Alex Honnold has been a legend in the climbing world for a long, long time. When it comes to free-soloing, he is unparalleled. His gear-less ascent of El Capitan was called “the greatest feat of pure rock climbing in the history of the sport,” and Free Solo, the film Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi made about the feat, won an Academy Award. Honnold will climb just about anything, it seems. And he’s no stranger to first ascents, either.
Take, for example, this short film that was released in 2015. Honnold scales Mark di Suvero’s sculptures on San Francisco’s Crissy Field, summits the iconic Palace of Fine Arts, and completes the first-ever free solo of a brick-facade in San Francisco in the shadow of the TransAmerica building.
