On June 5 and 6, 2012, Alex Honnold made the first solo link up of Yosemite's Mt. Watkins, El Capitan, and Half Dome, completing the Triple Crown in roughly 18 hours and 50 minutes. It's one of his biggest achievements in the last few years, even though he has pushed the limits on several climbs. As a result, Honnold has gained a higher level of fame than most climbers, appearing on , the cover of , and in ϳԹ. The attention is one of the main reason's is following him for . They recorded Honnold during his triple because they are working on a movie in which they want to answer one question: “How would fame and celebrity affect Alex in his pursuit of the world’s boldest free solos?”
The video clip above shows raw footage of Honnold on the rock. To offer a bit more backstory on the feat, Peter Mortimer of Sender Films wrote a post titled “.” I've included the start of his post below, just in case you make the mistake of not clicking on the link in the preceding sentence. It's worth a read.
As a creaky 38-year old, I daydream of reincarnation in the form of Lebron on a 50-point playoff night, or Messi scoring five goals in a Champions league battle. But no vision comes close to Alex Honnold soloing 7,000 vertical feet of the sheerest, most exposed rock on earth in an 18-hour period, knocking over the Lower-48’s three biggest rock faces in less time than it takes most parties to get to the 1/4 mark of El Capitan.
In scaling El Cap, Watkins and Half Dome in perfect style, Alex incorporated 50 years of the greatest advancements in Yosemite climbing, bringing together big wall techniques, hard free climbing, bold free soloing, and speedy link-ups into one grand event that, in my opinion, is the greatest climbing achievement in the history of the universe. And given what we know about Alex, it all seemed so … predictable.
Read the full article .
—Joe Spring