Mountain climber Alex Honnold defied death and made history at California’s Yosemite National Park ― and he did it all under four hours.
The 31-year-old elite climber on Saturday became the first person to scale the nearly 3,000-foot face of Yosemite’s El Capitan granite formation without ropes or safety gear, an act known in mountaineering as free-soloing.
Take a virtual tour of Yosemite’s El Capitan via Google Maps
National Geographic, which exclusively reported Honnold’s ascent, called it perhaps “the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport.” Fellow elite climber Tommy Caldwell had another way of describing Honnold’s feat:
“This is the ‘moon landing’ of free-soloing,” Caldwell told National Geographic. Caldwell would know difficulty: In 2015, with a partner and safety gear, he scaled the Dawn Wall, considered El Capitan’s most difficult route.
After Honnold completed his climb in 3 hours and 56 minutes, he shared a photo of his climb via Facebook and said he was “so stoked to realize a life dream today.”
Staggering achievement. First solo free climb on El Capitan.
Just looking at the images makes me break out in a cold sweat....
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Considering people are already willing to watch 6-plus hours of golf (which is just slightly more interesting than watching paint dry or cement harden) and have come to consider poker-playing a spectator sport, the idea of viewers watching someone climb a rock does not surprise me at all. -"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?
