Alone on the Wall: Alex Honnold and the Ultimate Limits of Adventure

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There is an aspect of "flow" in the focusing that creates a "high" because of the complete concentration and the complete exertion.

Looking at the book as if I’d never heard or read any of these stories, they are stunning accomplishments, but the writing itself does not convey the magic or suspense that a film can. That said, if I was a climber who didn’t know about all of his exploits it would be a lot more interesting. It is clear that Mark Synnott knows the climbing world, but this book lost me early on and never regained its footing. While Honnold is best known for his starring role in the Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo, he has also appeared in several other films.He’s compelled less by death itself, it seems, than by taunting the moment when death becomes inevitable: after you’ve fallen, before you hit the ground. In 2012, Honnold began giving away one-third of his income to solar projects that increased energy access worldwide.

Each of the most challenging areas of the climb were mapped out extensively in the notebook he updated after every climb, and reviewed relentlessly.

Alone on the Wall reveals him to be an utterly unique and extremely appealing young man’ - Jon Krakauer, bestselling author of Into the Wild. Alex Honnold is one of the world's best ‘free solo’ climbers, he scales impossible rock faces without ropes, pitons or any support of any kind. I just finished up Mark Synnott's book on the history of rock climbing, which focuses on Alex Honnold's historic "free solo" of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, documented by the Oscar-winning movie, "Free Solo" released in 2018.

Honnold also holds the record for the fastest ascent of the "Yosemite Triple Crown", an 18-hour, 50-minute link-up of Mount Watkins, The Nose, and the Regular Northwest Face of Half Dome. In 2021, National Geographic signed Honnold for an original docuseries about his quest to climb across the peaks of Greenland. No one within the cloistered community of climbing nor to the general public’s view of the sport is a bigger star right now than Alex Honnold, a man who has in a multitude of ways raised the bar on what is even possible in climbing.Alex Honnold is one of the world's best ‘free solo’ climbers, he scales impossible rock faces without ropes, pitons or and support of any kind. I'm simply pointing out that they are indeed cliches of the mountaineering genre, although of course that genre has become more complex, not least since the popular success of Krakauer's "Into Thin Air.