Q&A: Alex Honnold, Simply "Pysched"

Alex Honnold competes in a sport more commonly covered by National Geographic than ESPN. Yet he's likely garnered more media attention than any other climber before him, for an obvious reason: He climbs giant, sheer walls (such as Half Dome and El Capitan) without using ropes or protection. It's called "free-solo," and it's the most dangerous kind of climbing. Photographed extensively by Jimmy Chin, fawned over by Lara Logan in a 60 Minutes special, and subject of an award-winning Peter Mortimer documentary — Honnold is the poster boy of The North Face, the rock star of Yosemite dirtbags, and the doe-eyed heartthrob to even the most callused climbers.

Last week, Honnold added yet another seemingly impossible achievement to his free-solo climbing resume, ascending 1,500-foot limestone wall of El Sendero Luminoso in El Potrero, Mexico. And though Alex "No Big Deal" Honnold might shrug it off as another awesome day of rock climbing, fellow Yosemite virtuoso Cedar Wright dubbed his effort, "one of the most cutting-edge, big-wall solos of all time." 

Understated triumphs, simplicity, and humility: This is not just Honnold the climber, but Honnold the global humanitarian. His nonprofit initiative, Honnold Foundation, strives for succinct solutions in providing green energy to gridless populations. The foundation's mission: "Helping people live better, simply."

We met up with Alex at a Sacramento climbing gym back in November, the day after Thanksgiving. Topics included: graduating from "full dirtbag" to only "kind of dirtbag," planning his skyscraper climb in Taipei, his nonprofit foundation, and the surprising backstory behind an iconic photo.

In recent news, you've settled on climbing one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world, Taipei 101, in Taiwan. When will you get to climb this behemoth? 

Yosemite: Off Limits

A long time ago, I took my very first trip to Yosemite. It was so long ago that there were still matchbooks in the hotel rooms. On the cover was a picture of Half Dome covered in snow with the words: "YOSEMITE. OPEN ALL YEAR." It made me laugh. The idea that anyone thought nature was something that could be left open or closed down seemed so preposterous that I've kept that matchbook all these years. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem so funny.

During the stalemate in Washington, nature became a pawn, something that was opened and closed to the public at will. And that makes me sad. During the three years my family lived in Yosemite National Park, fall always marked one of our favorite times of year. Labor Day meant the end of Yosemite's crowds, when traffic jams and noise were replaced almost overnight by quiet, serenity and peace. For those lucky enough to experience the park in October, with its still warm days and resplendent fall color, Yosemite seemed especially blessed. But not this year.

This year, no one was happy. Not the law enforcement rangers. They were charged with the duty of keeping people out of Yosemite Valley and enforcing the rules about the park’s shutdown status. Not the scientists, maintenance workers, interpretive rangers and fire specialists who woke one morning to find they were “non-essential.” Certainly not the employees of Delaware North Companies, Inc. (DNC ) who work at the shops, restaurants and hotels that cater to Yosemite visitors. Already hovering at the bottom of the pay scale, many of these people make it only because DNC helps subsidize their living expenses. And certainly not the visitors. They were greeted at the gate by one lone employee who hands a piece of paper stating that they may drive the highways, but the park itself was closed and that pulling off the road, even to gaze at the scenery, was forbidden. 

What's Next for Yosemite & National Parks?

We've all heard the news by now: Yosemite National Park, on its 123rd birthday, was closed indefinitely due to the government shutdown. But as the shutdown continues, what will come of the rest of the country's 401 national parks, monuments, and federally managed sites? Here's the skinny on what will change, what will remain the same, and what you can do to let your voice be heard. 

Tourists vanish. Across the nation, national parks welcome an estimated 750,000 tourists a day. And in Yosemite, tourists coming from around the world to witness Half Dome and El Capitan must first pass through gateway communities like Mariposa, Oakhurst, Mammoth, and Sonora, to name a few. These small towns, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, require a steady flow of tourists, which fuel 5,700 private-sector jobs and generate a $360-million-a-year industry. On any given day, the park hosts 15,000 tourists, and October is one of Yosemite's most popular months for weddings. A stoppage in tourist flow could be catastrophic to small businesses. 

Many of these small communities have already seen reduced numbers of tourists due to the Rim Fire that decimated the nearby Stanislaus Forest. The shuttering of Yosemite only compounds the financial and economic problems faced by these small towns — and other towns across the country that depend on tourists traveling to National Parks. 

Oil drilling continues.  Parks across the country may be closed to backpackers, climbers, sight-seers, and naturalists, but according to Climate Progress, oil and gas drilling will continue on public land, unchanged and — now that the EPA is vastly reduced — unchecked. Over ninety percent of the EPA's 16,204 employees will be furloughed as a result of the shutdown, severely limiting the scope of the agency's protection power.

Year in Yosemite: Moving On

I was worried about moving from Yosemite National Park to Orange County, California. And rightly so. Two more different places could hardly be found. Although it may not feel like it to those who visit in summer, with its crush of people and its bumper-to-bumper traffic, Yosemite, at its heart, is about the preservation of wilderness.

In the mid-1800s, Frederick Law Olmstead (designer of Central Park) pushed for a Yosemite where roads would funnel people into 5% of its landmass. That left the other 95%, an area the size of Rhode Island, alone.

The same could not be said of Orange County. Size-wise, it’s one of the smallest counties in California. Yet, with just over 3 million people, its population ranks it third in the state, just behind Los Angeles to its north and San Diego to the south. It wasn't always this way.

As its name implies, Orange County once supplied citrus to the world. At the very same time that Olmstead was laying out his vision of Yosemite, farmers were planting Orange County's first Valencia orange trees. By 1948, 5 million trees were under cultivation on 67,000 acres of land. Yet 30 years later, only 4,000 acres remained. By 2005, less than 100 acres of Valencia oranges still existed. What happened? Development. As the aerospace and defense industries of the Cold War years moved to Southern California, the people who owned Orange County’s farms discovered the land had far more value when the only thing cropping up were office buildings and housing tracts.

Year in Yosemite: Closure

In my very favorite mystery series, the heroine, a Ms. Maisie Dobbs, revisits every site and person she encountered in the solving of the crime. Psychic and able to take on the "energy" of a person or place, she does it as a form of closure, a way to lay the energy to rest. Now that we're leaving our Yosemite home in just six weeks, I find myself following her lead.

And so, days that should be filled with organizing and packing, often find me visiting my favorite places.

But unlike Maisie, I don't want to lay the energy to rest; I want to imprint it on my soul. That's because all the mysteries I solved while living here were of the internal kind. During our three-year stay, I learned more about myself than I had in the previous three decades.

So what's become sacred to me in the time that we've lived here? Here's my top ten:

1. Walking down Chilnualna Falls Road in Wawona to the Pioneer Village, across the Vermont-inspired covered bridge to the post office. It may not sound like much, but for three years I’ve done it almost daily, usually in the company of good friends.

Year in Yosemite: Time Travel

For thousands of years, the native peoples wandered around Yosemite with seemingly no problem. For everyone else, access to Yosemite has never been easy. I was reminded of this when a friend wrote to say she was thinking of coming to visit. “How do I find you?” she asked. My answer bordered on the ridiculous. She could fly into Fresno and we’d come pick her up. Or she could fly to San Francisco, Oakland, Burbank or Los Angeles (4-6 hours away), take the train to Fresno and again we’d pick her up. Without renting a car, none of the choices were easy and even if she rented one, the trip from all but Fresno was long (especially after flying in from the East Coast). Furthermore, unless a person loves whipping around curvy mountain roads, the drive is not much fun. All of which led me to conclude that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Year in Yosemite: The Inspiration

"I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds."

-- Gaelic saying/Adams's favorite

We moved to Yosemite National Park three years ago because of Ansel Adams. And, spectacular as they are, it wasn't his photographs that hooked us. It was his early life. Like so many people who went on to change our world -- Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Walt Disney, Richard Branson, Charles Dickens -- he never finished school. Some of these people dropped out for economic reasons. Some, like Branson, were lousy students. And some, like Adams, Einstein and Edison, got kicked out and were asked to never come back. Too distracted, too dreamy and too inattentive, they proved a trial and tribulation for their teachers.

In Ansel Adams's case, he got lucky. After multiple schools had asked him to leave, his parents decided to home school him. When they discovered that nature calmed their high- energy, fidgety son they let nature become his greatest teacher.

Year in Yosemite: Inspired Pilgrim

"We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us,…"
-- John Muir

 

A couple of weeks ago, 25 students and almost as many parents went to see our Mariposa County Supervisor. He spoke for an hour and held his audience spellbound. There was no talk of politics but I'd be willing to bet he filled our students' young minds with thoughts of possibility and power, social responsibility, and civic action. That's because our local county supervisor is Lee Stetson. A trained actor, director and writer, Mr. Stetson treated us to what he’s best known for—his one-man show as John Muir.

Year in Yosemite: Natural Opposites

Now that I know that we'll be leaving our home in Yosemite National Park by summer, I've become acutely aware of everything around me. Almost daily I add to my list of things that I'll miss—the frogs that bluster and croak in the seasonal pond by our library; the first daffodils that bloom at my daughter's school; the magnificent ride from Fresno to Yosemite through the Sierra foothills and, of course, the breathtaking beauty of this place.

And while I know living by the beach in Southern California will offer its own version of views to rival Yosemite's, I don't believe I'll find anything in Orange County to rival the mountain area's deeply eccentric charm. Where else but here would you find a building that's part gas station and part church? Where will I find another chiropractor's office that has copies of Body & Soul magazine sitting alongside Guns & Ammo? Will the Elks Club of Orange County help children get craniosacral bodywork like the Elks Club here does?

Year in Yosemite: On View

Before we left Los Angeles to live in Yosemite National Park, we lived in a very nice neighborhood on a lovely tree-lined street. Our daughter was at a school we liked; our closest friends were just minutes away. It should have been perfect, but I had a problem. Every night I'd wake up gasping for breath, feeling as if the city were closing in on me.

That feeling left when we moved to Yosemite. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe. It helped that we moved to quiet, laid-back Wawona and not to Yosemite Valley. The Valley is stunningly scenic but its towering granite walls, narrow valley floor and endless summer traffic jams leave me feeling hemmed in too. Living in a national park, I've come to realize that everyone has their own favorite type of scenery. Some love the deserts. Others prefer the prairies. What speaks to me are wide-open places.

Give me the rolling hills of Yellowstone over the narrow slot canyons of the Grand Canyon. I'll take meadows over forests and the sweeping pasturelands of the Sierra foothills over the mountains themselves. Even in parks defined by their valleys, I prefer the open views from on high. That's why we encourage all our friends to hike to Sentinel Dome with its 8,300-foot- high, 360-degree view of the valley and much of the rest of the park. And no visit to Zion is complete without leaving its exquisite valley to circle back through the town of Virgin to Kolob Reservoir Road for the ride to the crest of the park.