I’ve done a lot of crazy things on mountains. So you need a good understanding of your body and an excellent memory for moves. You learn a tough climb in sections: if you don’t have your hold right here, if you don’t put your foot correctly there, if you don’t bend your knee at this bit, then your body’s not going to have enough tension and you’re going to fall off. If he hadn’t had a rope, if he’d been free-soloing, well, that would be a different conversation.įalling is pretty standard at the top level when you’re pushing yourself. That part of the climb is so overhung, he just dropped down into air. Alex didn’t slam down into the wall, though. The light is nice, the Aegean looks amazing and, given the way his legs and arms are, he seems frozen in time. ![]() Alex is falling right into the negative space. I like this shot because, compositionally, it’s very clean. It’s a little tricky taking shots that way, working out of a bag while dangling from a rope that’s attached to the cliff via anchors. We’re both about 30m up, me on an adjacent route. Photograph: Jimmy Chin/National Geographic/Jimmy Chin Sheer thrills … Alex Honnold climbing El Capitan without a rope, in the film Free Solo. It’s one of the most dangerous things you can do because there’s no room for any error at all. I’ve had close friends who died base-jumping, ice-climber friends who died on big mountains, and one friend who died “free-soloing”. So three months later, when a magazine asked me to go on a rock shoot, I agreed and I’ve been climbing ever since. But I was 22 and my photography career was just starting to be a thing. It shook me up and I swore I was finished with climbing. I just remember waking up pretty disorientated, with about eight heads looking down at me. I don’t remember the impact so there was no trauma associated with that. It all came away from the wall and I hit the ground 11 metres below. I was just waiting for my equipment to catch me, but it didn’t. I collapsed my right lung, too, and had kidney and liver damage. I broke my neck, my pelvic bone and four ribs. The worst fall I ever had happened while I was in Aspen, Colorado, in 2002. At the time of Honold’s solo in 2011 it was the hardest route every soloed in Yosemite.When you’re climbing, things can go from fun to serious pretty quick. ![]() It was first on-sighted by Jerry Moffatt in 1984. The Phoenix was first climbed by Ray Jardine in 1977 using siege tactics and prototype Friends and given the unprecedented grade of 5.13a. The initial tips-laybacking and then flared finger jamming gives way to 80 foot of overhanging thin-hands before the difficult exit right at the top high above the valley floor. Immediately in a no-fall zone, Honnold slowly works his way up the 130 foot crack. Having abseiled in and practiced a few moves, Motimer pulls up Honnold’s harness and abseil rope and Honnold commits. Prior to Free Solo, the award-winning documentary of Alex Honnold’s 2017 epoch-defining free solo of Freerider, little footage of Alex Honnold free-soloing had ever been seen hardly surprising given the seriousness of the routes that Honnold was soloing! However, in footage just released by videographer/filmmaker Peter Mortimer, Honnold is seen free soloing The Phoenix (5.13) high above the Cathedral Falls in Yosemite. In 2011 Alex Honnold free-soloed The Phoenix, the uber classic 5.13 thin-hands crack in Yosemite filmmaker Peter Mortimer shares the back story in newly released footage. Alex Honnold free-soloes The Phoenix (5.13)
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