In Mark Synnott’s unique window on the ethos of climbing, his friend Alex Honnold’s astonishing free solo ascent of El Capitan’s 3,000 feet of sheer granite is the central act. On June 6, 2018, Honnold teamed up with Tommy Caldwell to break the Nose on El Capitan speed record in Yosemite. Loved the interviews with his friends, expert climbers, the equivalents of Beck, Clapton, and Townsend acknowledging that Hendrix is on another level. There were points where you could feel the pulse of what was driving the story - but got lost in facts when it could have been an opportunity for some beautiful description. There are people in the book that say he is humble, but he constantly comes off as snooty, judgmental and annoying.

Alone on the Wall by Alex Honnold, David Roberts | Waterstones

His foundation supports small social and environmental organizations that have concrete and sustainable project goals. Chin and Vasarhelyi have done such a good job laying out some of El Capitan’s specific challenges for the viewer that they become resonant beats in a mini-story arc. The Soloist was directed by Jonathan Griffith, a filmmaker who specializes in shooting mountain sports. In June 2017, he climbed El Capitan in Yosemite Valley (USA) via the "Freerider" route without a rope or belay. While the book does fall flat in this regard, Alex does reach some level of self realization regarding dedicating one’s life to the betterment of mankind, a la Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; This is to have succeeded.Audiences saw his singularity of focus in his push to conquer El Cap, as well as the anxiety the pursuit brought to his friends. Unfortunately against the backdrop of Alex’s principally hedonistic pursuits, these thoughts fail to gain much traction. Painting an authentic, wry portrait of climbing history and profiling Yosemite heroes and the harlequin tribes of climbers known as the Stonemasters and the Stone Monkeys, Synnott weaves in his own experiences with poignant insight and wit: tensions burst on the mile-high northwest face of Pakistan’s Great Trango Tower; fellow climber Jimmy Chin miraculously persuades an official in the Borneo jungle to allow Honnold’s first foreign expedition, led by Synnott, to continue; armed bandits accost the same trio at the foot of a tower in the Chad desert .

Alex Honnold - Wikipedia Alex Honnold - Wikipedia

When I watched the film, for days after I wondered if he just fell off some cliff in Chad or Patagonia or Nevada -- reading this I started worrying about him again. He covers his speed records on The Nose of El Capitan with Hans Florine and the Yosemite Triple Crown (Mount Watkins, The Nose, and Regular Northwest Face), among other projects. Even readers who have never set toe to rock are going to find themselves glued to this insanely brilliant account of extreme athletic ambition and endurance. Mark Synnott’s The Impossible Climb is to climbing what William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days is to surfing.

She’s always been a huge personal inspiration in terms of living with intention and making good choices. How have those deaths affected you, both personally and in terms of your will to keep climbing at the cutting edge? His books have won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition. And mostly, he just wants to tell us about all the other climbing he does — the speed records, the linkups, and the expeditions that constitute the majority of his professional pursuit (and, more importantly, his passion).