With no ropes, Alex Honnold conquered El Capitan’s Freerider route over the weekend. Scaling the 5.12d/13a heartstopper in about four hours is widely considered the greatest feat in the history of the sport. Photographer Jimmy Chin was there to capture all the action:
The ascent usually involves stopping overnight with gear. Honnold tried not to wake up some sleeping climbers he passed on the way up. Via NPR:
“I woke up one guy and he sort of said, ‘Oh, hey.’ Then when I went by, I think he discreetly woke up his buddies because when I looked down they were all three standing there like ‘What the f***?’ ”
By conquering El Capitan, Honnold fulfilled a goal he had worked toward for years. He first wrote about the potential record-setting climb in his journal in 2009 — but he repeatedly found reasons to set it aside, as he said last year on the Basecamp podcast with Gripped editor Brandon Pullan.
“Obviously, that’s like, the thing to do,” Honnold said when discussing El Capitan with Pullan in 2016, adding, “it’s always seemed really scary.”
Here’s another shot he took, posted by NatGeo:
• Alex Honnold Scales El Capitan Without Ropes, And The Climbing World Reels (NPR)