ALEX HONNOLD Rock Climber
I am speculating that Alex Honnold is on the autistic spectrum. I actually wrote an email to him suggesting this. I emphasized the strengths autism provides. However, most people might not want to have the label because of all the negative associations with being autistic. He never acknowledged the email.
Here are some of the reasons:
Parents. Honnold was born in Sacramento, California, the son of community college professor Dierdre Wolownick (b.1951) and Charles Honnold (1949–2004). His paternal ancestry is German, and his maternal ancestry is Polish.
Alex’s mother, Dierdre Wolownick, said. “Alex’s Dad was a person with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. “He was in a bubble and no one could get in.” Her memoir chronicles the demise of her marriage to Charles, whose unexplained anger and brooding emotional distance she now believes were the result of Asperger’s syndrome. She likens tiny cracks that began to emerge in her marriage to being “like the hairline webs that cover the bottom of your great-grandmother’s soup tureen or sugar bowl, but that don’t stop you from using it.” She described the marriage as “horrible” after they had been divorced.
His father, Charles Honnold was likely on the spectrum. Autism is known to run in families, so it is likely that Alex Honnold’s autistic traits were passed on to him from his father.
Dierdre Wolownick is an accomplished writer, musician (she conducted an orchestra for four years), teacher and author of 17 books on education. She speaks five languages and has taught on three different continents. She speaks regularly for environmental and outdoors groups. After Charles’s death from a heart attack in 2004, Wolownick focused her attention on her two college-aged children, who in return propelled their mother to find a new inner strength. The challenges she overcame seem to me as challenging as any rock wall.
She started climbing at the age of 60 and is the oldest woman to climb El Capitan (first at the age of 66 and then, breaking her own record, again at age 70).
She wrote The Sharp End of Life, A Mother’s Story. She was a goal-driven person and doesn’t think she’s ever set a goal for herself that she hasn’t met. She believes that success is in the preparation.
Add his mother’s drive to the focus possible in people on the spectrum, and then you might understand Alex Honnold.
Childhood and Education
Honnold’s mother likes to tell a story about how he pulled himself to stand on the day he was born – He had really strong thighs and these big hands. Honnold, who tends to skepticism, considers this story apocryphal. Either way, Wolownick said, “You could say he was climbing from day one. He was a horrible kid to raise. Always climbing on stuff. Alex rode a 2-wheeler from the age of about 2½, which scared the bejeebers out of all the moms in our court.”
His father was an ESL teacher, and he had an early Macintosh computer. “The game I remember was laid out in a two-dimensional grid. You were point-of-view walking through basically a maze, and you had to remember the maze,” Honnold said. “All I remember about these games is the left, left, right, right, left, right, left and ‘Whoa, which room am I in?’” He had to remember the sequence, the beta.
As a child, Honnold spent a lot of time by himself. He covered his bedroom floor with so many Legos that his parents permitted him to get rid of his bed.
Alex wore sweatpants to school—every day. There was a gray pair and a blue pair. He wore T-shirts that were two sizes too big, and they said things like, “I Hiked the Grand Canyon,” “Visit Yellowstone,” or “How to Identify Deer Tracks.” He was very good at capture the flag. He could talk to you about the War of 1812 for an hour. It wasn’t so much that he was shy, as he didn’t even bother to try. He would speak to you if you talked to him. He wore hoodies in class, always with the hood up, and he would sit there, but he always knew the answer if a teacher called on him. He’s got sort of a Holden Caulfield thing going on, maybe, in that he’s always on the lookout for a phony.
He began climbing in a climbing gym at the age of 5 and was climbing “many times a week” by the time he was 10. He participated in many national and international youth climbing championships as a teenager.
Gym climbing was also his main form of interaction with his father. Charles was a big man with a burly beard. Although they didn’t talk much, Charles belayed him for hours. When Honnold started to compete, the two drove hundreds of miles to regional and national competitions. “They’d say maybe five words that whole time.”. “But Alex said that’s just how his father was.” His parents were not very happily married. His father would sit on the couch most nights, reading until he fell asleep.
A friend thought Alex got worse in high school. He withdrew further. He hung out with the kids who played Pokémon in the math room at lunch. During sophomore year, Alex got his first girlfriend. Her name was Elizabeth Thomas. She went by E.T. That should give you some idea of the social circle she ran in. I don’t think Alex thought the typical high school stuff was for him. He considered himself more of a loner.
After graduating from Mira Loma High School as part of the International Baccalaureate Programme in 2003, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study civil engineering. His maternal grandfather died, his parents divorced during his first year of college, and Honnold skipped many of his classes to boulder by himself at Indian Rock.
College was heinous. “See, I didn’t live in a dorm. We had a family friend who let me sublet his two-bedroom apartment in town. In my one year at Berkeley, I never met anybody. I never spoke to anybody. That was monkish. I was sitting in an empty building by myself in my boxers all the time. I’d go to Indian Rock a bit and Ironworks [the climbing gym]. I didn’t get into the scene at all. I spent like a year basically in isolation.”
Honnold dropped out of college. “There was no reason for me to be there. Nobody wanted me to be there. I didn’t want to be there. Like, what the fuck? You know? My dad died.” A friend yelled at him “Why aren’t you upset?” A friend thought that deep down, Alex never truly mourned.
After college
After dropping out of Berkeley, he spent time living at home and driving around California to go climbing. “I’d wound up with my mom’s old minivan, and that was my base,” he said. “I’d use it to drive to Joshua Tree to climb, or I’d drive to LA to see my girlfriend. I destroyed that van fairly quickly; it died on me one day, and for the next year, I lived just on my bicycle and in a tent.”
In 2007, he purchased a 2002 Ford Econoline E150 van, which enabled him to focus on climbing and tracking the weather.
Yet despite the resulting fame, Honnold remained an enigma, his privacy guarded by the incomprehensibility of his abilities and by what his friends describe as a nearly pathological shyness. I first met him at the Red River Gorge, Kentucky, in the spring of 2007. His shoulders seemed very broad and his irises, an odd metallic brown, were bigger than most people’s. Although his eyes made him look perpetually dazed and/or surprised, I soon realized he had a ruthlessly analytical brain and a keen bullshit detector. Mostly what I remember is that, if you could get him to speak, pretty much all he would talk about was rock climbing.
Lack of Fear
One of the parts of the brain most affected by autism is the amygdala, which controls the “fight or flight” fear response. It is common for autistic people to have a blunted fear response.
Often referred to as the brain’s fear center, the amygdala is more precisely the center of a threat response and interpretation system. It receives information on a straight pathway from our senses, which allows us to, for example, step back from an unexpected precipice without a moment’s conscious thought, and triggers a roster of other bodily responses familiar to almost everyone: racing heartbeat, sweaty palms, tunnel vision, loss of appetite. Meanwhile, the amygdala sends information up the line for higher processing in the cortical structures of the brain, where it may be translated into the conscious emotion we call fear.
This is not a type of pathology, but rather regions of his brain work in another way. The amygdala is the seat of emotional responses, including automatic responses associated with fear. This is typical of some of the highest functioning people with autism.
How are you able to do what you’ve done while fearing death? “You just make sure you’re not going to die.”
Those who need intense stimulation, such as Honnold’s rock climbing, seem to lack dopamine and need to participate in more “dangerous” situations to experience the same dopamine rush others get from, say, riding a rollercoaster.
In 2016, he was subjected to functional magnetic resonance imaging scans that revealed that, unlike other high sensation seekers, his amygdala is smaller than usual and barely activated when watching disturbing images. He, however, confesses to feeling fear occasionally. Through imagination and practice, he has desensitized himself to most fearful situations. He has said. “I’d say that death is probably the only thing that I really do fear.”
Prefers to be Alone
Alex Honnold is a free solo enthusiast and has been free climbing incredible walls worldwide. Honnold started free soloing while climbing alone. He didn’t have the confidence to ask others to belay or climb with him. His shyness prompted him to step into the world of free soloing.
By himself, he could choose whether to climb or not. He didn’t have to ask for a belay, make small talk, or interact with anybody. The tiny epics on giant stacked boulders–5.10 roof cracks that took him uncomfortably off his feet, skatey friction slabs on granular monzogranite–provided his original proving ground. Picture, romantically or not, a lone kid wending his way through the desert from formation to formation, topping out in the dry wind and walking off to the next bump on the horizon. Like most teenagers, his mood probably zigged between distant points. From anger at his dad’s death/his parents’ divorce to girls/girl problems and life problems to the simplicity, the movement, the tingle of total commitment and the forgetting of all of the angst that free soloing allowed.
But Honnold is not normal, socially or otherwise. Last year, when he visited Pearson in Tucson, they went to a bar with some of her best friends. At one point, Honnold slipped away without saying a word. He was gone for two hours. She texted him to ask where he was. He replied that he didn’t know. He’d just taken a walk. “He’s still very uncomfortable in big groups of people he’s not familiar with,” Pearson said.
Honnold lived in a van alone for over a decade. “I don’t think ‘van life’ is particularly appealing,” he says. “It’s not like I love living in a car, but I love living in all these places. I love being in Yosemite; I love being basically wherever the weather is good; I love being able to follow good conditions wherever they may be. And be relatively comfortable as I do it. And so that pretty much necessitates living in a car … If I could, like, miraculously teleport a house from place to place, I’d prefer to live in a nice, comfortable house. Though, honestly, the van is nice. I like having everything within arm’s reach. When I stay in a hotel room – like, sometimes you get put up in a really classy hotel room, and it’s huge, and you have to walk quite a ways to the bathroom, and you’re like, ‘Man, I wish I had my [pee] bottle.’ Who wants to walk all the ways to the bathroom in the middle of the night when you could lean over and grab your bottle and go?” “It is a pet peeve when you get put in really nice hotel rooms and it’s really far between… When you’re used to living in a van, you want everything within a six-foot radius. It doesn’t make any sense to go bumbling in the dark, trying to find the bathroom.” The van he lived in was custom-outfitted with a kitchenette and cabinets.
Described so often as a recluse and lauded for a monkish devotion to climbing, Honnold is being scheduled out of his hermitic life. In 2017, Honnold bought a home in the Las Vegas area. “I didn’t have any furniture at first, so I lived in the van in the driveway for the first couple of weeks. It felt more like home than an empty house did.”
He’s been able to put down roots in Vegas, despite being the least Vegas person who has ever existed. He lives there for easy access to climbs and a convenient airport. He only goes to the Strip once a year, if that, to see a show. His idea of luxury is taking multiple showers. He never gambles, because what thrill is this man gonna feel at a blackjack table?
Around the same time, he replaced the Ford Econoline van he had lived in since 2007, which had accumulated 200,000 miles, with a new 2016 Ram ProMaster, which he still uses for living and travelling for most of the year.
Doesn’t care about others’ opinions of him.
Alex is very good at downplaying his accomplishments. At first, it was thought to be false modesty, but then he draws me into a sincere discussion that attempts to make his climbing appear less impressive. Yes, he is an elite big wall soloist, but his activities represent only a “specialty” within climbing.
Are you more chill than you used to be? “I’m pretty chill, mostly because I just don’t care about any of this stuff that I don’t think matters. Like it doesn’t affect performance and life, let it go. I heard some other people complaining the other day about how their kids don’t comb their hair. He’s 17, and he looks really stupid. I was like, ‘I haven’t combed my hair in 20 years.’ Who cares? Like, whatever. If they’re happy, you’re happy.”
When I asked about the current size of his ego, he sighed. “Well, it’s probably bigger,” he said. “When everybody keeps telling you that you’re the shit, it’s hard for it not to sink in a little bit–it makes me kind of sad to say that, but it’s true.”
Wondering what makes him tick, I ask him if he believes in God. “Not at all.” Alex is a committed atheist.
Drive and Focus
Autism tends to give higher-functioning individuals a “superpower” of sorts. In Alex Honnold’s case, he combines his abnormal ability to focus and plan routes in climbing with his lack of fear and emotional response – his autism is something he uses to his advantage to be able to free solo routes.
“I was never, like, a bad climber [as a kid], but I had never been a great climber, either,” he says. “There were a lot of other climbers who were much, much stronger than me, who started as kids and were, like, instantly freakishly strong – like they just have a natural gift. And that was never me. I just loved climbing, and I’ve been climbing all the time ever since, so I’ve naturally gotten better at it, but I’ve never been gifted.”
He has an unbelievable record of achievements. Autism provides a significant drive and focus. He clearly has a lot of both.
The doing is quick. It’s the thinking that lasts longer. Honnold ruminates for months before he carries out a big free solo. In the summer after Moonlight Buttress, he was ambling over granite somewhere, when he decided that Half Dome was next and that he didn’t want to prepare so extensively for it. “I think that if you limit your soloing to stuff you rehearse all the time (1) It’s kind of stupid and (2) It’s kind of gimmicky in a way., It’s like a gymnast practicing a routine.”
His mother gives many insights into Alex: “What you read in the press is these amazing feats of his. He is in a world of his own when it comes to endurance and accomplishing things like this. He is the Unicorn, there’s nobody else like him on the planet. I always laugh or chuckle when I hear people compare him to Michael Jordan or other people in other sports, but in none of those sports, if you don’t make it, you won’t die, so the stakes are totally different.”
“I got the sense of Alex after I read his book on my own, and I think everyone views him as a unicorn, a superhuman. People use those words that he’s in this by himself and in fact, he talks about his singular focus.”
“Alex, he’s a really nice guy and a sweetheart and very involved in humanity and saving the planet and making the road a better place for people. That’s his drive, but the only thing that gets out there is sensationalism.”
Free Solo is the story of a man with supernatural powers of concentration and of the people who vicariously feel the terror that he, ever focused, cannot allow himself to acknowledge.
When describing his free solo of El Capitan, he had to memorize thousands of moves, the exact hand and foot placements.
Emotional Awareness
Honnold met Sanni McCandless at a book signing in November 2015; they began dating soon after.
Free Solo was a chronicle of Honnold’s ascent up El Cap but also a compellingly awkward love story between him and then-girlfriend Sanni McCandless, filmed right at the beginning of their relationship. The Honnold you see in 2018 is, fittingly, a solitary man. He lives in a van. He never appears interested in socializing with other people. He tells the camera, point-blank, that he would “always” choose climbing over a woman. El Capitan is the only thing he truly cares about, and it has to be because the price of being distracted while preparing for El Cap, and of course while being on El Cap, is death.
Sanni and her relationship with Honnold feature prominently in Free Solo. On December 25, 2019, Honnold announced, via social media, that he and McCandless were engaged. On September 13, 2020, Honnold announced via Instagram that he and McCandless had married. Honnold’s and McCandless’s daughter, June, was born on February 17, 2022. Their second daughter, Alice Summer, was born on February 6, 2024.
What do you consider to be your deficits, in your own words? “Lack of affection, lack of caring? I’m not sure, because I think I’m getting better at those things as I get older, having been with Sanni for a long time. It’s slightly getting more normal.”When asked about “stonewalling,” a term used in marriage and relationship therapy to describe being emotionally shut off to others. “In early life, when climbing became his passion, Alex shared some of these traits, and Dierdre admits to being driven to exasperation as a parent, unable to contain his defiance of boundaries meant to keep him safe.”
From an interview on the Fatherly website.
Did you ever feel like you weren’t well-adjusted? “Yes. I don’t know, actually. I’ve always felt like I was fine, but everybody else had a problem.”
Do you feel more emotionally accessible than you were previously? “Maybe a little, but that’s a very slow process.”
He still doesn’t consider himself “normal” in terms of emotional accessibility, but he’s wise enough to make sure June is surrounded by other loved ones who are more so. “I think that can help smooth over some of my deficits.”
Sanni, “We experience emotion really differently. But when June was born, we were on the same page. We were in the same place.”
“I still realized that you’re just not going to have a great family scene if you’re too single-mindedly focused on specific goals and too aggro about it all. I’ve always wanted to be well-adjusted at some point.”
SELECTED CLIMBS
In the mind of the climbing world, Honnold emerged from the goo fully formed. In 2006, nobody had heard of him.
Big Wall Climbing
2007 Freerider, Yosemite. 3000 ft, 37 pitches in one day VI 5.13a. One day free ascent with Brian Kimball.
2007 Astroman and The Rostrum, Yosemite, Free solo, 10+8 pitches. First-ever repeat of Peter Croft‘s free solo in one day. After this, Alex became pretty well known.
2007 Salathé Wall, Free ascent, 3,000 ft/~35 pitches, VI 5.13b/c, Eleventh free ascent
2008 Bushido and Hong Kong Phooey, Utah. Traditional, 5.13+, 5.13b–5.14. Two challenging crack routes.
2008 Moonlight Buttress, Zion Utah. Free solo, 1,200 ft / 9 pitches, 83 minutes, V 5.12d, 1200 ft. First free solo. A 5.12d finger crack that splits Zion’s Moonlight Buttress. For days, people thought the news was a joke.
2008 Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, Yosemite. Free solo 2,000 ft / 23 pitches, 2 hours 50 minutes 5.12a. First free solo.
The unprecedented step of free soloing the 2,000-foot (610m), glacially bulldozed Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome. Croft called this climb the most impressive ropeless ascent ever done. After Half Dome, he gained mainstream recognition. The climb was featured in the film Alone on the Wall and a subsequent 60 Minutes interview.
2012 The Nose, Yosemite, El Capitan. Speed climb 2,900 ft / ~31 pitches, 2:23:46, VI 5.8 A2 Former speed record of 2:23:46 with Hans Florine. In November 2011, Honnold and Hans Florine missed setting the speed climbing record on the famous Nose big-wall crack climbing route on El Capitan by 45 seconds. At the time, the record stood at 2:36:45, as set by Dean Potter & Sean Leary in November 2010. On June 17, 2012, Honnold and Florine set a new record of 2:23:46 (or 2:23:51) on that same route.
2012 The Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome, Yosemite. Speed solo, 2,000 ft / 23 pitches,1:225, 12a
2012 Yosemite Triple Crown, Yosemite. Link-up, 18:50, Various Solo, link-up of three iconic Yosemite routes. (Mt. Watkins, El Capitan, and Half Dome)
2014 Pre Muir Yosemite, El Capitan. Free climb, V 5.13c/d, Climbed with Josh McCoy
2014 Muir Wall – Shaft Variation Yosemite, El Capitan Speed climb12 Hours V 5.13b/c Speed record ascent
2014 El Corazon Yosemite, El Capitan. Speed climb, 15:30, V 5.13b Speed record ascent
2014 El Sendero LuminosoEl Potrero Chico, Mexico Free solo1,750 ft, 15 pitch Just over 3 hours V 5.12d First free solo ascent
2014 University Wall Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. Free solo, 8 pitches, 2 hours (car-to-car), 5.12a C2, First free solo
2016 Complete Scream Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Free Solo, 200 ftds, E8 6b, Notable climb in Northern Ireland
2017 Freerider Yosemite, El Capitan. Free solo, 3,000 ft / 37 pitches, 3 hours 56 minutes, 5.13a VI, First-ever big wall free solo at the grade of 5.13a (7c+). Honnold rose to worldwide fame in June 2017 when he became the first person to free solo a whole route on El Capitan, a climb described in The New York Times as “one of the incredible athletic feats of any kind, ever. On June 3, 2017, this first-ever free solo ascent of El Capitan completed Alex Huber‘s 2,900-foot (884m) (5.13a VI), in 3 hours and 56 minutes. The climb, described as “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever,” was documented by climber and photographer Jimmy Chin and documentary filmmaker E. Chai Vasarhelyi, as the subject of the documentary Free Solo. Among other awards, the film won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (2018).
2018 The Nose Yosemite, El Capitan. Speed Climb, 2,900 ft / ~31 pitches, 1:58:07, VI 5.8 A2 Speed record with Tommy Caldwell. On June 6, 2018, this broke the Nose on El Capitan speed record becoming the first climbers to complete it in under two hours.
2019 El Niño Yosemite, El Capitan. Free climb, 3,000 ft, VI 5.13c Second entirely free ascent via the Pineapple Express variation with Brad Gobright
2019 Passage to Freedom Yosemite, El Capitan. Free climb, 3,000 ft, VI 5.13d, First free ascent with Tommy Caldwell,
2022 Igmikortilaq sea cliff in eastern Greenland. Free ascent, 3,750-foot, First ascent of a sea cliff, climbed with Hazel Findlay
2023 The Heart Route Yosemite, El Capitan. Free climb 3,000ft, VI 5.13b, V10, Third free ascent.
2024 Triple Rainbow. Rainbow Wall, USA. Free climb, Dreefee (11 pitch 5.13d), Desert Solitare (11 pitch 5.13b) and Rainbow Country (13 pitch 5.12d), 5.13d, First free ascent of a link-up of Dreefee, Desert Solitare and Rainbow Country
Bouldering
2010 Ambrosia Bishop, California. V11 8A second ascent
2011 The Mandala Bishop, California V12 8A+
2012 Too Big to Flail Bishop, California V10 7C+ or 8b (5.13d) first ascent
Single pitch (sport and traditional) climbing
2008 Parthian Shot, New Statesman, Meshuga (solo) London Wall, on-sight solo; in England. Free solo Varies Multiple solos and flashes
2010 The Green Mile Jailhouse crag, San Francisco. Sport climb, 5.14c(8c+)
2010 Rainbow Arch, Ennedi Desert, Chad. Top-rope, 5.12+, First ascent
2011 Heaven and Cosmic Debris, Yosemite National Park, Free solo, 5.12d, 5.13b
2011 The Phoenix, Yosemite, Free solo, 5.13a. The Phoenix was the first-ever consensus 5.13a in history.
2011 Cobra Crack Squamish, British Columbia. Free climb, 5.14b, ascent is etched in a board between that of Will Stanhope and Pete Whittaker
2019 Arrested Development Mount Charleston, Nevada Sport climb, 9a 5.14d, second ascent of sport climbing route after Jonathan Siegrist.
2024 Manphibian Mount Charleston, Nevada Sport climb, 9a 5.14d
Alpine Climbing
2009 Unnamed Low’s Gully, Borneo. Attempted free ascent, VI 5.12 A2. Attempted first free ascent
2014 The Fitz Roy Traverse Fitz Roy massif, Patagonia. 5,000 m, 5 Days, 5.11d C1 65 degrees, 5000m Completed over five days with Tommy Caldwell
2016 Torre Traverse Patagonia. Under 21 Hours, Second traverse (north-to-south) of the Cerro Torre Group. Completed with Colin Haley.
2023 Diablo Traverse, Devils Thumb, Alaska. Under 24 Hours, 5.10 A2, Second traverse of the range. Completed with Tommy Caldwell
Other Accomplishments
In 2021, National Geographic signed Honnold for an original docuseries about his quest to climb across the peaks of Greenland.
Also in 2021, Honnold started a podcast about climbing called Climbing Gold. In its first season, Climbing Gold focused on telling stories of extraordinary climbers throughout history and featured notable climbers and ascents, including Lynn Hill, John Gill, Beth Rodden, and Hans Florine, as well as coverage of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, which featured competition climbing for the first time.
On October 12, 2022, Honnold completed the “Honnold Ultimate Red Rock Traverse”, or HURT, in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. In total, the endeavour took 32 hours and 6 minutes, with Honnold covering 35 miles of running, scrambling, and climbing, logging 24,000′ of elevation gain, and summitting 18 out of the 23 peaks in Red Rock Canyon. Targeting the area’s classic climbing routes, including Epinephrine, Dark Shadows, and Olive Oil, Honnold completed 126 pitches with about 13,000′ of technical climbing.
Philanthropy
In 2012, Honnold began giving away one-third of his income to solar projects that increased energy access worldwide. Soon, this idea expanded to form the Honnold Foundation. The Honnold Foundation “partners with marginalized communities to expand equitable solar energy access”. The Foundation identifies and supports small, community-led nonprofits that utilize solar energy to expand economic opportunities, energy access, and/or sovereignty. After incorporating as a 501 (c) (3) in 2018, the Foundation’s work has expanded to fund nearly 100 solar energy projects around the world, thanks to Honnold’s continued commitment, alongside philanthropic contributions from a growing community of supporters.
The Foundation prioritizes a “trust-based philanthropic approach”. Per Honnold, “In climbing, you trust your partner with your life. Why should philanthropy be any different”?Books
Honnold is the author (with David Roberts) of the memoir Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure (2015) and the subject of the 2018 biographical documentary Free Solo, which won a BAFTA and an Award.
Filmography
While Honnold is best known for his starring role in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, he has also appeared in several other films and television episodes.
The Sharp End (2007)
Alone on the Wall (2008)
Progression (2009)
Honnold 3.0 (2012)
Valley Uprising (2014)
A Line Across the Sky (2015)
Showdown at Horseshoe Hell (2015)
Africa Fusion (2016)
Queen Maud Land (2018)
Free Solo (2018)
The Nose Speed Record (Real Rock 14) (2019)
Fine Lines (2019)
Duncanville (2020) (TV)
The Alpinist (2021)
Explorer: The Last Tepui (2022)
Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin (2022)
Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold (2024)
The Devil’s Climb (2024)
Awards
2010: Golden Piton Award from Climbing magazine, for endurance climbing
2010: The film Alone on the Wall was shown at the European Outdoor Film Tour
2015: Piolet d’Or for alpine climbing. Honnold, together with Tommy Caldwell for the first complete traverse of the Fitz Roy Range (also known as the enchainment or the Fitz Traverse) in Patagonia, Argentina over 5 days.
2018: Robert and Miriam Underhill Award from the American Alpine Club, for excellence in various fields of climbing
2018: Special mention of Piolets d’Or for his outstanding contribution to climbing.
MARC-ANDRE LECLERC 1992 – March 5, 2018. Rock climber, ice and mixed climber and alpinist
I am conjecturing that Leclerc, like Alex Honnold, was autistic. He was making climbs as difficult at Honnold’s but kept an elusive and low-profile existence. Leclerc is quirky and unaccustomed to being filmed. Unlike others, he doesn’t care about accolades or fame; he simply climbs for his love of climbing and adventure. Brette Harrington, Leclerc’s girlfriend and fellow climber, remarks that Leclerc is a free spirit who doesn’t care about films or “making his own climb significant to the world.” Leclerc carries no communication devices and climbs on-sight, meaning that he has never been on the mountain and “never rehearsed the route.”
The Alpinist is a 2021 American documentary film directed by Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen about Marc-André Leclerc, a free-spirited and little-known 23-year-old Canadian rock climber, ice climber, and alpinist. From 2015 to 2016, a film crew followed Leclerc as he solo climbed some of the most difficult and dangerous alpine climbing routes in the world.
In an interview with Tim Ferriss, Alex Honnold, the subject of the 2018 documentary film Free Solo, is asked who impresses him currently. Honnold mentions Marc-André Leclerc, a climber who is relatively unknown due to his elusive and low-profile nature. There is little video footage of Leclerc’s climbs, because, as Honnold states, “He’s just going out and climbing for himself in such a pure style.”
In 2015, director Peter Mortimer, a climber himself, comes across a blog post about Leclerc, a 23-year-old Canadian who had solo climbed a famous climbing route known as The Corkscrew (1,250m, 5.10d, A1) on Cerro Torre. Mortimer travels to Squamish, British Columbia—the heart of Canada’s climbing scene—to meet Leclerc. Leclerc is quirky and unaccustomed to being filmed. Unlike others, he doesn’t care about accolades or fame; he simply climbs for his love of climbing and adventure.
Although Leclerc enjoys free solo rock climbing on Stawamus Chief in Squamish, breaking Honnold’s speed record on The Grand Wall (5.11a), his main aspirations are in solo alpine climbing. Mortimer’s crew travels with him to Canmore in the Canadian Rockies for ice climbing season. Although incredibly dangerous and rarely done, in a single day Leclerc solo climbs both ice and mixed routes of rock and ice, including on the notorious Stanley Headwall, where he free solos famous routes such as Nightmare on Wolf Street (W16+, M6), French Reality (WI6+, 5.8), and Nemesis (WI6). This attracts the interest of local climbers.
Leclerc becomes restless as the film crew plans the next shoot and drops off the radar for months, to Mortimer’s frustration. The crew eventually tracks Leclerc down to the Ghost River Wilderness Area in Alberta. Brette Harrington, Leclerc’s girlfriend and fellow climber, remarks that Leclerc is a free spirit who doesn’t care about films or “making his own climb significant to the world.”
In April 2016, news breaks that Leclerc has completed the first winter solo ascent of the Emperor Face of Mount Robson in British Columbia via the alpine climbing route Infinite Patience (2,250m, VI, 5.9, WI5, M5). This sends shockwaves throughout the climbing community, and Mortimer is frustrated that Leclerc made the solo ascent without letting his crew know. Leclerc tells him that “it wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there.” Having now completed the first solo ascent, Leclerc invites the crew to Mount Robson to film his method of solo alpine climbing. Leclerc carries no communication devices and climbs on-sight, meaning that he has never been on the mountain and “never rehearsed the route.”
Months later, Leclerc travels to Patagonia to attempt the first winter solo ascent of Torre Egger, and on-sight, a longtime dream of his. Leclerc allows one cameraman, his climbing friend Austin Siadak, but only for the lower sections of the route—a variation of Dani Arnold’s 2010 Winter Link-Up route that finishes with Titanic (950m, 5.10, A1) on the southeast face. Leclerc would then complete the summit push alone with a small camera. After days of climbing, a snowstorm hits, and Leclerc—only four pitches from the summit—is forced to abandon his bivvy, rappel the mountain in blizzard conditions, and hike back to El Chaltén.
Mortimer expects Leclerc to pack up and fly back home, but Leclerc is determined to complete the climb. No longer an on-sight ascent, Leclerc decides to raise the stakes by climbing without any additional food or bivvy equipment. On September 17, 2016, Leclerc completes the entire route in just 21 hours, thus completing the first-ever solo winter ascent of Torre Egger on a route with difficulties of 5.10, WI3, M5, and A1.
Mortimer begins assembling the documentary with his footage. In March 2018, Harrington calls Mortimer and tells him that Leclerc and his climbing partner Ryan Johnson have gone missing while descending Mendenhall Towers in Alaska. Mortimer travels to Alaska with Harrington and Leclerc’s family and friends to search for him. Near the climbers’ descent route, Juneau Mountain Rescue discovers ropes buried in avalanche snow, and it is presumed that Leclerc and Johnson are both dead. Their bodies are never recovered.
Months after the accident, a memorial was held for Leclerc in Squamish.
George Washington 1732-1799, US Politician
Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, US Politician
Benjamin Franklin 1706-1790, US politician/writer
Kaspar Hauser 1812-1833, German foundling, portrayed in a film by Werner Herzog
Henry Thoreau 1817-1862, US writer
Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890, Dutch painter
Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900,German philosopher
George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish playwright, writer of Pygmalion, critic, and Socialist
Ludwig II 1845-1886, King of Bavaria
Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922, Scottish/Canadian/American inventor of the telephone
Anton Bruckner 1824-1896, Austrian composer
Oliver Heaviside 1850-1925, English physicist
Richard Strauss, 1864-1949, German composer
Gustav Mahler 1860-1911, Czech/Austrian composer
Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, Russian/French painter
Erik Satie 1866-1925 – Composer
Charles Rennie Mackintosh 1868-1928, Scottish architect and designer
Bertrand Russell 1872-1970, British logician
Carl Jung 1875-1961, Swiss psychoanalyst
Bela Bartok 1881-1945, Hungarian composer
Virginia Woolf 1882-1941, English Writer
Franz Kafka 1883-1924, Czech writer
L S Lowry 1887-1976, English painter of “matchstick men”
HP Lovecraft, 1890-1937, US writer
Howard Hughes 1905-1976, US billionaire
Isaac Asimov 1920-1992, Russian/US writer on science and science fiction, author of Bicentennial Man
Tony Benn 1925- 2014, English Labour politician
Marilyn Monroe 1926-1962, US actress
Garrison Keillor 1942-2001, US writer, humorist, and host of Prairie Home Companion
John Denver 1943-1997, US musician
Andy Kaufman 1949-1984, US comedian, subject of the film Man on the Moon
Robin McLaurin Williams 1951 – 2014. US Actor
Carl Sagan – Astronomer (C)
Francis Galton. Scientist, mathematician, and discoverer of fingerprints
Dr. Vernon Smith – a professor of economics at Chapman University, practically invented the field of experimental economics, an achievement for which he won the Nobel Prize in 2002. Credits Asperger’s for his success. (C)
