Articles   •   July, 2017

Source: The National Geographic

It was still dark when Alex Honnold stepped out of his van dressed in his favourite red t-shirt and cutoff nylon pants. He slipped on a pair of sticky soled climbing shoes, fastened a small bag of chalk around his waist, found his first toehold, and at 5.32am on that early Saturday June 3rd morning, began inching his way up toward climbing history. At 9.28am – a mere 3 hours 56 minutes later – he pulled himself over the rocky summit of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and became the first solo climber to scale the 914m vertical granite wall without ropes or any safety harness. A feat known as free solo climbing.

For eight years, Alex dreamt about climbing the mighty wall but every time he walked up to it, he found it too daunting. “Each year I would show up and it would seem just much too daunting” he said. “To walk up to the base of the climb without ropes and harness, it just feels a little outrageous.” That was the case until the weekend of June 3rd. Alex, who has been climbing walls for over 20 years, has been training for the climb of his life for over two years. His achievement has been described as the “moon landing of free soloing” by Tommy Caldwell who made his own history in January 2015 when in 19 days he “free climbed” the Dawn Wall, El Capitan’s most difficult climb, with his partner Kevin Jorgeson (free climbing uses no gear to help progress up the mountain and only ropes to catch them if they fell. Free soloing is when a climber is alone and uses no ropes or any other equipment that aids or protects him as he climbs). According to the National Geographic, “It’s hard to overstate the physical and mental difficulties of a free solo ascent of the peak, which is considered by many to be the epicentre of the rock climbing world. It is a vertical expanse stretching more than a half mile up—higher than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. From the meadow at the foot of El Capitan, climbers on the peak’s upper reaches are practically invisible to the naked eye.”

In his pursuit of the impossible, Alex was not immune to the barrage of criticisms levelled at his recklessness by not donning protective gear. Sometimes it impacted him financially. Following the release of a documentary about climbers risking their lives by climbing without safety gear, Alex was one of the elite climbers who saw his endorsement dropped by an energy food company. “I could see how for a non-climber it might seem completely insane.” He said calmly. In his interviews recounting his epic climb, two things were immediately evident.

You Need to be Obsessive about Preparation

Alex grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento has been practising indoor rock climbing since age 11. As his passion for climbing increased, he dropped out of the University of California Berkeley to conquer major summits in the United States, Europe, China and Morocco. “I’ve devoted 20 years to climbing and probably six or seven years to this particular project, so it’s not like I’m some crazy kid who in the spur of the moment decided to do this crazy thing. It took me years of effort.” he said.

From the start Alex prepared religiously for this climb. He scaled the route countless times with safety gear, memorising and rehearsing the grip, the various holes he had to grab and the position of his body until he felt ready to attempt the free solo climb with nothing to catch him if he as much as slipped and fell. Although Alex has completed two free solo climbs — the northwest face of Yosemite’s Half Dome and the Moonlight Buttress in Utah’s Zion National Park prior to this, he was obsessive about his training, which includes hour-long sessions hanging by his fingertips and doing one- and two-armed pullups on a specially-made equipment that he creatively bolted into the doorway of his van. This on top of perfecting, rehearsing, and memorising exact sequences of hand and foot placements at every step.

You Need to Overcome your Own Mental Hurdles

Whilst we may say his feat called for a high level of athleticism, what is perhaps more challenging is conquering the fear. “To climb without ropes where the slightest slip is literally fatal in that arena requires enormous self-control and focus.” That’s Daniel Duane, author of El Capitan: Historic Feats and Radical Routes. “It requires this intense cognitive effort to keep fear at bay and focus on the task in front of you.” He said Alex has a rare ability to control fear and his body for a long period of time.

Indeed the route Alex chose to reach the summit is known as Freerider. The National Geographic described it as a zigzagging path that traces several spidery networks of cracks and fissures, some gaping, others barely a knuckle wide. Along the way, Alex squeezed his body into narrow chimneys, tiptoed across ledges the width of matchboxes, and in some places, dangled in the open air by his fingertips. For Alex the true test was whether he could maintain his composure alone on a vertical face thousands of feet up where putting a foot wrong or a panic attack could mean the difference between life and death. Alex’s ability to remain calm and analytical in such dangerous situations is a skill slowly developed over the 20 years he has been climbing. “With free-soloing, obviously I know that I’m in danger, but feeling fearful while I’m up there is not helping me in any way. It’s only hindering my performance, so I just set it aside and leave it be.” Alex said pragmatically.

Sure there are other climbers who may match Alex physically, but so far no one else has matched his mental ability to control fear. The National Geographic said his tolerance for scary situations is so remarkable that neuroscientists have studied the parts of his brain related to fear to see how they might differ from the norm.

In January 2015, when Caldwell and Jorgeson summited the Dawn Wall, Alex was there to meet them. Jorgeson told a reporter, “I think everyone has their own secret Dawn Wall to complete one day.” What’s my Dawn Wall? Alex asked himself. But he already knew the answer. For years he’d been thinking about what it would take to free solo El Capitan.

Evant & Co started the journey up its Dawn Wall. We still obsess with preparing for every Client meeting and focusing on great outcomes.

About the Author(s):

Andrew Lee is the Managing Director of Evant & Co., a management consulting firm with offices in Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. Our purpose is to help our people and our clients to realise their aspirations while improving lives through business. We advise leaders on strategy, human capital, digital, and outsourcing.