Alex Honnold has a brain that works a little differently than most brains. That’s part of the reason he’s found such incredible success in the climbing world. He has the ability, it seems, to simply turn off the part of his brain that creates fear. That all came to a pinnacle of sorts when he free soloed El Cap. Although famous among climbers before that, his free solo of the route, and the film that followed, skyrocketed his fame, making him a household name. That particular feat occurred in 2017, but, as you’d imagine, it wasn’t the first time he’d climbed up a rock face with nothing to fall back on except the ground thousands of feet below. And recently, a filmmaker named Peter Mortimer sat down to talk about what it was like to watch him climb one of them.
Before El Cap, in 2008, Honnold stunned the world by climbing Yosemite’s Half Dome rope-less, then followed it up by conquering Moonlight Buttress in Utah. And in 2011, he free soloed one of the hardest pitches in Yosemite, which the short film here focusses on. Called The Phoenix, the 5.13 pitch sits above the Phoenix canyon. Just around the corner from it is Cascade Falls, which sends a mist over to the Phoenix crack. It’s stunningly beautiful to look at, but incredibly dangerous to climb.
“Because it was spring,” says Peter Mortimer, the man who nervously filmed Honnold’s Phoenix climb, “the waterfall was raging. To get to The Phoenix, you have to rappel in because the crack starts halfway up this wall. The waterfall is so powerful you feel like the rocks are shaking under your feet.”
Honnold rappelled down to the crack, glanced up at the camera with a wry grin on his face, and began to check the route. Mortimer had rappelled to the anchors at the top of route and was getting his cameras ready to document the feat.
“Normally Alex is so calm about everything,” he remembered. “But he flashed me this quick, nervous smile that made me think, ‘wow, he’s feeling something. This is big for him.'”
As Mortimer watched, Honnold swung down to the bottom, then asked the cameraman to haul up all his gear. Pulling up Honnold’s ropes and harness, Mortimer had a thought. “I think this is why he invited me here,” he laughed. “Not to film it or capture this amazing footage, but just to get his stuff out of the way so that he climb more quickly.”
Once everything was up and out of the way, Honnold began. It was just him against the rock, relying on nothing but his skills. He, of course, successfully completed The Phoenix, and Peter Mortimer recently sat down to tell his side of the story. And judging from both of their reactions, it appears that it might’ve been harder on Mortimer’s nerves than Honnold’s.
