# Most Replayed Moment: Fear Is A Skill You Can Train! Lessons From The World's Greatest Climber

An episode of [The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1291423644), 14 Aug 2026, 26 min.

Audio: https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/01KZX9EY9AKSB1F728SSAR3SCP.mp3

What if fear isn’t something you need to overcome? Alex Honnold is the legendary professional rock climber behind Free Solo, best known for becoming the first person to free solo Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan without ropes or safety equipment. In this moment, Alex explains why he still feels fear, and how decades of repeatedly confronting it have changed the way he responds to it. He reveals how to make seemingly impossible challenges feel manageable, and shares a provocative perspective on modern life and what it means to feel free. Listen to the full episode here! Spotify: https://g2ul0.app.link/ZkT5tn2Wz5b Apple: https://g2ul0.app.link/abbjfEaXz5b Watch the Episodes On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Alex Honnold: https://www.alexhonnold.com/

## Transcript

[0:04] If your kids came to you, you have two girls, right?
[0:05] Yeah.
[0:06] If they came to you and said, Dad, like, give me advice on what I should aim at in life, would you tell them?
[0:11] I wouldn't give them advice.
[0:12] I'd be like, you do you.
[0:13] You find the thing you love to do, go hard, you know, basically, like, learn some skills, get good at something.
[0:17] Like, what do you like to do?
[0:18] I mean, that's kind of the thing for me, especially with climbing, is, like, if someone had told me, like, you're going to train climbing for the rest of your life,
[0:25] people are like, oh, that sounds like kind of a grind, you know?
[0:27] Because, I mean, it is hard work.
[0:29] You're, like, hiking uphill with a heavy backpack, and it's cold and it's windy.
[0:31] It's, like, it's basically physically uncomfortable.
[0:33] I mean, being a professional rock climber means that you're physically uncomfortable all the time.
[0:38] Like, often, you know?
[0:39] Like, it's, you know, it's hard.
[0:41] Yeah.
[0:41] But if you're doing it because you freaking love doing it, it doesn't feel very hard.
[0:45] And so, I mean, I think the key for a kid is find the thing that doesn't feel like hard work.
[0:49] And when you started, were you scared of big, tall rock faces and stuff like that?
[0:55] I mean, yeah, I had like a healthy intimidation of things.
[0:58] I mean, like my first season in Yosemite, the first time seeing El Cap as a climber, I was 19, and it looks impossible.
[1:03] It looks completely insane.
[1:04] I was like, that's so big.
[1:06] But then, you know, within a couple of seasons, you know, I climbed some bigger walls, learned how to climb, and then,
[1:11] A friend and I had the sort of season goal, like we were going to climb Yosemite all season with the aspiration at the end to climb all cap in a day.
[1:17] So basically there was this long progression on all caps specifically where it's like, you go from just trying to get up it to trying to get up it faster to trying to get up, but with just your hands and feet still using protection.
[1:26] But basically there's like all of these steps you can take.
[1:28] And so over a bunch of seasons, you know, I climbed all cap like 60 times, different routes, all these different things.
[1:34] And then eventually you're sort of like, Oh, maybe I can start thinking about free soloing it, which is where the film free solo comes in.
[1:40] And then eventually you do this thing.
[1:41] But then people are like, well, aren't you scared?
[1:43] And you're kind of like, well, I've spent 10 years building up on this thing.
[1:47] I guess that's what people don't see.
[1:48] Yeah.
[1:50] I mean, the documentary Free Solo, I think, does a pretty good job of showing the direct preparation, like the training involved in doing that specific climb.
[1:57] But it just doesn't show the...
[2:00] like eight years before that, I guess, because the documentary was filmed over two years.
[2:04] And I guess I've been going since 2006.
[2:06] So it was nine years before that, that I've been going to Yosemite and I've been spending maybe three months a year climbing walls.
[2:13] I guess that's the illusion of like all people that do great things and become like athletes or sprinters or whatever.
[2:17] Ronaldo or Messi is you don't get to see the.
[2:21] Yeah, the whole life that they put into doing the thing.
[2:23] Yeah.
[2:24] Yeah.
[2:24] So it looks it looks like a magic trick when we see the outcome.
[2:27] When we show up on Netflix to watch you climb Taipei, we're like, whoa.
[2:30] Yeah.
[2:30] He's hanging with it from his leg.
[2:31] Yeah.
[2:31] I mean, people watch some of those programs and they're like, he just walked up and did it.
[2:35] And you're like, well, yeah, after 30 years of practice, like I just walked up and did it.
[2:38] But no, it's not like just walking up and doing it.
[2:41] Hmm.
[2:43] I mean, like, I've literally been climbing five days a week for 30 years.
[2:47] Like, that's so much climbing.
[2:49] Like, I freaking love climbing, and I climb a lot.
[2:53] On this idea of exposure therapy, as it relates to fear and anxiety and confronting things that terrify them, was there, in the early days, I'm trying to understand, were you scared at some point?
[3:03] Oh, all the time.
[3:04] That's actually something that I think, you know, I've obviously done so many interviews around fear and managing fear and all that.
[3:11] And I've talked about fear a lot of different ways over the years.
[3:14] And I think as I've gotten older, I've sort of come to realize that actually, you're just scared all the time as a climber.
[3:19] Like low-level fear, but you're...
[3:22] But climbing is fundamentally scary.
[3:23] Like it's always kind of scary because there are always consequences.
[3:25] Like even if you're climbing with a rope, you're still always visualizing like, what happens if the rope breaks?
[3:29] Like what if, you know, like, is this safe?
[3:31] Like, you know, is the gear good?
[3:33] Like, is this actually safe?
[3:35] And so you're always a little bit scared.
[3:37] And so,
[3:38] after years and years of always being scared, you get pretty good at managing that kind of stuff.
[3:42] Because there's a lot of sort of misconceptions swirling around this brain scan you get.
[3:45] Yeah, no, I hate all that stuff.
[3:46] That's just all from the film Free Solo.
[3:48] It was like too short of a scene in the film.
[3:50] They needed a little more, they need to let it breathe, you know, explain things a little better, I think.
[3:54] So they scanned a control subject, another person scanned you, looked at the amygdala in your brain, and the conclusion that a lot of people have arrived at is that you don't experience fear because when they look at these two brain scans, your amygdala is lighting up less when you're shown scary images, basically, right?
[4:10] But like shown just this image, like what does that even mean?
[4:13] Like my brain's purple and his brain is orange.
[4:14] You're like, what does that mean?
[4:16] Like, I don't know.
[4:16] But no, I mean, the thing is, though,
[4:19] and this is what I wish was explained in the film better, is that we're being shown black and white photos inside an fMRI.
[4:26] So you're inside a sealed metal tube, you're totally safe, you're physically safe and comfortable, and you're being shown black and white photos.
[4:31] And so to me, obviously that's not going to light up the fear response in my brain, because you're looking at pictures, you're like, who cares, I'm totally safe.
[4:37] But in a control subject, apparently your brain sort of responds to images one way or another.
[4:43] But I'm kind of like, I've been climbing for 20 years, so I've been scared quite a lot.
[4:46] And you're kind of like, well, black and white photos start to lose their edge if you've been scared all the time for 20 years.
[4:51] So it's like, obviously, that's not going to trigger much.
[4:54] Yeah, and I imagine everybody in their life can think of a scenario where they have mastery.
[4:58] A stand-up comedian looking out at a stage probably wouldn't be as scared as me.
[5:03] Yeah.
[5:04] Because that would terrify me.
[5:06] So, again, this is not necessarily some sort of neurological...
[5:10] I think the real takeaway is that I have an amygdala and it works.
[5:14] You know what I mean?
[5:15] Because I think if the results had shown that I was missing my amygdala, then I would have died already at youth because I wouldn't be able to function as a human, basically.
[5:24] But had it shown something like that where there are structural differences or some real change, but this is basically just showing that after 20 years of conditioning, I respond differently than an average person.
[5:34] And you're like, yeah, no kidding.
[5:35] If you put a monk into an fMRI, their brain responds totally differently than an average person as well.
[5:39] Which I actually think is a really inspiring conclusion because it means that we can all grasp our fears better.
[5:45] And even, you know, people won't know this about me, but 10 years ago, I sat down on camera with my friend Ash in his apartment to record a two-minute video.
[5:54] And as I sat there, I was so scared I couldn't get the words out.
[5:57] So you're actually in this two-minute video that comes out.
[5:58] You see it go from night and day in the background just because we did that many cuts over seven hours trying to get me to say two minutes on camera.
[6:03] And obviously after 10 years of being on camera, I can now speak without shitting myself.
[6:08] And I imagine my brain state looks significantly different because of my exposure therapy.
[6:11] Totally.
[6:12] Yeah, you should do the fMRI.
[6:14] Yeah, you should have done 10 years ago because then you'd have your control.
[6:18] And then you do it now and it'd be totally different.
[6:20] But also the psychologists I've sat with all confirm this.
[6:22] They talk about exposure therapy.
[6:23] Yeah.
[6:24] And I went through exactly the same thing with public speaking.
[6:26] Like I was always so afraid of public speaking.
[6:28] I was also very shy and like just not like...
[6:32] It was terrifying.
[6:33] And now because of the Free Solo Film Tour and, you know, all the public things I've done since then, I'm like, basically fine.
[6:40] You know, it's like you still got a little nervous, but it's like basically easy now.
[6:43] You're kind of like, well, that's a total change.
[6:45] It's like, obviously, there's a tremendous capacity for humans to learn.
[6:49] People talk to you about fear all the time because, I mean, your work.
[6:53] Because climbing is really freaking scary.
[6:55] It makes sense.
[6:55] It's totally understandable.
[6:56] Yeah.
[6:56] Yeah.
[6:57] Yeah.
[6:58] And they also realize, I think, at some deep level that the thing holding them back from who they think they want to be or who they aspire to be is fear.
[7:04] Often it's judgment of someone else.
[7:06] It's taking a risk.
[7:07] Totally.
[7:07] So you've become, for many people, they're like, tell me.
[7:11] Tell me how to overcome.
[7:13] Yeah.
[7:13] Well, I think that everyone's like, what's your hack to overcome fear?
[7:17] And you're like, there's no hack.
[7:18] You just get really freaking scared over and over for so long.
[7:20] And eventually it's not that scary anymore.
[7:23] But I will say that that's like a very enduring way to overcome your fear is like if you're willing to go through that process, then you are actually unafraid, you know, because like you can do like hacks.
[7:32] I mean, you can you can like crank up loud rock music and just go for it, you know, like and there are plenty of examples of that.
[7:38] And in what I'd call gravity assisted sports, like say if you're going to jump a cliff on skis, like you can get to the edge and be like, this is really scary.
[7:44] And then be like, three, two, one, do it.
[7:46] And just like go.
[7:46] Yeah.
[7:47] In climbing, you can't really do that as much because it's so slow.
[7:50] Like, when you climb, you make one move, and then you make another move, and then you're like, do I still want to be here?
[7:55] Like, basically, fear creeps in a lot more.
[7:57] But sort of in gravity-assisted sports, you can have more of that moment where you just, like, overcome your fear, and then it happens.
[8:02] You know, like, making a big drop in a kayak or, like, skis or things like that, where it's like, once you commit, it's happening one way or another.
[8:08] Anyway, there's a lot to get into with, like—
[8:10] No, but I mean, I want to get into it.
[8:12] I watched a video of you climbing Half Dome, I think it was.
[8:15] Yeah.
[8:15] And it looks like you got scared halfway up or...
[8:18] Yeah.
[8:19] Yeah.
[8:19] Well, so that video is actually filmed later.
[8:20] So the voiceover in that video is me talking about the experience of me free soloing when I was totally alone.
[8:25] And I did get really scared on half dome and I had this whole somewhat traumatic climate experience near the top of the wall.
[8:30] But then when we went back to film it, I had a different traumatic experience while we were filming, less traumatic, but, uh, but like very scary for a moment.
[8:37] And they got that on camera.
[8:38] So they basically in the film, they just cut the two together as like, uh,
[8:42] being really scared.
[8:43] What's Half Dome to start with?
[8:44] And then what was the traffic experience?
[8:46] Yeah.
[8:46] So Half Dome for anyone who hasn't seen is, uh, is this just totally amazing wall in Yosemite.
[8:51] It's a 2000 foot granite face.
[8:53] Actually, it's the North face logo.
[8:54] It's a freaking, it's that's Half Dome.
[8:56] Oh, okay.
[8:57] Yeah.
[8:57] So it's like an iconic wall in Yosemite.
[8:59] Um,
[9:00] It looks like half of a dome, but actually it's more like a hockey puck just shoved in.
[9:03] It's actually a full dome, depending how you look at it.
[9:05] But the northwest face is vertical for 2,000 feet.
[9:08] It's incredible.
[9:09] And so I free sold.
[9:10] That was one of the first major free solas I did in 2008.
[9:12] And one of the things that sort of made me a professional climber in a way.
[9:17] But when I did the climb, I did...
[9:19] The bare minimum preparation, I basically like didn't know.
[9:22] It was the biggest thing I'd ever free soloed.
[9:24] I didn't quite know how to like go by getting ready for it.
[9:26] Anyway, I climbed it and basically hadn't practiced enough.
[9:29] I was really freaking scared.
[9:30] Got off route, got confused, skipped some stuff.
[9:33] And then at the very top had this whole moment of...
[9:36] extreme panic, you know, basically I got up into some stuff and all sort of like crumbled mentally and like sort of barely managed to finish this upper slab.
[9:44] Like the hardest part of the climb was like right near the top.
[9:46] I was trying to walk across this ledge.
[9:48] Basically I've walked across that ledge face in and face out and normally people hand traverse it or they crawl across it.
[9:53] There are like different ways to go across the ledge and I've done it every which way.
[9:56] And then we were up there filming and I was like, oh, I'm going to walk it face out.
[9:59] But it turns out when you walk it face out, it's really freaking scary.
[10:02] And so I made it kind of halfway and was like, oh my gosh, and then bailed.
[10:06] And when you say you're having like a crisis in your mind, what is that?
[10:12] Is that just, oh my God, what am I, like how does that sound?
[10:14] Well, I mean, so in this case, so walking across this ledge, it's like it starts maybe as a foot wide.
[10:20] So your foot is fully on the ledge and you're shuffling across it.
[10:22] But then at a certain point, yeah, I mean, that's that's put on the screen for anyone.
[10:27] Yeah, that's that's the ledge.
[10:29] But basically at the narrowest part, your feet are sticking out over the lip of it and the wall bulges ever so slightly.
[10:34] So it forces your back out a little.
[10:35] And so you're basically like rocking on your heels with, I don't know, like a 1700 foot drop or something or 1800 foot drop, like straight down below you.
[10:44] And so, you know, it's like pretty, it's pretty intense.
[10:47] Anyway, and so I thought I was going to walk across it like that.
[10:51] I made it to the bulging part and was suddenly like, oh my God, this isn't like, this isn't for me.
[10:55] And then managed to like shuffle back and change my strategy.
[10:59] Is it like panic in your head?
[11:01] It's not panic, but you're like, oh, oh, I made the wrong choice.
[11:04] Like, this is bad.
[11:05] This is bad.
[11:06] You know, I mean, it's not like full, like five alarm bell, like panic, panic.
[11:11] But yeah, you're like, oh, I'm so screwed.
[11:13] And you have fallen a long, long way before.
[11:16] I was hearing it by the time when you were young and you fell off a mountain and called your mother, managed to call your mother.
[11:21] Yeah.
[11:21] That was like sliding down an icy couloir type thing.
[11:23] It's a little different than like free falling off of a cliff.
[11:25] That's like sliding down a mountain.
[11:27] But yeah, I got totally messed up and, and, uh.
[11:30] Yeah.
[11:30] Yeah, and I've, like, broken my arm several times as a kid falling off things.
[11:34] And then with a rope as a climber, you take big falls, like, routinely, you know, when you have protection.
[11:39] That's, like, part of the sport, basically.
[11:42] I mean, it's certainly easy to visualize falling 700.
[11:45] You know, when you're, like, standing on a little ledge and you're just bulging and you're looking down, you're...
[11:49] It's easy to be like, oh my god.
[11:50] It's like if you just bend forward a little bit, you're just going to take a swan dive like 7,000 feet to the ground.
[11:55] The stats in this sport are, I mean, of fatalities.
[12:00] How do they compare to other sports?
[12:01] Safer than you would think.
[12:03] Everyone thinks it seems crazy, but it's not that crazy.
[12:07] I don't know actual statistics, but...
[12:10] I suspect that it's actually pretty comparable to skiing or something, you know, because like recreational skiers die all the time, like falling in tree wells or like going off cliffs backs and things like that.
[12:20] Climbing is actually surprisingly safe, which is one of the things I love about climbing.
[12:24] I mean, climbing is very, it's very sort of binary where it's like either you're totally safe or you're going to die.
[12:32] And the odds of you dying are very, very, very small.
[12:36] But because they're there, they always keep you on.
[12:40] You know what I mean?
[12:40] Like, it basically keeps you alert.
[12:43] But you're never really going to get hurt.
[12:45] Is that including free soloing?
[12:48] Yeah, I mean, for the most part.
[12:50] I mean, a couple people have died free soloing.
[12:52] I mean, people occasionally die free soloing for sure.
[12:54] But actually, most of the sort of cutting-edge free soloists have not died soloing.
[12:59] They've, like, died in other things.
[13:01] I think it was in the documentary on Netflix, Free Solo, where one of your colleagues— Yeah, Tommy is like, most free solos are dead now, which is kind of true, but it's slightly misstated.
[13:13] I mean, you know, he's just, like, speaking off the cuff, and it's not, like, strictly true.
[13:17] Like a couple of the best free solas have died free soling, though they died on very easy terrain.
[13:21] But then the majority of other great free solas have died in sort of climbing adjacent accidents like wingsuit base jumping.
[13:28] And like one got swept to sea by a rogue wave, like while he was out climbing a sea cliff.
[13:32] But he was like standing on shore and got swept out to sea, you know, things like that where you're just kind of like.
[13:37] You know, obviously they're taking risks in their lives and they wind up dead, but it's not the way that people think.
[13:43] You know, you see a photo like that and you're like, free soul and you're going to die for sure.
[13:46] And you're kind of like, well, people don't actually really die that way.
[13:49] I mean, they have, I mean, not to say that it doesn't happen, but way less frequently than people would suspect.
[13:54] If I was to try and like, you know, professionally torture you, and again, I'm not talking in extremes here, but what life would I prescribe you to live?
[14:03] Oh, being like a finance bro or something.
[14:05] having to like just work spreadsheets my whole life.
[14:06] Is that what you mean?
[14:07] Like what, what is my like worst, I don't know, something like that.
[14:12] Or honestly being like a choreographer for dance or something.
[14:15] Like I just, I couldn't do like, or being like an opera singer.
[14:18] Like I would just kill myself.
[14:20] I just couldn't do that.
[14:21] Why would being a finance bro be like the worst thing for Alex?
[14:25] Just the idea of sitting a computer in a cubicle, just like typing.
[14:29] I mean, I'm kind of contrarian.
[14:30] I don't like rules.
[14:31] I don't want to like jump through hoops.
[14:32] I don't want to do arbitrary things.
[14:34] Like I don't want some manager to come and tell me like, oh, you got to file that report again.
[14:37] You like missed a line.
[14:38] I'd be like, you go after.
[14:39] So, you know, I was just like walk out of the building.
[14:41] Like, it's just, I just like, I don't know if I could take that.
[14:44] Be like, no.
[14:45] But that's like how most of the world live.
[14:46] We kind of, we all live in like, you know, I just don't know if it's for me.
[14:51] I don't know.
[14:52] I mean, doesn't that just seem, I mean, I had this moment, I've been in New York a couple of days and I took the subway down to see some, see some friends.
[14:57] And I was like coming out of the tunnel and it's like packed with people.
[15:00] And I was just like looking at the ground and I was like, just, you know, following someone else's footsteps up this like beat down path of stairs.
[15:07] And I was like, I couldn't live like this.
[15:09] Like not day in and day out every day.
[15:10] Like, this is just like feeling like you're just doing the exact same thing as everyone else around you.
[15:14] I'm like, Oh, it seems so, so boring.
[15:18] It's funny because so many of us look at your life and go, wow, that's not very normal.
[15:23] But actually, maybe at a foundational level, you're living a much more normal life than when you're out in nature, you're moving your body.
[15:31] Yeah, yeah, in that way, for sure.
[15:33] I'm like going on cool adventures and going out and I don't know.
[15:37] I think that's also part of why the sort of attraction and allure with your life, especially when you watch Free Solo, is you do seem to be a free man.
[15:46] in a way where most of us aren't free as such.
[15:49] Yeah, I mean, I think we're all sort of aspiring to that to some extent.
[15:51] I mean, most people see that, though, as like they get their vacation for the year, they're planning to retire at some point, and then they're going to have their freedom.
[15:58] And you're kind of like, well, I don't know, I mean, maybe you've got to try to live that way as much as possible.
[16:02] If your young girls came up to you, June and Alice, and said, Dad, what is a meaningful life?
[16:07] What are the principles of living a fulfilling, meaningful life?
[16:09] Would you give them advice there?
[16:11] Yeah, yeah, I mean...
[16:13] it'd be a long rambling multi-day conversation with them about, but I mean, following your own goals is, is I think, you know, certainly one of the cores of having a meaningful life, like having things that you find valuable.
[16:26] I mean, really like living in line with your values, finding things that are important to you and pursuing them with as much as you can give them.
[16:33] When you look at your early, so twenties to thirties, it kind of looks like you're living like a Buddhist a little bit.
[16:37] I mean, yeah, I went on a trip once where they called me the monk.
[16:42] Just because I was living such a sort of acetic lifestyle.
[16:45] I was like reading.
[16:46] I've never, I don't drink and I don't like party and I didn't just for personal preference, whatever.
[16:51] So I'm just like living in my little van and reading books and climbing all the time.
[16:56] Those are the things that I'm into doing, you know.
[16:59] It's like it's, yeah, it's just doing what you want to do.
[17:02] Have you ever been depressed or...
[17:05] Yeah, probably not like deep clinical depression, but there's certainly periods from time to time where you're just like, what am I doing or why or what are my goals?
[17:13] Like, you know, what's and I think to me, the most depressing thing is that, you know, I've put like my whole life in a climate, like trying to be the best you can be all the time.
[17:20] And sometimes you put tons of effort in and you just don't see results.
[17:23] Like for whatever reason, you just suck.
[17:24] You're like, I'm trying so hard and I'm just like not as good as I want to be.
[17:28] And like, that's challenging, you know, but that's.
[17:32] I mean, everybody faces that to some extent, where you're like, I'm working hard at a thing, but I'm just not achieving the results that I want.
[17:38] And between that...
[17:39] There's sort of that period of no man's love, the 20 and 30, where your career hasn't taken off yet.
[17:44] The documentary's not out.
[17:45] You've not climbed Taipei.
[17:47] How much money are you earning from climbing?
[17:51] I mean, my first couple of years, my sponsorship through the North Face was like, I think my first year was like 10K a year.
[17:57] I was like, this is amazing.
[17:58] So I was living in my car.
[17:59] And, you know, making 10 grand when you live by yourself in a van is like more than you need, basically.
[18:06] It obviously went up beyond that at some point.
[18:09] But it was, you know, like in the 10 to 100 range for the first, for the whole, yeah, for years.
[18:16] And at some point it increases.
[18:17] Yeah, and then it increases.
[18:18] I mean, then free solo is obviously like a big thing.
[18:21] And that sort of opened up all these opportunities.
[18:23] Because then I started doing corporate speaking and stuff like that.
[18:25] And I mean, as I'm sure you know, that's just like a whole different world.
[18:29] And so then you go from just like making some money from sponsors to like making money from other corporations.
[18:35] And you're like, okay, now you're making some money.
[18:37] One of the things when I was hearing you talk about some of your incredible climbing stories is, I was trying to understand what role visualization or your preparation plays and how that's transferable to me in my life.
[18:50] We talked a little bit about just how much preparation you did for something like LCAP.
[18:54] But it sounds like you really break down the challenge into smaller bits and then really go through those individual steps.
[19:01] Whereas a lot of people just look at LCAP and go, oh my God, they'll be terrified.
[19:05] And they'd say impossible.
[19:06] Yeah, which is fair.
[19:07] I mean, I spent years looking at El Cap and being like, that's too big.
[19:09] That's impossible.
[19:11] And then, you know, after years of that, I kept hoping that I would look at it and it would like look easy somehow.
[19:16] And I'd be like, cool, now I'm going to do it.
[19:17] And it just never looked easy.
[19:19] And so then finally I was like, OK, I'm going to have to like put some real work into it.
[19:23] And then I started slowly breaking it down.
[19:25] And then once you like break it into pieces and start working on the pieces, then you're kind of like, OK, it starts to feel more reasonable.
[19:31] break it into pieces and start working on the pieces.
[19:33] What does that mean in terms of climbing?
[19:35] So if we, I mean, I've got this model here of type A.
[19:40] So, you know, this is also a metaphor for any challenge I have in my life.
[19:44] But this is actually perfect because it's right here.
[19:45] So I scouted this in September of this year.
[19:47] I did the climb in January or whatever.
[19:49] In September we went and, well, we had to like, one, make sure it was possible before you sort of like commit to it, doing a whole TV program.
[19:55] We were kind of like, let's make sure we can do this.
[19:57] And then they also had to get all this sort of marketing material.
[20:00] You'd like get the photos with the building, like all the stuff that becomes the trailer and whatever.
[20:04] And so we went in September to sort of like do the prep.
[20:06] And so I basically checked out all the different pieces.
[20:10] And so anywhere where you see it looking a little bit different, it's like this whole bottom part is like a low angle slab.
[20:16] It's like punctuated with these two little ruins, these little like coin things or whatever, the clouds or whatever there are.
[20:21] And then there's the dragons on the corners.
[20:23] These are all overhanging.
[20:24] Like each of these eight blocks is like a big overhanging thing.
[20:26] It feels a little bit different.
[20:27] Then you get up here, there's like these balconies.
[20:30] These are actually overhanging.
[20:31] Like basically each little segment of this is quite different.
[20:34] You know, obviously on this model, it like looks the same, but each transition between the different pieces is like a thing.
[20:40] So I checked out all of them with ropes.
[20:42] And yeah, you just go piece by piece all the way up the whole thing.
[20:44] And you hadn't ever climbed it before we saw it on Netflix Live?
[20:47] Well, I hadn't.
[20:48] Free solo, no, but I had climbed all the pieces with a rope for sure.
[20:52] I'd like checked out the different things.
[20:54] Okay, so you look at these as individual challenges every step.
[20:58] Yeah, it's like you go, even like just getting off the ground, the first move is a slightly different move than any of the other moves.
[21:04] You have to like jump up to a thing and like press it out.
[21:07] Then climbing over these little clouds is a different thing.
[21:09] Each dragon is a different thing.
[21:11] Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, there's a surprising amount of complexity to it.
[21:15] And so our first on the scout, you know, I had a note on my phone and I'm just like writing down all the different, basically, I'm trying to learn it the way you study anything where I'm just like making notes and sort of like from floor 54 to 72, it feels like this.
[21:26] I climb the southeast corner, the left are at, you know, just, and then, yeah, just writing it all down.
[21:31] And I mean, there's this famous photo of you hanging with your leg.
[21:33] Yeah, that's this.
[21:34] These are the rings up here.
[21:35] So you're hanging, you're hanging here, from here with your leg.
[21:38] Yeah.
[21:38] Now, I...
[21:40] and this is really a question of endurance, like how do you plan to have the energy?
[21:44] Like how do you know if you're going to have enough energy when you're up here, when you're just planning it?
[21:49] I mean, this is what makes it exciting, because you can't be sure.
[21:52] But, you know, I've done a lot of climbing in my life, and I've done a lot of climbs that were like 24 hours.
[21:56] I mean, I had this experience in Patagonia once.
[21:59] It was a 54-hour push.
[22:00] Like, the last 20 hours, we hiked without food, because we got caught in a storm.
[22:04] It's a whole crazy story.
[22:06] But basically, you know, I've had a lot of experience in my life where I've done hard exercise for more than 24 hours.
[22:11] And so this, you know, I expect it to take me somewhere in the hour and a half, two hour range.
[22:15] And I'm kind of like, yeah, I mean, I'll be tired after two hours of exercise, but I'm not going to be exhausted.
[22:20] You know what I mean?
[22:20] Like, I know that I have a much deeper reserve than that.
[22:23] So much of the conversation around after you'd done this, or some of the conversation was around whether this was a harder challenge than El Capitan.
[22:31] No, no, it's obviously much easier.
[22:34] I mean, I'm doing it on live television, you know, it's like, obviously it's easier.
[22:37] But...
[22:38] What makes it cool is that it's different.
[22:40] It's fun.
[22:41] It's challenging.
[22:42] Like for me, it's really like in my sweet spot where it is challenging enough.
[22:46] Like it's, it's not easy.
[22:47] You know what I mean?
[22:48] Like saying easier than El Cap, it doesn't, you know, El Cap was like a 10 year life project that I did an absolute secrecy.
[22:54] I did on my terms on the correct day after years of effort, I had failed attempts.
[23:00] I, you know what I mean?
[23:00] Like El Cap was like an all consuming life project for years.
[23:04] Kind of like, obviously, you can't do that for live TV.
[23:07] It's like you just can't put – anyway.
[23:09] But this was very much in my sweet spot where you're like, oh, it's hard enough that it's hard.
[23:15] Like, it's cool.
[23:15] You know, like, it's fun.
[23:16] It's interesting.
[23:17] The climate's engaging.
[23:18] It's, you know, gave me something to train for for months.
[23:20] It's like it's super fun.
[23:21] Yeah.
[23:21] But it's not like the absolute limit of what I can do.
[23:25] Because you just can't do that on live TV.
[23:26] I mean, if nothing else, I was climbing the Southeast Aret because it gets good morning light and it looks beautiful and it's like great for filming.
[23:32] But if I was trying to do the absolute most cutting edge climb I could do, I'd be climbing the Northwest Aret because it'd be full shade, because it'd be good, better conditions, it'd be colder.
[23:39] Like you just don't want to be in the sun, it makes your skin, it makes you hot and stuff.
[23:43] And so, just things like that, you're like, well, if you're doing it for TV and you're trying to broadcast it, then you want it to look good.
[23:50] But like, if you're trying to do it for hard climbing in good conditions, you do it in full shade.
[23:55] And Netflix had a 10 second delay just in case you fell.
[23:58] I mean, I'm sure part of it's in case you fall.
[23:59] But part of it's like, what if somebody unplugs one of the things?
[24:02] Or you know what I mean?
[24:02] Like, it's so complicated.
[24:04] There's so much stuff going on.
[24:05] It's insane.
[24:05] Yeah.
[24:06] Was there a hardest part of this, a part where you were at all nervous?
[24:10] The thing I was most nervous about when I started were the bamboo boxes, like doing these eight overhanging segments because they're just so relentlessly the same move, and it's just pretty physical.
[24:19] You get tired for sure.
[24:20] I mean, the actual physical hardest moves...
[24:24] I actually randomly one of these corners up here would have been quite a hard move, but there was this freaking security camera bolted out of the wall.
[24:30] And so you use the security camera as this handle.
[24:32] It was really freaking cool.
[24:33] And it was like bolted on these giant bolts.
[24:34] So it like looks super safe.
[24:35] And, you know, it was like very robust and secure, but it would have been kind of like this extreme jump, which I wasn't, you know, it's probably possible, but would have been like a major thing.
[24:44] Yeah.
[24:45] But instead, you just reef off the security camera.
[24:47] And I was like, that's so cool.
[24:49] So there are a few things like that, like individual moves that are kind of muscly.
[24:53] But overall, it's the stamina, like the challenge of doing this over and over for hundreds of feet that was the hardest thing.
[25:00] Do you have a conversation with your girls and your wife before you go and do something like this about just in case you don't come back?
[25:07] Not with the kids because they're too young and they don't understand anyway.
[25:11] And not with her because she came with me to Taipei or she was there for the whole end of it.
[25:15] I went a little bit earlier so I could adapt to the times I had more and feel better.
[25:19] But basically she was with me.
[25:20] So we went to bed together that night and woke up that morning and had breakfast together.
[25:24] So it didn't feel like a big goodbye.
[25:26] It was kind of...
[25:27] Actually, she was with me at the base.
[25:28] We did the start together.
[25:29] And then I literally was like, okay, bye, and walked over and did the thing and saw her going to the top.
[25:33] So we were only apart for like an hour and a half.
[25:36] And I saw her through the window a couple of times.
[25:38] And so it felt like she was just there having the whole experience with me.
[25:42] What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode.
[25:46] If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below.
[25:49] Check the description.
[25:51] Thank you.

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