Alex Honnold

But the northwest face is vertical for 2,000 feet.

It's incredible.

And so I free soled.

That was one of the first, like, major free solos I did in 2008.

And one of the things that sort of made me a professional climber in a way.

But when I did the climb, I did the bare minimum preparation.

I basically, like, didn't know.

It was the biggest thing I'd ever free soloed.

I didn't quite know how to, like, go by getting ready for it.

Anyway, I climbed it and basically hadn't practiced enough, was really freaking scared, got off route, got confused, skipped some stuff, and then at the very top had this whole moment of...

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 like the hardest part of the climb is like right near the top i was trying to walk across this ledge basically i've walked across that ledge face in and face out and you normally people hand traverse it or they crawl across it they're like different ways to go across the ledge and i've done it every which way

And then we were up there filming and I was like, oh, I'm going to walk and face out.

But it turns out when you walk and face out, it's really freaking scary.

And so I made it kind of halfway and was like, oh my gosh, and then bailed.

Well, I mean, so in this case, so walking across this ledge, it's like it starts maybe as a foot wide.

So your foot is fully on the ledge and you're shuffling across it.

But then at a certain point, yeah, I mean, that's the video.

Yeah, that's the ledge.

But basically at the narrowest part, your feet are sticking out over the lip of it and the wall bulges ever so slightly.

So it forces your back out a little.