Alex Honnold

And so my dad had left enough for, for my sister and me to finish college.

And so I took that money and put it in bonds.

I'm just like, I don't know what that is.

But, you know, so I was making like a couple hundred bucks a month in bonds.

And then I stole the family minivan.

Like I said, my grandparents and my two grandfathers had died before.

So like basically my mom had inherited this little car.

So she was driving my grandpa's car.

I took the family minivan.

I was making a couple hundred bucks in bonds.

Basically, that just kind of covered any of the pressure, like the financial pressure, whereas like that gave me enough of a buffer that I was like, well, for several years, at least I can just kind of like live in this minivan and see what happens.

And then after a couple years, I was sponsored, I was getting free product, I was getting it like a very, very small amount of money, but some amount of money, which is enough.

sort of justify the whole thing we're like oh companies are paying me to do this thing I should see how well I can do it and then and then it all kind of took off from there but yeah I mean it I mean that's one of the ways in which I was very lucky as a climber you know there was like just enough financial cushion that I could try to do the thing as much as I wanted for a couple years and see how it played out and it just happened to work out well

with with your mind your mind's eye like do you have like like clear recollection of like i'm gonna i'm gonna snap a shot of this like keep this one no i can't remember no i mean to me it's more the living there day in and day out like you know with freestyling el capo let's say i mean we i spent months on the wall and it's like just every day you know you're going up before sunrise a lot of the time so you're watching the sunrise over half dome and it's like super beautiful and then you're going down at sunset and you're watching the moon and it's just

I mean, it's just day in and day out.

It's the most beautiful place on Earth in all these amazing conditions.

You know, sometimes it starts snowing.

Sometimes it's raining.

It's like there are clouds swirling and mist or whatever.

And you're just like, oh, it's amazing.