Free Solo

Directed by Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Released in 2018 Free Solo follows American rock climber Alex Honnold along his journey of free soloing up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Alex fell in love with climbing as a child and when his father passed at 19 Alex dropped out and started to pursue climbing full time, moving into a van and travelling around. In the first 25 minutes of this documentary, we see his process of preparation for this climb planning the route and training in Morocco with a support team of friends who climb with him. Honnold also talks about how he gained attention with other climbs such as the finger crack of Zion’s Moonlight Buttress and the regular northwest face of Half Dome which was featured in a smaller documentary. Alex talks about his other interests like environmentalism, the initial reasoning behind his vegetarianism. Honnold is passionate about climbing stating at one point that he would never choose a girlfriend over climbing but we see him eventually meet Sanni who understands that he needs to climb. Sanni is not a climber and though she voices her concerns she doesn’t stop him. This first section closes off with Jimmy Chin, a friend and the director, discussing the ethical concerns of filming this documentary. Chin says “I’ve always been conflicting about shooting a film about free soloing just because it’s so dangerous. It’s hard to not imagine your friend, Alex, soloing something extremely dangerous, and you’re making a film about it which may put undue pressure on him to do something, and him falling through the frame to his death. And we have to work through that and understand that what we’re doing is something we can live with even in a worst-case scenario.”

I was sitting in the back on my break at work with one of my co-workers Kelsey talking about the latest documentary she had watched. She told me it’s about this crazy climber who goes up these cliffs without any rope. “He’s a bit awkward but funny and it’s really interesting you should watch it.” Kelsey had recently started climbing at one of the bouldering gyms in town and had come across some of Honnold’s interviews and eventually the documentary. I told her I could never do it, climb like that. In fact, I could barely jump off a diving board at the pool. I have a crippling fear of heights or really…a fear of falling. Fast forward six months later and I found myself at said climbing gym beside Kelsey ready to face my fears. Kelsey’s normal climbing friend moved away, and she somehow conned me into going with her while we were hiking one morning. Though I’ve only just started climbing one thing that Alex said has really stood out to me, “It’s low risk, but high consequence. Think of it like driving your car. It’s low risk because you’ve easily driven countless miles, but it’s high consequence because you’ll pay dearly for nearly any mistake.” The consequence is a lot less at the gym because there are lots of padded mats, but the risk of injury is still there. As I keep climbing routes I become more confident in my movements and the risk decreases. There may be high consequences but there’s also high reward. nothing feels better than completing a challenging climb.

Unfortunately Free Solo is only available for purchase or part of a subscription to Disney+