. When I was a kid, I was way cuter, and my parents put me in dresses,

which is why I have a lot of repressed rage.

It's weird.

So why is this room so messy?

Just part of the persona.

I'm sure Mozart had a messy room.

There is no life other than climbing, really, in Alex's world.

But he reads. He reads voraciously.

You can't worry all the time.

You know, you get to a point where you just have to let that go. And I had to

let that go years ago.

Obviously, I'm a full -fledged climbing junkie now. After I turned 19, I dropped

out of college, stole the family minivan, and then just started rock

all the time from then on.

I was just drawn to go climbing.

I think my lifestyle can just be summed up as I do whatever I have to do to

climb as much as I can in different places all the time. And so the only way

go climbing all the time is to live in a van.

I'm Alex Arnold. This is my ride.

Here's the living room.

It's pretty dirty. I'm trying to tidy right now.

There's the bedroom.

Is that where the magic happens?

That is where the magic happens.

I wish.

And then, oh, and there's the kitchen.

That shelf.

Kitchen, huh?

Pretty good.

I don't know, maybe this is like the garage.

If I could live in a four -star hotel all the time, that'd be sick.

No, I don't love being dirty all the time.

I mean, I do it because I want to climb all the time, and that's just the only

way you can do it.

Yosemite National Park is home to some of the world's most legendary rock

formations.

Until now, climbers have never dared to go free solo.

on these huge walls which normally require days to climb and

always rope as a lifeline thousands of feet off the ground

the idea of of heading up

that gigantic chunk of you know granite without a rope and what's required to be

able to keep your mind together in doing a 2 000 foot route which is going to

take you hours there isn't Anything else I can think of that requires that kind

of concentration for that length of time with the penalty being certain death if

you make any mistake.

From pretty much anywhere I hang out in the valley, I can look up and just see

Half Dome above me.

It's just this enormous, perfect wall.

Amazingly beautiful.

Half Dome was a huge step for me because...

It was just twice as big as anything I'd ever sold.

And it's more intimidating.

It's huge.

Half Dome is 2 ,000 feet high.

It's one of the biggest and steepest faces in Yosemite, and it was first

in 1957, and it was the first big wall to ever climb in the world.

In 1957, Roy Robbins led a team and established the route over five days,

was pretty groundbreaking at the time.

The face of Half Dome just stood there and said, Try me if you dare.

And so we were a little bit concerned about that.

I was on the first descent of the Northwest Face, which we did in five

And at that time, that was the leading, premier climb in North America.

And it was scary. It was big.

We felt like we'd entered a different world then.

And it just showed climbers in the valley what was possible to tackle these

bigger walls.

If anyone had told me in 1957 that someone would solo this route in a

a few hours, I'd have told you you're crazy.

It's not possible.

So it's interesting that 51 years later, somebody comes along and does it

without a rope. I mean, that's a representative of what is happening in

sport at this time. That's sort of an ultimate statement of what's going on

right now.

You spend two hours walking up.

You have this enormous wall looming over you, and you have to, like, not get

psyched out that entire time.

Possibly the bigger challenge is just getting mentally prepared, basically

wanting to solo the wall, because your natural instinct is to look at it and be

like, oh, my God, that's intimidating.

There's no other time in climbing when you have to be honest with yourself as

much as so long.

Like, no matter how much I want to climb something, you know, can I actually

climb it?

Looking up at this enormous wall, and you're like, am I really doing this?

And then you're like, all right, I'm doing it, and you just go for it.

I like the simplicity of soloing.

You don't have any gear on you. You don't have a partner.

You move faster.

You never climb better than when you're soloing walls, which is part of the fun

of it.

You execute the entire wall perfectly.

For the most part, you'd be taking, you know, like a 1 ,500 -foot fall to the

ground. Yeah, I think about that, and I think about how hideous that would be.

I should be fully conscious of both ends of the spectrum.

I'm going to do something that's going to be sick, and it's going to be so

or, like, I'm going to fail trying, and it's going to be the most hideous four

seconds of my life while I just free fall to the ground.

Climbing Half Dome took me two hours and 50 minutes, and it's hard to be

completely focused and completely on your game for that long.

Basically, when I'm soloing, normally I have almost like a mental armor.

You could say I'm in the zone.

I have something that's, let's say, protecting my head from thinking too

And for whatever reason on Half Dome, I ran out of whatever armor I had.

I found myself, like, 1 ,800 feet off the ground.

I was like, what am I doing up here?

Why am I doing this? You know, just all the questions all of a sudden entered my

mind.

I think doubt is probably the biggest danger in so long. Because basically as

soon as you start to hesitate, then you're screwed.

I just had this like mini nervous breakdown.

I never had anything quite like that happen before.

Nothing really happened. It just all happened inside my head while I stood

for a few minutes.

At some point in there, I just dealt with whatever was going on and then just

climbed it.

Yeah, it was cool to, like, escape, you know, my little prison.

I haven't had a moment of panic like that in a really long time.

I was like...

Once I made that move and was suddenly into the easier terrain, it was

fantastic.

And I just charged the summit.

Northwest base of Hampton without a rope.

It's a marvelous thing to even consider the mental mastery that's necessary to

actually do that.

I mean, it took some vision to get up there, but, man, it took some freaking

balls to actually do this thing, for sure.

So you climb from all the way from that valley all the way to where we're

standing now?

That's impressive.

Thanks. I think it's crazy.

Too close to a death witch.

You must be not afraid of heights at all.

Not really, no.

He's stupid, but impressive nevertheless.

What did your parents say when you told them you were doing it?

I don't know. Mom was, like, surprised and psyched about it.

I don't worry about Alex too much. I think that his, you know, his mind is

strong, and I think that his reason for doing what he's doing is pure.

There are a lot of different reasons to follow a route like that.

because the route itself is amazingly beautiful.

It's because it's hard for me and I just want to do something that challenges

me. Partially because it's never been done before.

I think that Alex is going to live a long, happy life.

Maybe not with a lot of girls in it, but with a lot of hard solos in it.

Yeah, impressing girls is definitely a reason to solo walls.

But so far it hasn't worked at all, but I'm still optimistic.

Kind of like having chopsticks.

I feel like a chimp using a stick to fish for ants and stuff.

It's like primitive tool use, dude.

This is what makes us human.