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" My friends like to remind me that I have relatively weak fingers. Aerobic strength and general endurance have come easy, but finger strength has always been my biggest weakness. "
Alex Honnold
Me
Friends
Endurance
Related Quotes:
" To be clear, I normally climb with a rope and partner. Free-soloing makes up only a small percentage of my total climbing. But when I do solo, I manage the risk through careful preparation. I don't solo anything unless I'm sure I can do it. "
Alex Honnold
Climb
Partner
Preparation
" Pretty much every gym I go into, I feel very comfortable. I dump my stuff, take my shoes off, do my thing. "
Alex Honnold
Off
Shoes
Feel
" For sure, Potrero Chico is a super nice winter vacation climbing area. It's really convenient to fly into Monterrey, one of the nicer cities in Mex, and get a taxi to Potero. Then you can just live in the camping area and walk everywhere. It's muy tranquilo, as they say there. "
Alex Honnold
Live
Fly
Nice
" I know that when I'm standing alone below a thousand-foot wall, looking up and considering a climb, my sponsors are the furthest thing from my mind. If I'm going to take risks, they are going to be for myself - not for any company. "
Alex Honnold
Alone
Climb
Know
" I've gotten over my shyness from many years of doing public events. "
Alex Honnold
Years
Doing
Events
" I make a fair amount of my food choices for environmental-type reasons than nutrition or taste. I'm trying to minimize impact, which is something most people don't necessarily think about when they're shopping. "
Alex Honnold
Shopping
People
Think
" Filming typically takes a bit away from the climbing experience, since you have to stop all the time and shoot. "
Alex Honnold
Climbing
Stop
Time
" I often joke that I've just become a professional schmoozer. Like, nobody cares how well I can rock climb anymore. It just has to do with how well I can schmooze. "
Alex Honnold
Climb
Professional
Rock
" So many people condemn me for risk taking, but I find it sort of hypocritical because everybody takes risks. Even the absence of activity could be viewed as a risk. If you sit on the sofa for your entire life, you're running a higher risk of getting heart disease and cancer. "
Alex Honnold
You
Risks
Heart
" I feel that a lot of human spirituality stems from the belief that we are unique and special in the universe, but maybe we are just what happens when there is proper temperature and proper distance from the right type of star. "
Alex Honnold
Distance
Universe
Special
" Music can be useful during training to help get you psyched, and I still listen to music on easy climbs or in the gym. But during cutting-edge solos or really hard climbs, I unplug. There shouldn't be a need for extra motivation on big days, be it music or anything else. It should come from within. "
Alex Honnold
Training
Help
Music
" If you're climbing big routes that'll take you 16 hours, or, like, El Capitan, you have to take something like a big, robust sandwich. Climbing isn't like running or triathlons, where you have to constantly be eating blocks, gels, and pure sugar. Climbing is relatively slow, so you can pretty much eat anything and digest it as you climb. "
Alex Honnold
Climb
You
Eat
" I've done routes where I've climbed 200 feet off the ground and just been, like, 'What am I doing?' I then just climbed back down and went home. Discretion is the better part of valor. Some days are just not your day. That's the big thing with free soloing: when to call it. "
Alex Honnold
Doing
Feet
Free
" The thing with physical preparation is I have tons of friends who train at a really high level and who can give me advice. But with mental training, I don't really know anybody who has a much better mind for climbing, I guess, so I don't really know where I would go. It's not really a limiting factor for me. "
Alex Honnold
Preparation
Mind
Me
" I love the feeling of touching the rock, the feeling of my body going up the rock. "
Alex Honnold
Love
Feeling
Body
" Seven years ago, when I started free soloing long, hard routes in Yosemite - climbing without a rope, gear or a partner - I did it because it seemed like the purest, most elegant way to scale big walls. Climbing, especially soloing, felt like a grand adventure, but I never dreamed it could be a profession. "
Alex Honnold
Partner
Walls
Adventure
" Anything called the Teflon Corner is not sweet for free-soloing. "
Alex Honnold
Anything
Sweet
Corner
" Free soloing is almost as old as climbing itself, with roots in the 19th century. Climbers are continuing to push the boundaries. There are certainly better technical climbers than me. But if I have a particular gift, it's a mental one - the ability to keep it together where others might freak out. "
Alex Honnold
Free
Roots
Me
" I have a journal of everything I've ever climbed since 2005. For the entry about free soloing Half Dome, I put a frowny face and added some little notes about what I should have done better, and then underlined it. Turns out that is one of my biggest climbing achievements. "
Alex Honnold
Free
Face
Done
" In a general sense, I think it's bad to bring too much money into climbing, since it takes away a little from the beauty of the mountains. But at the same time, I can't blame the Nepali government - or the Indian, Pakistani or Chinese, depending on where you're climbing - from wanting to capitalize on foreign climbers. "
Alex Honnold
Blame
Mountains
Time
" I'm sponsored by the solar company Goal Zero, and they were gracious enough to install panels on my van and a nice battery system for the inside. I have lights and a fridge inside the van. And of course I had panels installed on my mom's house. "
Alex Honnold
Mom
Nice
House
" I suppose being a bit of an antisocial weirdo definitely honed my skills as a soloist. It gave me a lot more opportunities to solo lots of easy routes, which in turn broadened my comfort zone quite a bit and has allowed me to climb the harder things without a rope that I've done now. "
Alex Honnold
Comfort Zone
Climb
Me
" We are apes - we should be climbing. "
Alex Honnold
Should
Climbing
" I took a test once; they said I was a genius. "
Alex Honnold
Genius
Once
Said
" I think part of what made the original 'Sufferfest' charming was the extremely low production value. It was all shaky handheld footage from Cedar. "
Alex Honnold
Value
Original
Think
" I've walked away from more climbs than I can count, just because I sensed that things were not quite right. "
Alex Honnold
Away
Just Because
More
" At the crux of Half Dome, at the very top of the wall, imagine, like, a smooth wall of rock - a nearly vertical granite slap with tiny ripples for your hands and feet. And so you're really trusting the rubber on your shoes to stick to these ripples. "
Alex Honnold
Rock
Feet
Top
" I was 19 when my father died from a heart attack. He was a 55-year-old college professor and had led what was by all appearances a risk-free life. But he was overweight, and heart disease runs in our family. "
Alex Honnold
Father
Life
College
" Big climbs energize me. It's all the other aspects of being a pro-climber that wear me down. The travel and expeditions and training can become pretty tiring. But the actual big climbs - that's what I live for. "
Alex Honnold
Me
Become
Down
" Much as Africa has leapfrogged straight to mobile phones, it has the opportunity to skip the dirty, grid-tied power plants that currently operate across the developed world and go straight to clean, distributed power. "
Alex Honnold
World
Plants
Dirty