Breakfast Club: October 31, 2018

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Alex Honnold in Free Solo.  Photo: National Geographic

Good morning!

I finally watched the climbing biopic, Free Solo, in the theater.  You’ve probably heard of the film—a 90-minute documentary on professional climber Alex Honnold’s attempt to climb Yosemite’s El Capitan, a 3,000-foot wall of granite, without ropes, harnesses, or protective equipment.

Honnold is a climbing savant consumed with the singular obsession of one utterly devoted to their craft.  Finding mastery alone on the wall dominates his life.  He doesn’t have a job.  He lives in a van.  He avoids meat, alcohol, and drugs.  He spends his mornings climbing on rock faces and his afternoons dangling from a hangboard.  His existence is exceptional, defined by the pursuit of a lone endeavor.

There’s nothing new about an ascetic soul pushing the limits of possibility.  And variations of Honnold’s story have been told many times in other disciplines.  So I found the build-up to his fr…