the man in the van (review of "Alone on the Wall")

Alex Honnold lives in a van. Not a nasty broken-down minivan, a comfortable white Ford Econoline, the kind favored by plumbers and electricians, outfitted with a bed, linoleum, wood panels, curtains, storage, a 5-gallon water tank, carbon monoxide detector, and power provided by rooftop solar panels. Alex lives in a van because this allows him to do what he loves most: climb large walls and towers of rock, oftentimes without a rope. He, like some veterinarians and firefighters, has managed to fulfill the dreams of his youth. For many of us, imagining what our free-spirited nineteen-year-old self would say about our adult life brings at least some feelings of discomfort. Alex doesn’t have this problem; at the end of his memoir, Alone on the Wall, he admits, “Climbing as well as you can for as long as you can is a boyhood dream, even if you’re about to turn thirty.”

At the core of Alone on the Wall (co-written with well-known mountaineering author David Roberts) lies the story of a young man who holds onto the freedom and simplicity of a life devoted to climbing by trading his skills for film footage and sponsorship and by inventing novel ways to push himself and his sport.

The book covers Alex’s big solo climbs and expeditions from 2008 until 2015, illustrating his life with vivid color photographs, including the famed shot of him standing on Thank God Ledge, arms outstreched, his back against a behemoth wall of granite. Preliminary chapters are devoted to his early years as a “dirtbag climber” living in his van and following the dictates of his fancy. Middle and later chapters turn to international pursuits as he acquires fame and is invited on more expeditionary climbs, and to speed climbs and link ups (consecutively climbing large walls in a set span of time). We follow him to crumbling rock towers in the deserts of Chad, remote Alaskan alpine walls, socked-in sea cliffs of Newfoundland (one of his least favorite places to climb), and limestone towers in Mexico. The narrative can at times feel choppy, particularly in later chapters, and Roberts' interspersals, while informative and providing historical perspective, make the book read like a documentary film with voice overs.

We meet Alex in 2008, two years after he has dropped out of his freshman year at Berkeley to climb. The young Honnold is portrayed as a shy, slouching sideliner “with a sort of Holden Caulfield thing going on.” He steps out of the anonymous periphery into the center of America’s elite climbing scene when he free solos (climbs without a rope) The Moonlight Buttress, a 1000-foot route in Utah’s Zion National Park. Later that year he free solos the Regular Northwest face of Half Dome in Yosemite, an iconic climb that took the first ascencionists five days to summit in 1957, and still takes most climbers multiple days and plenty of gear to complete. Honnold and Roberts' back-and-forth narration reveals generational juxtapositions and highlights the novelties of the former's demographic. Alex is of a generation of climbers who learned to climb by pulling plastic on indoor climbing walls; he free solos listening to Eminem, and although he warms up to mountaineering and mixed climbing (climbing on rock, ice and snow), in the early chapters he is quick to apply the label “old school” to anything over 35.

Most people struggle to understand a willingness to risk falls that would absolutely mean death. But Alex “no big deal” Honnold doesn’t have a good answer to those who don’t also enjoy his level of confidence and skill on the wall. He free solos because he likes it. Along with many high-level climbers, he describe free soloing as the simplest and purist form of climbing. Risk is fundamental to the purity. Roberts emphasizes, “The stakes are ultimate: If you fall, you die.” Honnold is not immune to the fear felt by mere mortals, but he possesses a powerful “mental armor” that shields him from panic, protects his focus from his fear. Imagine yoga breathing your way past a move that demands rocking up on a Lilliputian toe hold and stretching to a downward-sloping open handhold with nothing between you and a 2000-foot drop. That requires some serious yogi skill.

And yet. While climbers emphasize the purity and simplicity of free soloing, it turns out there is more than one way to solo. Readers are introduced to free soloing, daisy-soloing, rope soloing, and “French soloing.” Honnold or Roberts explain many such technical terms, but much climbing lingo passes without comment. The intended audience for Alone on the Wall is climbers, those who make up the vast majority of the population: recreational amateurs who climb for fun, and who are already familiar with terms like “cranking,” “jug,” “lie back,” and the much-favored, "psych." Honnold practices all forms of soloing as well as partnered climbing. One of the middle chapters is devoted to his link-ups and speed climbing. For some readers, these exploits may seem a far cry from simply of climbing a rock and more like gimmicky stunts, though Alex maintains that speed, along with the danger it imposes, has it’s own simplicity. In the upper echelons of climbing, purity is a close relation of danger.

Honnold is at his authorial best when describing the experiences of free climbing, but some of the more interesting passages of the book occur when he reflects on the environmental and ethical implications of his life and career. His travels, especially in Chad, prompt him to consider the privileged and complicated infrastructure that supports his gypsy climber lifestyle. During a film shoot to Mexico that required a sizable crew and the use of drones to capture shots of Honnold climbing, he reflects, “I couldn’t help wondering whether making a whole production out of climbing went against all the environmental principles I wanted to stand for. Could radio-controlled heli shots and minimalism really go together?” Such passages are regrettably brief and Honnold’s questions remain unresolved (at least for the reader). But his reflections on disparity lead him to create the Honnold Foundation, which supports projects that use green energy solutions to improve the lives of disadvantaged people.

Alone on the Wall has the usual celebrations of anti-gravity athletics and dudely machismo typical of the genre, but is also a tale of metamorphosis through which readers gain glimpses into the life of a sponsored outdoor athlete. Accompanying Honnold on his transformation from “dorky, awkward goofball” to a pro on the cusp of his thirties, readers learn that the boyhood dream of the simple dirtbag life involves complicated networks of promotion, fame, carbon consumption, professional obligations, and national parks regulations.