🧗🍿 Free Solo

Alex Honnold prepares to climb El Capitan in Yosemite, about 900 metres of granite, with no rope and no partner. The film follows two years of rehearsal on the route, a new relationship that complicates his certainty, and a camera crew of his friends who are not sure they should be filming at all.

Saturday afternoon, the first Saturday in three years with no wall in it. Yesterday's diagnosis: 🩹 2025-03-15 - Left ring finger A2 pulley strain. I did the first ten minutes of rehabilitation on the living-room floor, put the tape back on and watched a man hang from his fingertips above half a mile of air.

Mixed feelings, in order:

1. Envy. Not of the climb. Of having a body that does what it is asked.
2. Recognition. The preparation is the whole film. He writes every move of the hard pitch in a notebook and rehearses it on a rope until it is boring. That is the opposite of recklessness, and it is how I would like to treat 🪁 Bouldering when I am allowed back.
3. Unease. The people who love him are asked to be fine with it, and mostly manage.

The detail I keep: on his first attempt he turns round partway up and goes home, with cameras pointed at him. Backing off in front of an audience is the hardest move in the film.

Caleb messaged from Chalkline with a photo of the new set. I did not open it until Sunday.

Open Question

Is it courage if you do not feel the fear? The film shows a brain scan suggesting his alarm system needs far more than most people's to fire. Mine fires at two metres off a mat, and I am starting to think that is information and not a defect.

• The notebook: every hand and foot of the hardest section written out like a recipe.
• The scan. A machine looks for his fear response and finds it very hard to wake.
• The first attempt, in the autumn: he starts in the dark, stops low on the wall and comes down. Nobody on the crew says what they are thinking.
• The crux, about two thirds of the way up: a choice between a jump and a sideways kick to the opposite wall, both rehearsed on a rope dozens of times.
• The cameraman who cannot watch and turns his back on his own lens for the worst of it.
• The top, a little under four hours after he left the ground. He rings his girlfriend and then goes to train.