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Alex Honnold

El Capitan, Yosemite National Park, CA

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Alex Honnold's 2017 free solo ascent of El Capitan's 3,000-foot vertical face in Yosemite, climbing entirely without ropes or safety equipment, is widely regarded as one of the greatest athletic achievements in human history, and the 2018 documentary Free Solo chronicling the climb won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. His achievement required years of meticulous preparation, including memorizing every individual hand and foot placement across the route's thousands of feet, since a single mistake at nearly any point on the climb would have been fatal. Honnold's calm, methodical public demeanor when discussing the extreme risk of free soloing, including his own analytical explanations of how he manages fear during climbs, made him a subject of significant scientific interest, including brain imaging studies examining his neurological response to risk compared to typical subjects. His combination of an unprecedented, singular athletic achievement and the widely seen documentary chronicling it has made Honnold the individual most globally recognized rock climber in the sport's history, introducing free solo climbing to audiences far beyond the sport's traditional community.

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