The School of Greatness - Alex Honnold: THIS Is The MINDSET That Allowed Me To Achieve What NO ONE Ever Has (+ What’s NEXT!)

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Alex Honnold is history’s greatest ever climber in the free solo style, meaning he ascends without a rope or protective equipment of any kind.Above about 50 feet, any fall would likely be lethal, which means that, on epic days of soloing, he might spend 12 or more hours in the Death Zone. On the hardest parts of some climbing routes, his fingers will have no more contact with the rock than most people have with the touchscreens of their phones, while his toes press down on edges as thin as sticks of gum. Just watching a video of Honnold climbing will trigger some degree of vertigo, heart palpitations, or nausea in most people, and that’s if they can watch them at all. Even Honnold has said that his palms sweat when he watches himself on film.In this episode, Alex shares the unique mindset he brings to some of the most incredible human feats ever accomplished. We chat about his family life, how he receives love, and what it was like for Free Solo to win an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film – you won’t want to miss this episode!His new show on Nat Geo launched February 4th, 2024 on Disney+ - Arctic Ascent: With Alex HonnoldListen to Alex’s podcast - Climbing GoldIn this episode you will learnHow to prepare mentally and physically for life’s toughest challenges, such as climbing a 3,000+ foot wall without a rope.The importance of navigating fear and maintaining a clear mindset in high-stress situations.The impact of mentorship and community in achieving your goals.The role of visualization and goal-setting in achieving seemingly impossible feats.The benefits of embracing a minimalist lifestyle and focusing on what truly matters in life.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1581For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Nick Lavery – https://link.chtbl.com/1359-podDean Karnazes – https://link.chtbl.com/1280-pod

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, everyone at School of Greatness. We have the inspiring Alex Honnold in the house.

Good to see you, sir. Welcome to the show. I have to read this really quick so people can understand how inspiring of an athlete and human being you are. More people will walk on the moon than will do what Alex Honnold has done for me. Just reading that in your bio, I was like, this is unbelievable because not many people in the world can do or ever will do what you've, what you've done. And, uh, I'm curious if you could explain to people that don't know anything

about you, what it is you actually do that you think makes you so great. Well, so, I mean, I'm, I'm a professional rock climber and a rock climber my whole life. I mean, the thing that I'm most well known for is free soloing, which is climbing without a rope. And I mean, I think the quote that you just read is specifically referring to free soloing El Cap, which is a wall in Yosemite National Park, which to date, I'm the only person to have done. No one's ever done it again? No, no, no, no. And what is the, what is it you actually did? I mean, I watched the documentary. It was incredible, but for those that haven't seen it. Yes. The documentary fre documentary Free Solar kind of covers it. But it's Free Solar at El Capitan, which is a 3,000-foot granite wall.

So yeah, climbing this big wall without a rope. Without a rope. Yeah. Which was very challenging. It's funny. Now it's been a little while. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's just climbing. I did this thing.

Yeah, I did this thing climbing. But no, it was something that I was working on for many, many years. And sort of dreaming about for many years before that and how long did the actual climb take the actual climb took uh i think 356 or three almost four hours four hours which for context though the average party climbing all cabins so typically you climb that 3 000 foot wall with with ropes and equipment and people normally camp on the wall and they normally spend three to five days on the wall really yeah so they take three to five days you get it in under four hours yeah but it's kind of like the difference between ultra running and

backpacking where it's like once you decide not to take all the camping stuff then it becomes ultra running and you'd wind up going a lot faster right so some of it is just a product of the style like by choosing to go without ropes you just wind up going a lot faster. So some of it is just a product of the style. Like by choosing to go without ropes, you just wind up going a lot faster. You have to. But it's obviously a lot more extreme to go without ropes. So has anyone attempted, but they've come down or out? No, no.

I don't even think anybody's playing in that space right now. Really? Nobody's really doing anything quite like that. Why is that? And why is no one else trying to do that? And why were you so curious to do quite like that. Why is that? And why is no one else trying to do that? And why were you so curious to do something like that with no rope? I mean, okay, so

there just aren't that many people free-sailing right now. And part of that, I mean, part of that might be broader trends in the climbing world, like climbing went into the Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo. And so right now,

I think the sort of cutting edge of rock climbing is more on the competition front and, uh, you know, the Olympics and world cups and things like that. And so I think that a lot of the talent in climbing right now is sort of focused on competitions. Whereas when I was growing up, I think some of the sort of cultural, the coolness in climbing was more around speed climbing and big wall climbing and and free soloing and things like that like more the adventure side of climbing uh-huh like if you think of climbing as a spectrum between sort of athleticism and adventure like i grew up and the pendulum has shifted slightly more on the adventure side right now i think it's slightly

more shifted on the athleticism side which i think is maybe part of the reason that fewer people are doing big wall solos and more are going to the Olympics, but But whatever. I mean, that's just the way a sport grows up Yeah, and I think the main thing is just that nobody is really doing that much free solo right now No engine in general not even just like smaller walls or smaller mountains Well, there must be people doing some stuff that I don't know that much about but there's just nobody Well, okay So, you know when you ask like has anyone free-sold at El Cap?

I'm kind of like, man, for me to free-sell El Cap took this very long journey, and I did maybe 30 or 40 other big walls around the world that sort of led up to it. El Cap is a very particular kind of challenge, and so to tackle that kind of thing, you start by climbing smaller walls or slightly more difficult walls,

or, you know, walls that are maybe smaller but harder in some way or smaller and easier in other ways and you know you basically mix and match all these pieces until eventually you feel comfortable doing something that big and And that takes years. Yeah, that took like years and years But at this point nobody's even done any of those other pieces like of the 30 ish things that I did to lead up to El Cap No, nobody's actually repeated any of them. So, you know, when you're like, oh, has anyone done El Cap? I'm like, well, no, nobody's even started down the path. Like nobody's even, nobody's even aiming in that direction. So people are still climbing El Cap with ropes. Yeah. Yeah. People climb El Cap all the time. All the time with ropes. Yeah. But no

one's tried it or completed it without ropes. No. Freestyle is a completely different thing. Wow, man. I mean, climbing it with a rope obviously requires a degree of skill, and you have to be a skilled climber. But it's by no means elite. Like, any average person who's read enough books. Yeah, you could easily. Really? You could climb El Cap with a rope.

Come on. I mean, it would be the biggest adventure of your life. You'd spend five days on the wall. You'd come out totally haggard. But you could do it. Really? Yeah. It seems like it's a straight-up wall, though.

I mean, with very little, you know. I'm so big,'m so big though i'm 230 pounds how am i gonna hold myself up but so if the two of us went up all capped together and i was able to lead more of it you'd be able to ascend ropes you'd be able to camp on the lead like really you could get up it yeah you'd be worked you know like it would be hard for you might take me two weeks but you could do it you know wow but the difference between that and free-sailingling, the difference between that and climbing without a rope is vast. Yeah. That I would argue you'll never do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't even know if I could climb like 30 feet without a rope on anything, unless it was like I could walk it. I mean, I think that anybody can learn how to climb to a high level if they're interested and passionate about it, if they're curious. But then there's another step between that and then free-souling walls yeah yeah because that's like sort of you have to devote your like devote your life to it it's like a crowd you know when did you first think like i want to do climbing in general how old were you what was there something you saw or some someone that experienced it with you that you were like oh this is something i'm really

interested in no there wasn't like a specific moment i just always liked climbing and now now i have a daughter who uh will be two soon and she climbs on things all the time and it's really hard to tell how much that's nature versus nurture because she sees uh you know her mother and father climbing all the time and basically everybody around her climbs all the time so part of that has probably just hurt me and influenced by the people she's around but also she seems particularly into clambering on things and it makes me think that that's probably just how i was as a child because i got into rock climbing because my parents took me to a climbing gym when i was uh 10 but it's because i've been climbing trees and buildings and like things my whole life before that before that you were climbing so like okay let's put it yeah i was

like yeah i was really and you know I was the kid that was always running across the top of the monkey bars because you're like, oh, look, I can balance, you know, like that kind of just testing yourself on cool things. And so my parents thought that the climbing gym would be a safer outlet. And so they took me in to learn. Did you ever have any like big falls as a kid when you were climbing trees or the monkey bars? Yeah, I broke my arm twice as a little kid.

Really? Like before I learned how to rock climb, I fell off a play structure, two different play structure things and broke my arm twice as a little kid really like before i learned how to rock climb i fell off a play structure two different play structure things and broke my arm twice and then i also broke my arm again uh at the climbing gym when i was a teenager but did that pain ever hold you back from thinking uh maybe this isn't for me no no if anything you just learned that a broken wrist it's like no big deal you're like oh six weeks later you're totally fine it's like yeah that's no thing was there ever i mean i fell out of so many trees really yeah i mean yeah when you're a kid learning how to climb stuff you just fall down all the time but you never were afraid to fall well no i think i was afraid to fall i mean i don't i don't want to get hurt but i really like climbing things and you always think that you're going to make it you

know it's like you know you never think you're going to fall off. Was there ever a climb that you did that is supposed to be really easy? Like almost the most basic climb ever. Like someone like me could do it easily or someone, you know, maybe someone with some beginner skills could do this easily. That you thought you got into a very sticky situation where you thought, oh, I'm in a bad situation and I could actually fall and potentially die? I mean, I've been in a lot of sticky situations. I'm not sure if any of them were on things that should have, that were actually that easy. I mean, I guess the challenge though is that if you think something should be easy for you and then it winds up being just a little bit harder than you think it should be, you know, when your expectations mismatch reality, then that can be, I mean, the thing with freesolding is so much of it is psychological so anytime your experience doesn't match or like

your expectations don't match the reality then it's easy to get out of control mentally a little bit you're suddenly because if you start to get scared you start to second guess you start to hesitate like all of those things where none of those things help your performance right so then it can start to be sort of a negative spiral where it gets quite scary what do you think has helped you keep your mindset so clear under challenging situations is it the mental preparation is it the physical preparation is it just being present in the moment well part of it i think there are a couple things one is it just being present in the moment well part of it i think there are a couple things one is experience like being in situations like that

like basically getting really scared and then managing to to maintain some degree of self control when you're really scared is a bit of an acquired skill you just get scared over and over you know you know people ask all the time like oh you know you don't feel fear i'm like no of course i feel fear i've just gotten scared so much you know you just get used to it when you feel when you feel fear like when you're like oh i'm in a very scary situation what goes through your mind and how do you get out of it well i think a lot of the time i experience the same things everybody else does which is like anger tenseness like oh i hate this like why am i here why is it like why is this happening to me you know like i don't know if you're in some

tricky situation climate it starts to rain and all of a sudden like now it's really bad and you're like oh i'm so screwed you know you start like bargaining i mean what are all the stages of denial and grief and all the things you go through the whole list of like oh why and then a certain point you're like i'm on this cliff and it's raining. No amount of anything is going to change that. You just need to deal. And then you either go up or you go down or you figure it out. Were you pretty self-taught on your mental conditioning, mental training and mindset around all these things?

Or did you have mentors and teachers or friends kind of give you these psychological skills well i mean i'd say i'm largely self-taught but it's not exactly self-taught like thinking about it and figuring it out it's more like having experiences and just seeing what works over time but also i mean i've always cast a wide net i've read all the books about climbing i've read all the you know books on mental've read all the, you know, books on mental coaching. But the thing is, when I was growing up as a climber, there were far fewer resources for that kind of thing. Because climbing was just a smaller sport. Now there's a lot more available.

But at the time, you know, there were a handful of books. I obviously read them all. And I read all the climbing magazines. And you'd read all the stories. You'd read people's memoirs. I mean, a lot of the things you can learn are from other people's experiences in the mountains. And, like, somebody else has some harrowing experience. you're like oh well i don't want to do that yeah yeah or it's like i see how he survived like i would you know i should try to do the same thing

if that ever happens to me you know like let's hope it never happens but um who's been your biggest teacher around your mindset in this world i honestly don't even i mean there's there are very few people who free solo and so um you don't really talk to other people doing the exact same thing so it's more like you apply lessons from like the other edges of climbing because you can get really really scared climbing with a rope like most of my scariest experiences climbing have actually been with a rope on really because having a rope tied to your harness doesn't mean that you're actually connected to the wall safely like you still have to place gear into the the rock and right secure yourself with anchors and

things because if you don't have an anchor you could fall down and swing and hit your head and yeah so like you know have you have you climbed before at all i mean like a rock like if you ever like watched a climbing movie so like you tie into the rope and then you start setting out up the wall and as you go up the wall you have to place protection as you go and so sometimes say the rock quality is really bad and so you can't get good protection for 20 feet 30 feet 40 feet and so if you're 40 feet above your last piece that means you're looking at like an 80 foot plus fall you know because you'd fall the distance plus that much past the rope afterwards yeah exactly it's double the distance to your last piece you could die from that probably yeah exactly so if you're taking an 80 foot fall you you realistically, you know, like you could die.

And then how do you get down? What if you fall, break your arm or hit your head? Yeah. How do you get down? Well, that becomes the stuff of legends, you know, then it's like some harrowing survival story. And that's what you read in people's books and stuff. Like one arm. There are all these legendary stories from climbing, like some people climbing on the south face of Half Dome, which is like a very big wall in yosemite but the guy fell broke both his ankles and then they had to extricate themselves from the wall and then he crawled all the way back down the trail with two broken ankles what yeah which is like a you know seven mile crawl back

down to the valley floor and so anyway you know i grew up reading all these stories and like reading about these kinds of things so all that to say many of the scariest experiences are with a rope on because having the rope doesn't make you inherently safe you still need protection but the thing is when you do have a rope you're much more willing to push into the unknown because you're like surely i'll get to good protection eventually you know you have all this gear on you you're like eventually i'll get somewhere where i can use this like i'm sure it'll get better and it's easy to sucker yourself into positions of true fear because you're like i'm a little scared now but i'm sure it'll get better and you keep going and you're like well now i'm more scared but it's got to get better

so you keep going keep going it's like uh it's like a sunken cost by policy yeah good money what's the farthest you've gone without having to like i guess plug it without an anchor yeah yeah well so uh doing a first ascent in africa Africa, I went the full length of the rope, like 70 meters, so 230 feet without any gear. So we'd eyeballed this feature of this big granite dome in Angola. And from the ground, we thought that the dome was maybe 500 feet high.

And we thought that the big crack that we were looking at would be like a hand crate, like something you put your hands into. it turns out that the mountain itself was more like a thousand or fifteen hundred feet high and so the thing that looked like a crack was actually like a giant man-sized chimney so it was like bigger than this table and so it meant that you know you have all this climbing gear that would normally fit into a space like the size of this cup and then the crack is the biggest size of the table and you're

like oh no and so I wound up going a full 230 feet up up a thing like that with no protection and then by sheer miracle of nature there was a giant rock wedged inside the chimney at a certain point so i was able to sit down on that and sort of anchor myself to the rock and then bring my partner up and then do it again holy cow man but yeah so how many feet was that like 230 230 feet with no with no anchor. Yeah. So in theory, if you fell, you would take a 400 and... You're dead. Yeah. Like it would be disastrous.

Was there ever a point where you're like, oh, I'm going too far now. There's nowhere to anchor. If I slip, I'm out. Or do you not have those thoughts? No, no. I mean, you have those thoughts. It's like you should definitely be aware that if you make a mistake, you're going to die. I mean, and that's the thing with climbing is that you always have this ongoing dialogue around risk because

you should know when it's okay to fall and when it's not okay to fall but that point there was no it wasn't okay to fall yeah and so but that means that you should climb a lot more carefully and you should be very careful about what you grab and how you grab it because if you've just placed protection and you know you're totally safe then you should you should take risk you can just grab things you can move a little faster. Like, you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about everything you do because you're totally safe. Yeah. Hey, and the rock is good enough to anchor in different places.

You know you can anchor a few feet or something. If you know you're safe, you should just move confidently and move with ease. But if you know you're going to die, you should probably move pretty freaking carefully. Is it harder to go up or to go down something like that it depends actually chimneys like a big wide thing like that is actually slightly easier to go down because it's gravity assisted you just kind of like ease up the pressure and you just slide back down um but that's so this is kind of like a chimney where your feet are against the wall yeah exactly against the wall yeah exactly what if the chimney is too big and you're like then it starts to get really

scary you're like inches holding on like going up yeah no i mean if you have to go to like full body you spend then it's then it's really have you ever done that before yeah but uh but not that far yeah yeah i mean this is crazy so i feel like it'd be almost harder going down like trying to see where the holds are and then you have to unhook essentially right it depends on what exactly you're doing but oftentimes going down actually isn't is easier in some ways because when you look down you can see all the holds okay because sometimes when you're looking up a rock wall it's really hard to see you know what's an in cut like what's a positive edge and what isn't you know it just all looks like blank rock but when you're looking down it often you can see

all the little edges and things sometimes but then on the other hand when you're looking down you're leading with your feet which are further away and it's kind of hard to see whereas when you're going up you're looking at your next hand holds it's all within this this tight field of vision just depends but it's fascinating man i know you have to go to a climbing gym in practice oh my gosh i'm so pink though is it so it's so hard i don't think it matters really well okay so for low angle climbing like something 90 degrees or less, you're putting all your weight on your feet anyway. Okay. And there's big holes.

There's big like things to hold on to. Even if they're really small holes, the idea is that you transfer as much weight as possible off your feet. And it's like climbing a staircase. So I mean, just because you're big, I mean, you can still climb stairs, I assume. Yeah. Is it that easy though at like a rock climbing gym? Yeah. Somebody with good technique should be climbing.

So I've heard described as when you climb a staircase, you use the handrails, but you use them for balance not to pull yourself up. Right. And climbing should be the same way basically. Really? That the handholds are basically for balance and you still drive with your legs. I mean, that changes a little bit if the wall gets more than vertical. Sure.

Because then, obviously, you're hanging from your arms, and then it is harder to be really big and heavy. But being big and strong helps. Really? I think the only chance that I would actually go to a rock climbing gym is if you were there to give me some advice and coach me up the wall, that I'd be like, okay, maybe I could do this. I think it would be easier for you than you think.

Yeah. You have an athletic background. You're like, you know, but I feel like my hands, my arms get so tired. Like years ago, you're using them too much. I suppose my feet stand on your feet and then use your hands for balance, you know, be able to relax your hands and just use them to be close to the wall. Right. That was, yeah, that's what I remember.

It was just so hard. Yeah. I was just trying to muscle myself up as opposed to using but that's a common thing if you're already a big strong man you're like oh use my big muscles because i have them but then they're exhausted yeah exactly but they get tired so fast so it's all in the feet yeah it's all in the feet i read somewhere about you doing a brain scan and having like the fear signaling your brain less than others is that true uh sort of not exactly so that's also a scene in the film free solo in the documentary um and that was taken from a science journalist we did this profile thing where we went yeah used an fmri and basically

like looking at images while in in fmri and you see like a brain scan yeah yeah and the takeaway was that yes while doing this battery of images my brain didn't light up the way that others do but the conclusion was more that i had probably desensitized myself to that level of stimulus over years of exposure so not so much like my brain is missing a piece which i think is the simplistic like a lot of people like oh there's something wrong with you you're like no i think the real takeaway is that through you know chronic desensitization like i'm just no longer like i need a different level of stimulus gotcha which to me makes total sense well and also and you see that like in monks and things like that i mean people change the brain in all kinds of ways if

you do the same type of activity for long enough but I wouldn't be surprised if it's a little bit of both nature and nurture Where I was probably a little less sensitive that stuff to begin with which is probably why I like free-souling and doing some of these Other things climbing wise, but then i've also spent 15 At that point, you know, it's been 15 years doing it all the time and so naturally Got more comfortable with it A lot of people that come to watch this show or listen, not everyone, but a lot of people struggle with

the fear of failure, the fear of going after their goals, going after their dreams and failing and either being embarrassed by it or just feeling bad about it. And that fear that they're holding on to makes them unable to take action. How do you think people can overcome their fears better? Is it only through taking action over and over and kind of desensitizing yourself to the emotions and the feelings around failure?

Well, that is a good way to do it i suppose yeah but i mean one way i think that you see in climbing a lot is uh is just starting by deciding whether or not your fears are rational or well-founded you know i mean in climbing it's a little bit easier because your fear is often uh physical like it's based on some physical thing like you're actually in real danger as opposed to sort of Psychological like that's no fear of failure and things like that But I think it's easy to start with like is this a rational fear does this make sense? And in some ways that actually makes more sense for the psychological things because you're like I'm afraid because my friends will make fun Of me, you know, maybe you should really think about it

Like well your friends make fun of you for taking your shot at your dream like no your friends if they're real friends They're gonna be pretty psyched for you and they'll be you know bummed that it didn't work out but they'll be impressed that you tried and they'll they'll respect the effort you know it's like I think that that's maybe the place to start is like is this a well-founded fear in climbing a lot of the time when you evaluate your fears they often are well-founded like if you fail you will die or or whatever you know like if you slip you'll die die. You'll get hurt at least, yeah. Yeah, and so in those cases, it makes sense by starting by addressing them how you can,

you know, mitigating the danger, minimizing the risk, you know, doing whatever you can to make it safer so that you won't be as afraid. Right. You know, that's why I think talking about fear is complicated because it's, yeah, sometimes you should ignore it, you should push past it, you should suppress it, you should do whatever. But a lot of the time sometimes you should ignore it. You should push past it. You should suppress it. You should do whatever.

But a lot of the time, you should probably address the root cause of the fear. Like, a lot of the time, you're afraid because you're actually in danger or because, like, something terrible. You know, like, people being afraid of snakes and spiders. I mean, that's often well-founded because there are many places in the world where you will die if you interact with the wrong little creature. Yeah. But depending on where you live, you know, you should know because a lot of them aren't that dangerous and and in that case it doesn't really make sense to be that afraid right what are you most afraid of these days i don't know i mean the big you know death i guess are you afraid of death i mean yeah i'm

like i'd say i'm afraid of severe pain like i don't i mean i don't like feeling pain any more than anybody else really were you afraid of death before you started a family or yeah i mean i never wanted to die i mean i love being alive you know i mean the thing with free-souling is it's not like a death wish you know the i mean in some ways the real pleasure of free-sestalling is taking something that seems like it should be really, really scary and then making it feel safe because like on your best climbs, you feel good while you're doing it, but you're doing something that seems like it should be very, very scary. But you know, that's what makes it magical is because it doesn't feel

scary when you do it well. Right. But before you got, you know, before you started having a family, well right but before you got you know before you started having a family um did you did you look at your profession differently than after having a family not so far but i mean right now you know my daughter will be too soon and i feel like we're just starting to have like a nice relationship maybe in the last six months i feel like we're actually community you know we're having a good time bonding yeah we're like you're just like my buddy now. I can do stuff and it's awesome. And so I wouldn't be surprised if as that relationship grows, you know, my perspective around risk and climbing and stuff changed a little bit, but maybe not because I, you know, because I've been in serious relationships with romantic partners throughout all the hardest

climbing I've done. So. And didn't change the way you would address like the things you wanted to tackle and take on no not really really though i wouldn't be surprised though if children like having dependence is a little bit different just because romantic partners it's almost seem a little bit more disposable you know not to be too right right children it's different yeah yeah because you have a real legacy to raise your child with a romantic partner you're kind of like well i mean there are a lot of there are a lot of people out there exactly no matter how incredible your partner is it was kind of like i don't feel as beholden to them yeah i do a child of course did you have any fear around having your first child no no i've definitely always wanted a family and yeah

i mean even that's the thing is that even through all the extreme free soul i mean whatever i've always you know wanted to be an old person with grandkids at some point really yeah there's i mean there's seasons to life i mean you know you can't you can't just like do the hardest craziest thing forever and and why would you want to get so tired you know it's yeah it's yeah, it's funny. I've had this conversation, but I mean, this is all aside, but so, I mean, I'm at the point in life, I'm 38. A lot of my friends are a little bit older, but similar range of life. And so a lot of my friends are starting families right now. And there are a handful of professional climbers, you know, around my age who have

partners who like really want to start a family, but they're kind of like, not sure they still have some things they want to do. And know there's like this this tension between like do we start having kids and a conversation i've had with several of my friends who are professional climbers is that you know i've been i've been a professional climber for 15 years and it's been amazing and i love it and i've been going so hard for 15 years or actually a little more than that like 17 years or something but i'm 38 so realistically i could keep going at roughly the same pace into my 50s probably because climbing climbing has more longevity than most sports because it's relatively low impact on your body

and you don't really get injured and so you can go pretty hard for a long time wow but so that but so if i doubled what i've done that'd give me 55 but then i'd still have 40 more years of life potentially before i die and you're kind of like there's no way I could do it two more times after that wow it's like you'd be so tired and just the idea of taking everything that I've done in the last 15 17 years and then doing it all again I'm like I don't even know if I want to right so much really I mean I've you know and probably the more times you do these things yes you get more skilled at it and better at it but it's also more chances of an injury more chances of something bad happening too right yeah and i mean i would think also just a little bit

less passion for it because like if you've just done it all yeah i mean i mean i haven't done it all and they're always like other things to do and other challenges but i have done most of the things that i've dreamt of my whole life so done't know like I can dream up new things but do they mean as much as the things that I dreamt about since I was a kid you know it's like we can just keep adding more things on your list cuz you're like I don't want the list to end is that cool for a bigger mountain and a new yeah yeah I'll be freezing I'm gonna be naked club yeah exactly yeah I'm like do I need that I need that right I mean there are there are plenty of climbing challenge I'm still understand things. I'm like, do I need that? I'm like, I don't know if I need that. Right. I mean, there are, there are plenty of climbing challenges. I'm still interested in things that

I'm working on and whatever, but you know, I have done a lot of things that I want to do. What about, you know, this profession is a dangerous profession. I mean, you've had a lot of people that have lost their lives over the years, right? A lot of people that you're close with or people that you climbed with or knew of how dangerous is this sport really well yeah i mean i've definitely known i've known a lot of people who've died climbing but part of that is also because professional climbing you know everybody so any kind of accident you at least tangentially know the people involved probably um i mean climbing is interesting because it's very high consequence so if you have have an accident, it can often be fatal.

But you very rarely have accidents. And so I contrast climbing against a sport like mountain biking, let's say, where people break their clavicle like every other season. Right. So, I mean, I kind of prefer a sport like climbing where you basically never get injured, but you're always facing a tiny, tiny risk that you could die. Wow. If you did something wrong or if, you know, a lapse lapse of attention or whatever like there's always the chance you could die and there's always the chance of like minor injuries and things but but realistically if you're just a casual climber that climbs in the gym and goes sport climbing outside on weekends

and stuff you'll probably go your whole life without ever being injured or witnessing a serious accident whereas if you're a serious mountain biker you're gonna get hurt every year like it's just something's gonna happen yeah i mean gravity assisted sports like if you're an elite skier you're getting injured every season or like every couple seasons right you may not die yeah but that's the thing that's what i was gonna say is that like as a mountain biker skier things like that it's very rare that you die i mean you know you can but it's not common but you're always going to get injured i kind of prefer the other risk profile where it's like you're never going to

have little injuries but there's always the risk you die wow i think it's a little more heightened tell me it's very heightened is there something about that that excites you that like i could go up this right now and not come back well it's not that excites me but i think it demands a certain level of attention and focus and i just don't like i don't want to break my clavicle every year like i don't i don't want to like separate my ac joint like break my shoulders you know it's like i mean i have friends that have all been hurt biking doing different things and you're kind of like i don't want that like yeah i love climbing and i don't want to take time off because i you know broke my arm doing something stupid like skiing and biking or whatever. What is the thing you think about when you have a, you know, a long climb and

stakes are high? What is the thing that you're thinking about? Are you thinking about the end? Are you thinking about moment by moment? Are you thinking about the next few moments? Are you, are you distracted thinking, putting your mind in a different place? Where, where does your mind go? Yeah, it depends. So say on El Cap specifically, like free-selling El Cap, the, the route on El Cap can be broken down roughly as a third easy, a third medium climbing, and a third hard, just sort of interspersed throughout the 3000 feet. Like some of it is easy, some of it's, but then some of it's very then some it's very hard so on the easy terrain my mind can just kind of wander and and you can think about whatever you want on the medium terrain you know you kind of have to focus a little more and then on the very hard terrain

you're basically just focused on the movement and you're not even necessarily thinking about the movement you're just doing the movement and your mind is just sort of empty but i think um the easiest way to understand that is if you compare it to running or something let's say i think most people have had experience running pretty hard and if you're casually jogging then you can like look around and enjoy things but if you're sprinting as hard as you can sprint then you're really not thinking about anything you're just trying to keep breathing and keep your feet under you and that's it you're just doing doing the thing you're second by second you just focus on that second yeah you're just hoping your lungs don't explode like going as

hard as you can and i mean so i think that that's a pretty similar i think it's a good analogy we're like basically depending on the level of intensity you have more or less uh you know you focus more or less and i think you know people are like oh well you know if you're distracted on the easy parts like is that dangerous you're like yeah you don't want to be completely complacent you don't want to just like slip and fall off because you're not paying any attention right but it's the same way like when you're driving in like casual conditions your mind can be thinking about anything else and you can just trust your body to do the thing that you've been doing your whole life yeah sometimes you drive somewhere you're like how did i get here you get

to the end spot you're like i don't remember getting here totally you know it's like but your but your body and your mind knows where to go yeah you're paying attention and you're doing something that you've practiced for yeah possibly many hours a day for your entire life which is funny you know i mean nobody thinks of driving that way but it is something that you basically practice maybe not in an intentional level and not thinks of driving that way but it is something that you basically practice Maybe not in an intentional level and not like in a structured way But you do have a lot of experience with it over your life, especially like living in LA I mean, yeah Like hours a day that you're practicing this thing that you don't want to do

So I don't know. I mean, I think it makes sense that there's something you've practiced that much you can just execute on autopilot Yeah, but before you go up on something challenging are you visualizing it are you yeah on our cap obviously you talked about the whole process of like going up there doing the moves like you had a journal you're like going over everything but just on maybe a normal challenging adventure. How do you approach that? It depends. I mean, so in climbing, basically depends whether I've prepared for it or not, because there's some climbs that you intentionally don't practice and train for, but climbs all have ratings, like difficulties assigned to them. And so there are certain things that are so far within your comfort zone that you just kind of know that you can go out there and deal with whatever you find. And so in that case, you don't

necessarily visualize or practice or do anything ahead of time because you just know that it's within your comfort zone. But if something is a hard enough rating that it's like, you know, on the edge of your comfort zone or beyond it, then you kind of have to employ all the techniques I was using on all cap, like, you know, actual repelling and preparing and practicing and memorizing moves and then visualizing the moves and rehearsing and just all the things and so yeah it just depends on what level of challenge you're looking for from the moment you said i'm going to climb al cap to the actual day you did it how much time was that when you made the decision this is going to happen how much time was that well a decision like i'm going to do it or the or not the dream

i want to do it well both i was a dream but then like okay i feel ready now i'm gonna actually train for it yeah okay so in 2008 i soloed uh the northwest face of half dome which is like a 2000 foot wall and as soon as i did that i was kind of like oh l cap is the next obvious thing so starting in 2009 i was like l cap this year but it was uh you know but then i drove into the valley looked at all cabins like there is no way it's like totally out of the question it's way too much too scary it's just it's too crazy and so then from 2009 for the next i guess six years or so i kept thinking each year that the like this is the year you know like maybe this is really well i kept kind of just hoping that i would drive into yosemite and look at the wall and it would look easy

it never did no like and it's funny because even now having done it i look at it still doesn't look like how did i do that that was crazy totally it's uh i mean it's just it looks insane no matter what but so i spent years kind of hoping that i would just somehow get a little better and it would just look easy and so then by 2015 um so that's now you know six years later of like having this dream and you were climbing it also yeah yeah i was climbing with ropes and with partners and doing speed records and doing all kinds of things with ropes yeah so you're doing it but i was doing plenty of other walls without ropes and things you know like i was i'm i was professional climbers i was trying really hard i was doing

all kinds of things and i was just hoping that by doing all these things eventually all cap would look easy you'll be like yeah i got this no big deal yeah yeah it's not like i just drove in and was like i hope it changed you know it's like i was like grinding like all year going on expeditions like climbing hard routes freesailing big walls like doing film like doing all this stuff for years yeah for years hoping that at some point lcap would be like would look chill and it just never did so then by 2015 I finally sort of accepted that it was never going to be easy and that I should probably just start doing the prep work specifically like basically start acting as if I was going to do it even if I didn't really know if I could do it and just see what would happen and uh and then by sheer coincidence um the the film directing duo

like jimmy chan and chai vasarely the the people who co-directed the film free solo uh approached me that year by doing a feature documentary and so as a professional climber you're like oh cool somebody wants to make a movie about me climbing something like it makes sense that you know i've had this dream that i want to work on forever and now some people show up wanting to like basically help me work on a dream project i'm like this is perfect and so um so then we made the film free solo if they didn't approach you to do this film do you think you would have done lcap i think i still would have but i think it actually would have been well it would have been harder in some ways, but then also easier in other ways. Cause obviously the, the stress, the pressure of a film project, it doesn't really help with something like that in some ways, but actually it does help a lot

with some of the nitty gritty, like the logistics, like carrying rope to the summit of the wall, rappelling in, uh, working on sections, pulling the rope back out afterwards, stashing stuff, like moving equipment. It does help to have friends and partners involved who are like working on the same project with you. So you're not just alone out there. stashing stuff, like moving equipment. It does help to have friends and partners involved who are like working on the same project with you. So you're not just alone out there. Yeah. Well, no, I just mean the actual like weight of like, so carrying 1200 feet of rope to

the summit of the wall, each coil, each spool of rope is, you know, 50 to 75 pounds. Like basically it's, it represents days of effort. Just to get out there. Yeah. Just to get to the top of the wall. Yeah, exactly. It's just a lot of work. And so having a team, you can spread out the work a little bit better.

Wow. And it was helpful for me to have people that I could talk to about it. Because free soloing, you normally keep it pretty low key because nobody wants to hear about your soloing projects. Really? No, no. Because everyone's like, that's a bad idea. You shouldn't do that. Like nobody.

No one's encouraging you. No one's encouraging you. To climb thousands of feet in the air without a rope. Yeah, exactly. Like if you have a dream like that, that's kind of a fragile dream. Like you don't totally believe you can do it. And then all of your friends are constantly telling you, you shouldn't do it. You're never going to, you're never going to try, you know?

So you want to keep it like pretty close to the chest. So you don't tell people your dreams? No, not for free selling stuff. You're just maybe like one person, like this is something I'm thinking about, and they, you know, they got it. Not even really. Really? Without cap, I mean, not really. Maybe some, like, hypothetical conversations with friends over the years, but never, like, a...

Really? Yeah. Because it's just like, because it was too, it's too much. It's too crazy. So you couldn't tell anyone your, I guess your girlfriend at the time, she knew. Yeah, well, that was the thing with the film film project is that once we're doing the film project then obviously all the people involved with the film know what's going on and then and then you bring in a few people because you're filming with them like climbing partners and basically because we were doing the film

project it sort of opened the the net wide enough that i was able to talk to a handful of people about it get some advice and like which which turned out helping a bit but otherwise you no one would have known you would have just rehearsed and practiced for months almost all of my other major free solos were done basically alone with no one knowing well some i mean with varying degrees because for certain routes you need a partner to work on with you and that's the thing like with el cap it's so big like i knew that i would need partners to help like going up and down and repelling the wall like repelling the whole wall by yourself like you can do it but it's a grind and doing it over and over is a bit of a recipe for disaster um like it helps to have somebody with you just to manage the ropes and have the gear and all the stuff and so it it just helps

to have a film crew with it because you know like you might have some really good friends who are willing to go up there with you a couple days, but they're not going to go up there with you for months. Right. Because, like, nobody's that good a friend. Right. They're kind of like, okay, like, that was a good friend. Unless you're paying me.

I'll go up once or twice. Exactly. Yeah, I got a life. Yeah, exactly. They have, and it's like hard work, hiking to the top of the wall and rappelling down a big wall over and over. Like, it's not an easy day.

This is like, you know, sunrise a sundown type of thing like all day well it's actually more like way pre-sunrise like very very early and then trying to be down by uh before sunset before the sun hits certain parts of the wall but so it's more like a four to two kind of you know 4 a.m to like 2 p.m operation on the wall every day for like every day for months no. I mean like a couple days a week. I mean, they're really big days. You have to rest. Okay. So you had the dream kind of hypothetical since 2008 or nine, but then you realized, oh, this is actually the most terrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. Probably at one of my thinking, that's a crazy dream. But every

you come back, you train, you try other stuff, you come back you train you try other stuff you come back hoping to look at the wall and thinking i got this for years you didn't have it yeah until the point where you said maybe i've got this and then the film crew said not even necessarily maybe i've got this more like you know what i'll never know if i've got this or not unless i try because i kept kind of hoping that it would look easy before I put in the work and finally I realized I had to flip it and put in the work before it would look easy just to act as if you were going to exactly exactly basically I just realized that I'd have to put in all the work and then maybe it would happen maybe it wouldn't but I would just have to put in the work regardless to find out because otherwise I was never going to know and so what did that work look like for

you like how much time how many reps so, so then the work wound up being, as it turns out, almost two years of effort on the wall. But part of that's because one of the seasons I injured my hand and like a climbing fall, just like random things happen, you know, life happens. And I climbed a bunch of other routes while I was working on it and, you know, life goes on. But basically it was like another two years

of like working on this El Cap project. With one goal essentially. Yeah, yeah. And mapping it out how does that look like then you do you kind of have your journal and map out here's the game plan for month one more so um yeah a little bit and then actually more specifically i had my game plan for the route itself like here are the parts that have question marks um like i'm not sure about this one move on this one section and like what about this section and then there's like these

loose rocks up here and there's like this bush in the crack up there and you know there's just random stuff and you're like and so then you know piece by piece i worked my way through the the checklist so to speak and you know try to like make make myself feel comfortable in the different parts and i found workarounds through around a few sections that i never really felt that comfortable. And, um, yeah, and then eventually just sort of. How many times did you do the whole thing assisted with ropes before you went after it? Um, not that many, but that's because, uh, climbing the whole route from bottom to top with a rope actually wasn't the most efficient way to work on it. Because like I was saying, maybe a third of the route is pretty easy. You don't

need to do that. Yeah. And the third, this, this kind of medium. I don't really need to do that either. So I kind of wanted to focus all my effort on the hardest sections just because it's a better use of time. So it's just doing section after section, just kind of repeating it. The other thing is that if you climb from bottom to top, then you need a partner with you who's able to climb a wall that quickly, and there aren't that many. Just like five people maybe?

Yeah, yeah, like literally there are a couple people in the world. Yeah, and they're willing to do that with you maybe one or two times but then they're pretty tired and they're kind of like why are we doing this over and over yeah so for me it made more sense to rappel down the wall by myself or with a partner and work on the key sections because then i can be a little more strategic about the so you started at the top and went down yeah i generally start at the top interesting, so like a typical day might be starting, like hiking to the summit

very, very early in the morning. How long does that take to hike it? Like an hour or two, like two hours. Like an easy route on the back way up? Yeah, you basically hike around the back.

Oh, okay. So I'd like bike across the valley, get to this spot in the forest. You hike around the back, takes a couple hours. Wow. But that's like when you have all your stuff

already set up on the wall like with light loads moving really fast and then you rappelled on the wall i'd typically rappelled down to the hardest section which is 2300 feet off the ground and then i would do that a bunch of times and then i would keep going from there down um and then work on a couple other sections on the way down and then try to be down by lunchtime or something when you're rappelling down 3 000 feet and you see the ground 3 000 feet below you do you ever get scared no i mean well but like if you get scared just from seeing it then how are you gonna climb without a rope you know what i mean that's crazy but you're so high up man i know but that's fine but you're secure you're on a rope or in a harness you can just look down and hang there dangling and you feel fine if you know that you're safe i mean if

i thought the anchor was going to rip then i'd find it really scary you know like if i thought that the rope was about to snap then i find it pretty scary right but if you're just hanging dangling and you feel like everything's secure i'm good you can yeah that's fine look back dangle 3 000 feet in the air and not well like so when you uh ride in an airplane and you look out the window is that scary you're like no you feel totally confident in your safety and it's pretty chill but i'm seated inside of something yeah but it's the same thing i'm in a harness you're just sitting in your harness oh man but if it you know it's something that you've spent five days a week doing for 20 plus years yeah like it feels

pretty chill have you ever done those uh observation decks and skyscrapers where it's like a glass floor and it's kind of scary yeah it's like a little scary but you know you're secure but you know it's safe still yeah you saw all those other people doing it you're like it's safe it's fine and then it's chill and you just enjoy the view you appreciate the place like it's cool yeah after a minute you're like okay i'm fine if it's just a little square and i know that's the other thing with with all this you know all my talk of hiking to the top repelling the wall you're spending eight hours a day on the wall so yeah i'm used to it the first step over the edge can be kind of scary and especially in the morning there'll be like an updraft and it's cold wind and you're like literally looking over the edge of a

3 000 foot cliff and your ropes are all tangled and it's like chilly and you're just sort of like oh i'm a little on edge but then once you start like you just can't be on edge all day you know eight hours in you're like i'm so tired like you're relaxed yeah you're like it's it's fine now after you completed lcap uh your wife mentions in arctic ascent which is the new show coming out which the trailer is unbelievable we'll have it linked up here. She mentioned that you seemed lost. And as an athlete, myself, pursuing goals in many different sports, in high school and college, being a two-sport All-American, professional athlete, USA handball team,

I remember accomplishing big athletic goals and almost feeling depressed within 30 to 60 minutes after the celebration 30 minutes i remember like maybe a couple hours but like the dinner after the event was done like later that night i'd be like hoping to feel something else i never really felt what i thought i would after 10 years of pursuing a goal i I was always like, oh, I still don't love myself the way I think I should. I don't feel happy the way I'm supposed to feel. I don't feel it didn't solve every problem in my life. Yeah. No, I mean, I think maybe I'd sort of already learned that lesson a bunch of times before, before coming out cap. Cause yeah, you know,

you just learned that it's not solving any of your problems yeah but that said i still love climbing things so like climbing out cap i was still very satisfied and i'm still very satisfied with having climbed i was never but i think what my wife referred to i'm now like i don't know if i was really lost but i think that i mean we started dating right as i started the process of free song just by sheer coincidence of when we met and whatever but it was like basically right at the beginning of my my journey to actually free solo cap the final two years of like training and doing it so she had only dated me through the most focused and intense period of my entire life basically the biggest goal yeah the biggest goal in my whole life like there's the pinnacle achievement of all of my climbing like this is everything

and then I do it and then yeah i mean i'm sure from her perspective i'm like a little bit more relaxed a little more like what you know and and it is true that when you let a big goal like that go either by having done it or or by walking away from it because it's not possible for you for whatever reason i mean it does there is a little bit of a hole left behind where you're like, oh, like what gets me out of bed now? Like why, why get up early? Why train all the time? What's my purpose? My mission?

Yeah. Or like, why do I care about my diet if I'm not, if not for some important thing? Like, should I just eat dessert all day, every day? You know? So when did you, I mean, how long was that phase for you until you got clear on the next purpose? It'd be hard to say because that season, so part of my process actually for freestyling on CAP was because freestyling is so psychological,

so much of it's mental. I mean, physically I knew I was capable, but it's like the mental side is challenging. And so even though I knew it would be the most important thing I'd ever do in climbing, I didn't want to put it on too high of a pedestal because I didn't want to build it up even higher in my mind than it already was. And so in a way to sort of offset that in a way to keep it feeling more normal for myself, um, I tried to just keep my Yosemite season

as like one of many things throughout the year. So, um, so the season that I freestyled our cap, uh, I also had an expedition plan to Antarctica that winter. It was like my first trip to Antarctica and, um, it was a North face expedition with the whole team. And, you know, I was just going with people and I didn't even necessarily want to go cause I thought it'd be too cold as it turns out. It is too cold.

No, actually it turns out it was one of the best expeditions of my life and it was amazing. But at the time I was like, that sounds crazy. I don't want to go, but that's a different story. But at the time, I was like, that sounds crazy. I don't want to go. But that's a different story. But so because I knew I'd be going to Antarctica, I also planned this expedition to Alaska with some other people. Again, it was like someone else's trip, but I was going to go with them because it's a good way to practice the skills for Antarctica.

And I'd been there with them before, and we had some unfinished business. We didn't do the same. But so basically, I had my Yosemite season where I was hoping to freestyle all-cap. but I already had these other trips lined up and these other climbing goals and these partners and like plans because I wanted Yosemite to feel like oh I'm using Yosemite to get fit for Alaska and Alaska is getting me fit for Antarctica and it's all just part of the normal cycle of being a professional climber where you go from like one thing to another and yes of course my goal in Yosemite is way more important than any of those other things but it makes it feel like it's more normal right and that keeps it from feeling too crazy for me too intense too stressful yeah and so when I did El Cap like a week later I went to Alaska

and went on this expedition and as it turns out it actually was kind of a perfect come down because we had terrible weather so I spent a bunch of time in my tent I read a bunch and after you know years of training for El Cap and like several months of intense physical effort you reflected more yeah yeah then i was actually you know just because of the alaskan weather i just got to spend a couple weeks in my tent reading being like oh like chill you know but so your question though of like was there a big come down kind of like yeah there was a little bit but there was kind of this natural order of other trips and plans and goals and like you know i mean as a climber you just always have something that you're interested in sure but then it was complicated because then the next year the

film came out and then the free solo film i called it my deployment to hollywood sort of like a military deployment yeah because it was basically six months of like non-stop traveling events press interviews non-stop everything and so and i knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing so i totally embraced i was like i'm i'm going all in i'm doing everything they tell me to do i'm just i'm i'm here for the experience you know like oh there's bradley cooper again i met him at the last six things too you're like cool because he was touring with a star is born or whatever and you're just like oh bradley you're so handsome it's like like every time you bump into him you're like you're still so handsome you know but i knew that it was like a once in a

lifetime thing so everything you know the events are fun like i mean cool people yeah like but but it's cool you know it's like crazy stories and you know it's the only time you'll do it so you're just like that's that's fine but then again then you have a crazy comedown afterward because you've just spent six months basically living this like this Hollywood lifestyle yeah well it's like high but also kind of low because you're basically just going from airport to venue to hotel to airport to venue to hotel, like for months, which for me especially as a professional climber is like a complete change from normal lifestyle. No, you want to be outdoors. Yeah. Normally I like hike to the cliff. I spend the whole day

working on some random thing with my partner and then we hike back and it's all super chill. And then, you know, during the Free Solo Film Tour, we're having days where you wake up in New York City, you fly to SF, you drive for an hour, you do an event, you drive back to the airport, you fly again to LA, and then you do another event that night. And you're just like, I'm literally a piece of meat that's being shipped in a can around the country.

You're like, this is crazy. But you're also like what a unusual life experience you know i think i had two different days like that there were double days where it's like you wake up in chicago you fly to new york you do an event and then you fly to la and you do another event that night and you're like how can you even do that many of you know like you did two premieres on one day yeah not necessarily but like screenings or stress things or whatever yeah yeah yeah but like stuff so that was six months yeah it was like six months touring around speaking showing up taking photos maybe maybe

it was like five but it was really really long it was like you weren't able to really climb during then i mean i was training in the gym a lot wow quite a bit lifting or you were more like so any gym you could find in the country you would just go yeah yeah every climbing gym in the country basically you went to yeah yeah wow man so would you ever do that experience again where you're hanging out with i mean for the right thing yeah it is fun like it's a crazy experience it's cool what was the crazy story that that came out of that in those five there's so many i mean in some ways my wife and i now have a lot of the fun little couple stories like one of the oscars after party things uh maher shal Ali, whatever, you know, the guy, I think Green Book. I think, I don't know, I forget if he'd won something or not, but he was obviously like nominated.

He's a great actor and very handsome and all dapper in this amazing suit with this entourage. Anyway, he was like walking by and he like just shook my hand or something because we had just, you know, it was just. Anyway, my wife was like holding a bunch of hors d'oeuvres because we're pillaging all the free snacks and she literally just threw her snacks on the floor so she could be like hello and shake hands with them and she was like so delighted to meet him but it's just like the fun story if she like just dumps all her food so she can be like hello you know it's her one chance to shake hands with marshalla that's fun i don't know just things like that you know random wow you saw bradley cooper, six times?

I mean, a bunch, because everyone's on the same circuit. It's like the directors go to the war, the screen actors go to the war, the whatever is the Oscars. The Globes and this and that, yeah, yeah. The BAFTAs, the, nah. I like presented an award at like the Audio Guild Academy thing. You know, just like, it's all part of the campaign. It's, I don't know. You just do what everybody tells you.

You just felt like a piece of meat, though just being shipped around everywhere basically but i mean it's fine you're just doing what you're told i mean it's like having a job sure but you're like what a weird job did you get paid for that no but they pay for your flights and hotels yeah of course it's all expenses covered and then you know i make some percentage of what free solo made and then free solo was shockingly successful and so then you know so you make some percentage of what Free Solo made. And then Free Solo was shockingly successful. And so then, you know. So you get a cut of that. Yeah. So it's not, it's disingenuous to say I'm not going to pay because obviously it's all good for me.

You're helping promote something that could pay you. Yeah, exactly. Wow. And then when you think how well the film wound up doing and then, you know, I wound up getting corporate speaking offers and things like that. Like, obviously, the film doing well has been very good for me and my family. And that's all great. But the actual day-to-day, you're not getting paid. And you're just like, this is a lot like it's crazy well i mean you're not getting paid to climb a mountain either day-to-day i guess but that's true that's true i i mean my friends and

i often joke that if you if you broke out your pay as a climber by hours of hard labor you know you're getting paid like pennies yeah two bucks an hour to carry like a 50 pound backpack up a mountain and you're kind of like this is pretty hard work for that much money right but it's because you love doing it it's so fun of course i'm curious you've um you mentioned this in free solo but how many people that you've either climbed with or know as climbers have lost their life no i don't know i mean it depends on how wide of a net you cast you between close friends versus casual acquaintances and things. But, you know, in the broader community, like dozens probably. But close friends, you know, a handful.

Really? Yeah. Was there ever a time where there was, like, did anyone ever lose their life on a climb that you were on ever or an expedition? No, I don't think so. Nothing like too, too close. I mean, I've seen a couple terrible accidents like cliffs really where somebody yeah like you hear screaming you run around the corner and they broke their leg or something or uh well a couple things like that no i mean people dying though

really like you were there yeah yeah you were i mean it wasn't in your group or was just another group or um different group like some random kids at this. Climbing? Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. What's that like? Yeah, a kid fell and some of the protection ripped out and he landed on the ground and his head collapsed basically and he died. What's that like when you're on a climb and you see and you experience that? I mean, yeah, it's terrible.

Wow. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, yeah, it's terrible. But, you know, you're also, you're always sort of rationally aware of the risks involved. And so, I mean, and this might be one of the things that separates me from some of my friends or family, let's say, because I don't know if my wife feels the same way necessarily. But, you know, I feel like I'm rationally aware of all the risks involved. And so seeing them firsthand is sobering for sure and very sad. like seeing his friends was very you know like they were none they were all very inexperienced and so like nobody had any idea how the accident happened or what had happened or why he's dying and like it was all terrible it's terrible for the partners and um you know so that's like hard to watch but you are sort of like this is what you've signed up to do

you're like you know that this is a possibility. Seeing it doesn't make it any less of a possibility. You know, like it basically is always on you to mitigate risk as much as possible. Right. It's just, I mean, yeah, it was pretty intense. Yeah. Does something change in your brain or in your heart when you're, I guess, seeing either a bad accident or seeing someone you know lose their life is something shifting inside of you or are you just saying it's more of like a

blessing and a gratitude of like okay this is i have to really make sure i'm prepared it's another reminder of how difficult and challenging this is well that's the thing i think you can go either way i mean i think you can either deal with those kinds of things by sort of shutting yourself off to it and like enter yourself like numb yourself to it and be like doesn't matter that happens like whatever don't care or you can sort of let it in and be like this is really really sad and there are high consequences in this sport but i love doing this for anyone it's still worth it to me you know but i will do my best to avoid things like that happening right yeah i mean in some ways i think that that second option is the slightly more responsible and and sort of

the more seasoned response maybe and i think that's kind of where i probably am now whereas uh i think as a as a younger you know as a early 20s man it's easier to just either shut it out or just be like well they made a mistake and that won't happen to me which is like a little it's not really the right call what's the biggest loss you've had whether it be like an emotional loss or a physical loss you mean like loss like blow in life or loss like somebody dying it could just be like a grieving of anything you know it could be a physical grieving of someone or it could be an emotional grieving of something i don't know i mean they're the obvious things that come to mind like my father died when i was 19 and uh you know like grandparents

have all died and like family members have died but those are kind of like normal grieving in a way where like in some ways that's the natural course of life like my father obviously died much younger than than he should have but um but it's still sort of natural in a way you're like you know at some point your parents are going to die before you hopefully and you kind of want them to because it's better for them to die before you than for you to die before them right and so it's you know know now now as a parent i'm like well i hope i die before my daughter or daughters soon uh-huh um so i mean that that to me is sort of like natural grieving in some ways i think accidents and climate accidents are almost harder well even though they're you know in some ways more fair it's like people are taking risks of their lives

occasionally they die you're like well that you know they made choices and i mean that's kind of the callous way to look at it but it's still really sad and it's sad for their families and i don't know i've only had a couple like truly close friend climbing partners who have died in accidents really none of them were with me um but but those are sad because you see the impact on the families and you know you're just like you're close to their friends, their families, you know, their circles. Yeah.

And you still think about them. You're like, Oh, it'd be nice to hang out with that person right now. Wow. But, but I don't know. I mean,

that's kind of the thing with climbing though, is that it is harder than, you know, like I'm, I assume that you haven't had a lot of fellow handball athletes die. Like handball. Not that I know. I mean,

football is more intense and people get injured. Yeah. Yeah, but still very rare they die. Yeah, rare. Like, almost never die. Yeah, it's rare. No, with climbing, I mean, there is a lot more risk. But then that also gives you more from the sport in some ways. Like, I think some of the life lessons you can take from climbing you can't necessarily get from handball.

I mean, with all respect for handball because obviously all the lessons around like training and perseverance like those are all kind of the same but some of the like managing fear and like the different different levels yeah it's just different things yeah of course yeah you're not like managing mortal peril in the same way it's different and like grieving friends and and like being actually afraid for your life though it's funny because being afraid of failure or being afraid of like pressure of competition feels the same as being afraid for your life in a lot of ways in some ways you know and depending on the person and depending on how neurotic they are and like how stressed they are it can be worse

so what about the biggest emotional loss you've had or thing you've had to grieve i don't know i mean obviously relationships you know like failed relationships and things and particularly when you're younger and it just all seems like it matters more but um but in the grand scheme of the thing none of those are that big deal do you feel like you have a bigger heart because of the things you've been able to overcome do you have like an expansion of giving and receiving love i think i started from a very stunted place really and with steady nurturing through my wife and not having a family and you know good community and good relationships now my stunted cold heart has grown to like a below average size really for sure. Do you think it's hard for you to feel loved?

Yeah, yeah. Why do you think that is? Partially because I think there are, you know, billions of people on Earth and it's all slightly arbitrary. You know, it's like, if I didn't exist, then the people around me would love other people. And they would be fine. You know, like, life would go on. Wow. I mean, it's a slightly callous approach to it.

But I also think a very true approach. But when your wife is trying to, you know, show appreciation or love on you, are you able to receive that? Or do you feel like it's kind of distant? We joke sometimes that she's just shoveling dirt into a bottomless hole for her whole life. Or shoveling love into a deep, dark hole.

But the thing is, she's an incredibly caring person. And she's uh you know she's accepted a challenge in life oh my god yeah and i mean in that it might not be quite that bad yeah yeah especially now like with having kids and you know having more you're growing a little bit that's the thing i think the stunted darkness is growing a little why do you think it's hard for you to to receive love i don't know i mean doesn't matter to receive love yeah doesn't it feels great to receive love doesn't it well i wouldn't know the bottomless dark hole it's like you know i don't know i mean i guess but do you really believe it even if somebody you know man like even if someone's very genuine and they're like oh but i really love you like but do you really because you know if or when i disappear obviously yeah okay if someone

disappeared doesn't i guess it doesn't matter they can still love you if you're not around you know if if you died your wife can still love you for the rest of her life your kids can still love you but i just kind of think that she wouldn't because i think she'll basically just forget because that's that's human i don't think people forget if they have a great relationship with them though no but even still you lose the details i mean that's physiology you know it's like you just you have memories you have photos you have videos i know but actually that's the interesting thing with memories i mean this is kind of a whole aside but i mean so i've kind of noticed this being a professional climber so a lot of my life is on video and in photo and whatever. And there

are a lot of climbs that I don't even really remember that well now, you know, 15 years later or something. And so your memory starts to be supplanted by the video or by the photo or by whatever the, the, uh, the external memory is, you know, like the thing that you're supposed to remember. And you're like, I don't actually remember the experience. Like, I don't know what I was feeling. I mean, I know what the article said or what the book says or you know what the video shows or whatever but i'm like i don't remember you don't remember the feeling yeah i mean it's been a long freaking time so i yeah all that to say though i think that a lot of memories what people think of as a memory is actually just the story that they've told themselves

about it over and over i agree to that or the story that they've told to others about it over and over sure and so it's not like they actually remember it they just keep reminding themselves of like this terrible thing that happened to them or this thing that they lost or whatever but if they stop reminding themselves they'll just forget yeah for better for worse you know like in a lot of cases that's probably better if it's something you've lost so when do you feel the most loved when you're doing what or experiencing what when do you feel i don't know if you've ever talked about love before yeah no no this is fine well okay so like last night i was at a good friend's birthday party it was like kind of a nice little sort of family affair like

uh maybe four couples all hanging out all like very close friends all part of the climbing community and um and not that i felt loved per se but everybody was having a very nice time and it's like everyone's genuinely laughing and like having a great connection and i was like oh this is nice like this is real community like this feels good you know so you felt you felt yeah you feel like the you feel the community the the niceness in the air you know we're like oh this is a true group like this is a good moment it's a good feeling yeah totally did you feel loved as a kid did you feel like you had good community and connections and friends and family that you felt loved i mean i objectively did have good community

and good family and you know it was like raised in a comfortable safe environment like basically it's all should have been fine but i don't know if i necessarily felt really you know who influenced you more mom or dad it's hard to say in um i mean it's hard to say because my dad died when i was 19 and so you know it's it's like hard to remember a lot of ways i'd say like in terms of world view and things now it's like it seems clear that i'm more like my mother maybe but it's also because i don't know my father as well because you know i've never got to know him as an adult but um but in some of the very obvious ways my father had a bigger influence because he was the one who actually took me to the climbing gym all the time and like drove me to youth competitions and he wasn't a climber but he just you know it's kind of like being a little little league dad or something he was just

supportive so he was really supportive he showed up to your he took you to all the events yeah yeah he was encouraged he was really uh what are what are uh love languages and things you know he was really good with time like he was happy to like give quality times but not even necessarily quality because quality time would be like oh you're really having a moment together but i just mean like the showing up and like doing the thing for you like maybe acts of service yeah yeah yeah so he was like good at that kind of thing which i think as a kid you kind of take for granted because like well somebody else take me to the gym but now as an adult i'm like man he took me to the gym a lot a lot of time yeah that's a lot of time at the climbing gym you know and especially for i mean he was like a middle-aged professor

who's like belaying me he would climb a bit, mostly just because I would need to rest every once in a while, so then he would like climb something because he's there. So he dedicated a lot of time, actually. Yeah, yeah. He would belay me like on four or five routes, and then he would do one, and then I would do like four or five, and he would do one. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, no, exactly.

And that's the kind of thing that now as an adult, I can see that like that's a big thing on his part. Yeah, he had a lot of commitment. what was the biggest lesson that your dad taught you well i don't know i mean i think it's that i think it's like the showing up is is the most important thing in some ways wow which i mean in this if we're really going deep on relationship stuff i mean this is a common point of contention in my marriage is that to me actions are the most important thing you know my wife like wants more more words of appreciation words of affirmation yeah words about me yeah yeah whatever so i'm that physical touch yeah yeah i think we both are fine with that but like i think

she wants a little more like telling and and i think that doing is more important the action yeah i'm gonna show up because i'm like anybody can say the right things but doing the right things i think i think the same thing man i think it's like who's gonna commit and take the actions you know yeah well that's that's the cynic in me because i'm like anyone can say you know like a good actor you know since we're in la it's like you see all the billboards like any good actor could convince you that they just absolutely adore you but it doesn't mean anything unless they actually show up and and do the things Yeah, do what they say they're going to do. Yeah, like for years. Right, consistently.

Yeah. What do you wish you got to say to your dad that you never got to say? Is there anything? Oh, it's hard to say. I mean, if we're really getting into it. I mean, my parents got divorced the year before he died. Basically, like when I graduated high school. And they'd sort of been like staying together for the kids.

Which, in retrospect, was a terrible idea. And they should have gotten divorced when we were like seven. I know that and so it's kind of it's unfortunate because i felt like i never got to know him as a as his own like thriving adult because he was in this relationship like basically their whole situation like didn't seem that healthy and so now you know i'm like oh they should have just gotten divorced when we were kids and both been happy yeah and Yeah. And then both been like happy, independent adults. And we could have actually gotten to know them as real people instead of having this kind of like dour, you know, like non-person. Yeah. Cause in the year that after he got divorced, he was sort of

starting to thrive in his own, you know, he was like psyched on his own stuff and like doing his thing, but then he died. And so, you know know it's hard to really know him because right yeah because the things i hear from all my family members on his side of the family you know things like before i was born so we're like oh wow it's really different than the person that i knew is there anything you wish you could have said to him that you didn't get to or no no man last night like since we're gonna last night uh one of my wife's really good friends, we listened to this really long audio message from her that she had just had a family member die,

but she left this long audio message that was basically this very heartwarming story about how she had just crafted this long message to the family member, telling him how much they meant to them and blah, blah, and then basically the person was, like, dying the next day oh man and uh and his his daughter had the opportunity to like read this message to him before he died and so so this this friend you know was incredibly it was all like i was like man this is a lot it was like a straight up hallmark cards sort of

yeah it was deep i was like wow but i also it's like wow that's kind of incredible because she was so much more at peace with the death knowing that Anything she ever possibly could have wanted to say she managed to say to the person before they died and they died knowing everything That Wow everything that they meant to to this person, you know, I was like, oh that was my takeaway I was like man if we don't If you have any friends like you should just say the thing before And that's why your wife wants words of affirmations yeah exactly but at least when she does she'll know that i was

always there for her i didn't tell you how i felt but i showed you yeah but that's exactly exactly i didn't tell you enough but i did try to show you but you just said right there you should say to the people you care about i know no no but it's you know yeah it's harder to do do you feel like that's one of your greatest uh mountains to climb right now is to actually step into that or is that just maybe i mean that's probably a big part of being a good dad so but we're not quite there yet thankfully at this point they're not old enough yet for the yeah communicate that way yeah right now the big challenge this morning the diaper i changed had poop going all the way up the back through multiple layers of clothing

no and destroyed everything not destroyed but right right so it was everywhere yeah but then trying to take off the dirty shirts you know you get poop in the hair you get poop and every i was like this is this is yeah wow man parenting is a different phase right now it's like poop everywhere. I'm sure you'll look back at the memory and it'll be better than the moment. But we were talking about before we started rolling about your biggest challenge. And you were kind of mentioning, like right now, and you were kind of mentioning what to do when you were underperforming.

And you said you feel like you're failing a lot or not living up to an expectation. Yeah, not necessarily failing, but yeah, just not performing at the level that you think you should. So why do you think that's happening in your life right now? It's hard to say. I mean, you know. And your failure is still like

the greatest in the world at what you're doing. No, not the greatest in the world, but I'd say my sucking is still, you know, pretty good, but it's way worse than what i think it should be you know it's what do you think the core why do you think that's happening i don't know no i mean it's a long long sordid tale you know like i did a expedition this summer where i uh a partner and i bicycled 2 000 miles to alaska and then climbed some mountains but it was basically a two-month trip.

And over the course of the trip, I kind of got grounded to us. Like, I was kind of worked. You were worn out. Yeah, I was, like, worn out. 2,000 miles is a long time. Yeah, but he was doing well. And for whatever reason, though, I just wasn't really recovering and, like, was kind of, like, getting worse and worse.

You know, typically with a lot of exercise, if you enough rest you know you respond to it you get better and better yeah in this case i was kind of just getting worse the whole time and then i came back and was kind of sucking for a month or two but that was kind of understandable because i was like i'm digging back out of this hole and and the expedition was successful you know we did the things we were trying to do and it was cool and it'll be a film on for national geographic as well and so you know it's like it's fine like i don't mind having a trip like that where you get ground to dust if you do the things that you set out to do and then i don't mind spending some time recovering like that's totally understandable but i spent the time recovering and then and then

since then i've just never quite you know i keep having like moments where i feel about as good as i think i should be and then it kind of disappears again and keep having glimpses of like like physically or mentally or yeah physically but i feel like the mental side follows the physical but as a professional athlete especially because if you just can't do the thing that you want to do you know i mean even doing like a podcast like this it's like basically you know it's the school of greatness but what if you're not great then then what do you do should i just like walk out right now just give I just give up? Yeah, because for the last couple weeks, I haven't been that great. Or the last couple months, I haven't been that great.

So I'm like, should I just go? Right. I've had those seasons where I'm just tired or maybe I've just worked too hard and I feel like I'm not able to be as present or at the top of my game. But I was telling you before, yesterday was our 11-year anniversary of the show

where every week for 11 years the show has come out that is that is and i think also you know you've consistency and you've been doing this for 20 plus years it's like you're not always going to win every game or be the best every time every climb or every interview it's not always going to be my greatest performance but i think the consistency over time is a level of greatness even if you didn't want to do it that day even if it was a subpar performance but well so that's the whole tough thing as a self-coach climber is that so i agree consistency and just showing up and that's normally my approach for for training and things like even on the days where you kind

of suck like you just grind out the but if you're digging yourself into a hole, you have to know when to put down the shovel and like get out of the hole. True. You know, it's a rest. Yeah, exactly. And that's the challenge when, when you're like, am I sucking because I need more rest or am I sucking because I need to train harder and you just don't know which path you need to take. And they're totally divergent paths that lead to totally different things and so i think that recently i've been sort of on the i'm doing a little bit of both you know and maybe not quite nailing either and i'm not sure which is the right so you'll spend a couple weeks training harder and you're like that's not working let me take a week to relax recover more that's not

working yeah like what do i do a little bit of both yeah like huh you know we're like training more but then the whole family got sick and like the baby's sick and you're out in the middle of the night and then you're sort of like well that winds up being like a week or two of rest as it turns out like quote unquote rest yeah but like not heavy training load and then you're sort of like well now i'm doing both of them poorly like i don't know which is better i'm not really recovering and i'm not really double training and then baby number two shows up kind of soon and so then you're just i'm just gonna assume that that's not gonna help so you're not doing either again yeah exactly but in a way i mean i'm not that

stressed because i know long term like this time next year i'll probably be climbing pretty well and and or at least climbing the same like i'm not too stressed in the long term but it's just slightly frustrating when you want to when you feel like you could be doing better and you're not sure why why you're not there so in a year and a to, when you feel like you could be doing better and you're not sure why, why you're not there. So in a year and a half, two years, you'll be, you'll be 40, right? Yeah. So I'm 38. So yeah, in two years.

You'll have a, you know, a two-year-old and a four-year-old essentially. Maybe another, I don't know, but you'll have at least two-year-old and a four-year-old. Yeah, yeah. We'll have two daughters. but you'll have at least two-year-old and a four-year-old. Yeah, yeah, we'll have two daughters. And you will have lived 40 years of your life, and you will have accomplished so many incredible things that most climbers will never accomplish, ever.

What do you feel like the next 10 years will be if you could go into the future and think about the vision you might have? What do you see your life looking like? This is an interesting question, and I've been thinking about this a little bit because i mean this is an interesting question and i've been thinking about this a little bit because i think this is i mean i want to keep doing things that i'm proud of and climbing and partially because i want my daughters to know someone who's proud of the things that they're doing and not proud of the things that they did you know what i mean it's like kind of

a subtle distinction interesting but i don't want my daughters growing up with somebody who's like oh i used to do all these cool things as opposed to like i want them growing up with somebody who's excited to do cool things in the future and is like working on projects and because i think that kind of motivation that excitement to like work on projects and like get up early and train and like have things that you're passionate about i mean i think that's important yeah and that's certainly something that i'd love to pass on to my kids in like a healthy way not like not like a psycho pushing them away sure but like in a way for them to see someone who's fired up and like living their best life. And so, you know, I mean, I am very proud of all the things that I've done,

but I think it's important to have just as many things that I want to do in the future, because I think that's hopefully part of parenting, you know, like within reason, I don't need something all encompassing like El Cap, let's say, because that would probably take me away from family too much but i can have goals that i am passionate about that i try very hard for and that i can still be around my family sure do you have anything on your mind of what that will look like not i don't know nothing big right now i mean this year i have a couple sort of like uh climbing travel like destination goals where like my family and i will go to a place and climb for a while but they aren't like objectives in terms of performance it's more like to go to a place together and like have a good time yeah yeah um like hopefully be

able to do something cool while i'm in the places but but it's not like uh it's not the main not performance thing yeah yeah um but yeah so in some ways i see this as sort of an in-between year i mean and also in the big picture if i'm kind kind of like, oh, the first five years of my children's life, I was a little underproductive as a climber. I'm like, that doesn't seem crazy. Yeah. Like, that's fine. And as long as I think that I can come out of that again at some point. Like, if you just told me, you know, you will underperform for five years while you raise your kids at the beginning.

I'd be like, that's totally fine. It'd be like going to college or something where you're like, okay, well, I'm going through this phase of life because I know it'll set me up better for the future. Because I know I want a family long term. But I just want to know that I'll be okay again eventually. You could go back and do these things again. I don't mind the grinding and training and all that stuff if i think that eventually it'll it'll pay off or like it'll it'll work you know but i think that the challenge is when you start second guessing like is this the wrong path like am i doing this all wrong this is a waste of my time tell me about arctic ascent because the trailer of this thing is just blew

me away tell me what the expedition is was and you know what we should look forward to as we watch this series. Yes Arctic Sand is a three-part series on National Geographic. It comes out kind of soon and it was an expedition to Greenland. A six-week trip to Greenland to a remote part of eastern Greenland and a sort of interesting combination of climbing adventure. We went and we climbed these two cool walls one of which was a 4 000 foot sea cliff like sticking straight out of the ocean it was kind of insane um so you have to take a boat to get to the actual boat to the base you hop out of the boat and then you climb 4 000 feet straight out of the fjord it's pretty cool that's crazy yeah i'd never done

anything like that either it was uh how cold is it it's pretty freaking chilly it was a north facing wall in greenland so it wasn't it wasn't warm winds are just blowing up against you the waves are crashing against the wall well the waves are crashing against the wall 4 000 feet below you that's crazy man yeah it's really far yes it's like bigger now cat bigger than you know it's a big big wall so no one had ever climbed it not that wall no which is yeah So that was part of the excitement for you to go try something that no one had ever tried. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's probably one of the biggest unclimbed rock walls in the world like that.

Because there aren't that many 4,000 foot vertical walls. But, I mean, as you can imagine. So, I mean, how do you prepare mentally and emotionally for something that you've never done and no one else has ever done? Well, I have done a lot of other first ascents and I have climbed a lot of other mountains and I've climbed things of similar size and scale in different places. And so, you know, it's true that it's the first ascent I was ever climbed that rock. And as it turns out, that rock posed some unique challenges that I'd never quite encountered before. I had like this crazy swirly rock that varied in quality and it was actually uh turned out it was pretty hard but um but you know you just draw on all your experiences having

done other things that are somewhat similar and in that case you also have a team and so you're also drawing on the experiences of the team and and the team members were also incredibly skilled professional climbers and so you know between everybody you assume that somebody has what it takes wow or at least the team has what it takes do you think you could do it with alone without i mean maybe having the support of people with ropes or whatever but without other rock climber professionals kind of coaching and working with you could you have done it alone maybe but it'd be harder and it'd be less fun. And it'd be, you know, it wouldn't be the experience that you want necessarily. Right. It'd be a lot harder because sharing the psychological burden is a big part of it. Really? Because when you're looking up

at a 4,000 foot wall and you're not sure if it goes, like every move is, is uncertain. You know, we're like, am I going the right way? Am I? And so it's nice to be able to share that uncertainty with other people and like, let them think about it a little bit let them make some decisions like trust them to take the lead for a while and just take the rope up higher and then you can take over again so you'll pass the lead is what you're saying yeah you alternate leads and so it allows you to relax while the other person is leading and so in this case on that particular climb i was mostly uh climbing with this woman hazel finley who's a british climber who's a professional climber very very good at that kind of thing and so whenever she's leading it allows

me to totally relax and sort of recover and eat and drink and chill really and she's incredibly stressed because she's leading and trying to figure out how to stay safe and where we should go and like what direction but while she's stressing you can just sit down there being like really yeah i mean you're like you're you're you're hooked in you're just kind of dangling yeah i'm hooked in and i'm feeding the rope out to her i'm like i'm belaying i'm holding on the rope so i'm like protecting her but i'm also sort of eating drinking and relaxing and then just like watching the icebergs go by on the fjord you know it's like you're just chilling because the thing is as soon as she finishes her section of the climb and secures the rope then

she brings you up and then it's your turn to lead again oh man and then when you're leading it's suddenly stressful because you're like should i go left should i go right like left looks more dangerous but right looks like it might get blank and then we'd have to backtrack and you know you're constantly like making all these route finding decisions of like which way it looks harder which way it looks easier but you're always dealing with incomplete set of information because no one's been there so many knows so you look up and you're like well it looks easy but what if it isn't like then you're screwed wow how long how long did that whole uh climb take well that particular four thousandth wall only took 10 days or so of the trip but that's partially because we were

just sort of cramming it in at the end um climbing it took 10 days no like we pushed the ropes higher up and it rained a lot and it was crazy and then then the final ascent took us two days, but it's because we'd already gone halfway up the wall. So you were sleeping on the wall? Yeah, yeah, sleeping on the wall. So you were on the wall for 10 days? No, we were at a base camp nearby and then we were on the wall for two. Okay, gotcha.

Like we'd been pushing higher and higher up the wall and then finally we did the whole thing in two days. So you'd push up, then come back down to base camp, push a little little higher and part of that's the nature of filming and everything to make a tv show is that you kind of have to do things like that to make sure that the camera people can be in position and things wow but but that trip though was a six-week expedition and we'd climb this other wall where we also camped on the wall and we ski traversed across this ice cap and we did a bunch of science and i mean when you're talking about you know purpose and things like that i mean in some ways this expedition is is exactly that evolution because um we had this scientist heidi sylvester who's amazing she's this really

passionate glaciologist she's french and uh so she was there doing a bunch of science experiments for for different universities around the world. Basically all like sort of climate science, like glaciology related. Because Greenland is one of the most important places in the world for climate change. And, you know, that's the kind of thing that makes a trip like that feel a little bit more worthwhile. It's not just you going after some adventure, but it's you working on research that you care about.

Yeah, and working on something that actually matters for the world. You know, it's like, I can make a show where it's like, oh, we're just climbing this extreme rock. And you're like, that's cool. But realistically, I'd rather just do that by myself and not make a show about it. You know, it's like, if you're going to put something on television, it may as well be somewhat useful. And it may as well, you know, highlight important parts of the world and bring knowledge around things that matter and so you know the greenland ice sheet is is melting the ice sheet is the big part in the middle like when you look at a map of greenland it's like the whole

center of greenland is ice and if the greenland ice sheet melts uh you know raises sea levels by something like 20 feet which affects hundreds of million people around the world it's like you know half the major cities in the world are on the coast. It's like New York, and London, and Tokyo, all these places that go underwater. Buenos Aires, I don't know. But nobody thinks about Greenland. Nobody thinks about the Greenland ice sheet.

Not many people live there, too. Yeah, nobody lives there. I mean, in Greenland, some people live on the house. Yeah, but even Greenland, so few people live in Greenland some people live on the house. Yeah, but even in Greenland, like so few people live in Greenland. And so, you know, I think that in some ways that makes a trip like that feel a lot more worthwhile. Wow, that's cool. And that's part of your foundation too, right? Well, the work my foundation is doing is unrelated to something like this expedition.

But yeah, I have a foundation that supports solar projects around the world and has been doing so for the last decade or so. Wow, that's cool What made you want to get into that? Same idea just trying to do something useful. Yeah, you know just feeling like like climbing is fun and I love doing it But ultimately climbing is just for you or you know, just for me. It's like it's like a selfish endeavor in some sense Yeah, yeah, or it's a person like yeah people always say climbing selfish like climbers like to say like climbing is selfish and i don't i don't really love that because like any human activity is sort of selfish sure sure or most human activities are um but yeah climbing is generally a self-driven pursuit and it's nice to do something slightly more useful

in the world. Yeah. With the foundation, it kind of came about because, you know, and I'm sure you can relate to being given all kinds of interesting opportunities that are fun and you don't want to turn them down, but you also don't totally need them because your livelihood is already made. I was living in a van. I'm totally comfortable.

I'm doing the things I want to do. I'm having a great time. I'm living my best life. And if somebody offers you like a TV commercial thing and you're like i'd like to do it it's fun it's crazy money for like doing almost no work but you're kind of like why do that if you don't need to and the foundation was a nice way to say yes to the fun opportunities but then use that for something useful in the world well that's cool and so um how long were you living in the van for uh like 15 years or something 15 years i lived in this really small ford econoline for uh like a van you can't stand up in for nine years i think

and then i lived in a dodge pro master for another five ish or six ish how much was the those two uh cars how much they cost yeah the first one i think was uh i think was 10 grand 10 grand you lived in that for for nine years yeah yeah yeah i think so wow that's crazy and then the first one i think was uh i think was 10 grand 10 grand you lived in that for for nine years yeah yeah yeah i think so wow that's crazy and then the first one i went through three different build outs in it and the first build out my uncle and i did with random woody head around a shop that was just left over so literally the van cost you know yeah 10 grand and then i lived in it for several years and then i redid the interior a couple times as i got a little more wow yeah you got a couple dollars here and there yeah exactly yeah so i spent another like five grand

redoing the interior oh yeah yeah it was big big money and then the second time i splurged buying a new pro master a van that i could stand in like nice with like a little like faucet or like a bathroom well yeah so the van was just new and nice and that was like 30k or something and then the build out was probably i don't know another 10 or 20 so how long did you live in that one another five six years wow and then that one i would have kept living in but i actually crashed it um sadly i rolled it which is a total botch and then um but then coincidentally we found out the mom was pregnant right after that so we were kind of like well we need something different anyway because it doesn't have any seats so what'd you get a bus no now we know we have a longer van a longer van yeah still still like a van that you can camp in

but um with your daughter yeah yeah we've camped with her several months you live in the van still or do you know we live in a house but now we go to yosemite for a month or two every year and with the with the family yeah with the babies wow so you've upgraded to a house yeah i live in a house and then and also we've upgraded the van and yeah both yeah now it has kid seats so 15 years man in a van almost yeah yeah for by choice because you were like i want to be able to travel i want to be remote i don't want to have a lot of possessions yeah maybe it was like 12 or 13 really like in the van because we bought the house that one it's been a steady transition where we're in the house more. I mean, especially with kids now. Yeah, of course.

Wow. Though I wouldn't be surprised if as the kids grow up a little bit, we can be in the van more again. That's cool, man. But having infants, it's like it's just having the routine and nap time is just easier with a house. Yeah. What's the greatest lesson you learned living in a van for 12 years? What's the greatest lesson you learned living in a van for 12 years? That you just don't need that much stuff. I mean, I think that's the main thing.

It's like, you just don't need stuff. I mean, you want to do whatever you want to do in your life. Just focus on doing that thing and you don't need any of the extra stuff. I mean, I still have that problem with my wife all the time. It's like she has decorations and things. I'm like, why does this exist? Like, what is this? You know, like a throw pillow.

We don't need it. It's called a throw pillow because you throw it in the trash. Like, you don't use it for anything. It just, like, decorative pillows drive me insane. Like, stuff that doesn't have any function. No value. Not even as value, but if you don't use it all the time. Like, I just don't want to be a slave to my stuff.

Like, you don't want to be, like, moving your stuff around. You know, the thing about living in a van is that you have very few things and it's all the stuff that you need. Like it's only in the van because you use it all the time. You spend your time on the things you want to do and not, I guess, managing things and stuff. You know, it's just like a simpler lifestyle that's devoted entirely to the thing that you want to do. I mean, the thing with being in a van is that it is fundamentally uncomfortable. You know, don't have a shower you don't have a bathroom you don't have whatever and so it is harder living it's like colder you're more exposed the elements it's like you know you're living in a box parked on the side of the road a lot of the time so it's not that comfortable but it means that you're totally focused on

whatever you're in the van for you know it's like either you're there to go hiking or they go back you know in my case i'm always there to go climbing but it's like you're there to climb so you climb you know like on rest days you go scrambling because it's like there's not that much to do in your van right right it's like you just wind up being totally focused on the thing that you're doing wow that's cool man it's cool lifestyle um it's a very intentional lifestyle and i think that that kind of intention can be brought to normal life. Absolutely, yeah. Well, we can watch the show.

It's on Nat Geo, launching February 4th on Disney+, right? It's called Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold. And I'm excited for this, man. The trailer, again, looks incredible. So congrats on this. It's going to be a lot of fun. How else can we support you or follow you besides checking out the show and checking out your foundation yeah i mean you can go to honnoldfoundation.org see the work that that

affirmation is doing with solar projects around the world um i mean anybody can follow me on any social platform just alex honnold i've got a couple final questions for you but this has been inspiring so i appreciate your time, Alex. This is a question I ask everyone at the end of my interviews called the three truths. It's a hypothetical question. Imagine you get to live as long as you want to live,

but at the last day you've accomplished everything. You've experienced life. You've learned to, you know, share words of affirmation with your wife eventually, you know, all this is 750. It's taken a while. Everything you want to create, you know, you, you've lived a great life from this moment until the end of time, but it's the last day for you. And for whatever reason, you have to take everything you've ever created with you.

So this interview is gone. Books you write write the movies you've been in anything all the social media posts that you love putting out there they're gone however you do get to leave behind three things three lessons that you leave to the world I like to call it three truths what would those three truths be for you do you think man this is all we would have to remember you by I just don't I think I think if I was at the end of my life and I was content, I would just go. I don't know if I'd have any truths. So I think if you wipe the rest of the slate clean, it's just like, I just don't think that, I mean, to me, I think that the whole. But if people had, they wanted to remember you by something and they could only remember three things that you learned and experienced and you were able to share those things what would those three things be do you think just go big with an

exclamation mark i use that as a i sign things that way whenever you when you have to like sign things at events but it's kind of also one of my favorite things now just go big and just like go for it you know you can sort of take whatever lesson you want from it but it's like, go for it. You know, you can sort of take whatever lesson you want from it, but it's like, do the thing, you know, like try. But I think that also that's, that just sums up so much of my scene. Just go big. Go big. One truth.

Yeah. That's my one truth. Go big. Okay. I kind of think so. Cause I just think to, to get into other truths requires too much nuance and subtlety and like, you know, the richness of a life. And I just don't know if you can distill that down to it just be like yeah if everything else is being wiped you just step away

you're just you're just gone that's fine but this goes back to everyone's replaceable you know i'm like if my whole life gets erased like there'll be somebody else leading an awesome life you know like all the things that i've learned from climbing, somebody else could learn from unicycling or whatever other activity, you know, it's like, I think that human lives in many ways are sort of interchangeable, you know, like we can all learn how to lead good lives in different ways. You know, like somebody can devote their entire life for their garden and still learn all the same things that I have in my life about like experiencing hardship and trying hard and like overcoming and persevering. Like anybody can learn that however.

Well. Sort of like I don't know. What would be one extra thing you would leave behind for your for your daughters? If you could share a truth with them.

Dad who loves you. It's my my I don't know. I think that's probably the I mean if you're going to leave your child one thing that's probably the most

important thing. Like you are loved. I guess i guess that's beautiful man that's a good one honestly that's beautiful man we'll see if i can manage that when uh when the time comes oh man that's beautiful um before i ask the final question alex i want to acknowledge you man for what a life you have lived and an intentional life on the things that you wanted to pursue and are still pursuing. But again, living a life in a van essentially for 12, 13 years, very intentional to pursue something you care about the most. I just want to acknowledge you for going big, like going for it and consistently going for it. But I also want to acknowledge you for allowing yourself to evolve at this new season of life. You know, having kids,

raising a family, being in a relationship and allowing yourself to also evolve. Like you went, you've been going big, but you're also evolving with it as well. And I think it's really inspiring that people can have both love in their lives, relationships, but also be pursuing their dreams at the highest level, even if no one else has done that. So it's really cool what you've done. And I just want to acknowledge you for that. For this moment, of course. That's something actually that my wife has always pushed. You know, there's this false contrast between like doing rad things and being in a good relationship which i think you're often portrayed that way in in media is like you can either be alone doing something rad or you can be in a happy

relationship my wife is always like why don't you do the rad thing in a happy relationship yeah and uh and like basically from the very beginning of our relationship she's always kind of been steadfast and like why don't you just do something hard while being well adjusted in a good relationship and it's funny because until until we got together i was like i was like is that an option i kind of thought you needed the angst and the turmoil and the like suffering yeah exactly yeah the dark like the dark artist and now being with her i'm like oh yeah okay i guess you can actually just have a really nice life and still do hard things but just do it with a big smile it's like i'm like it is kind of

a better way to go. It's a way better way to go and support and friendship and collaboration and all that stuff. Final question, Alex, what's your definition of greatness? I mean, I think I'd just go with this sort of standard definition of like doing hard things, like achieving things I haven't done before. And I mean, I know that I should take a more inclusive, you know, just like living a good life and all that.

But I'm like, no, I think of greatness as doing something challenging that hasn't been done before. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on

Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.