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Sponsorships are the main way that professional climbers get paid. Other income can come from public speaking events, guiding, or books/movies. Unfortunately for the sport, there isn’t really a climbing ‘league’ in the way that you have organizations like the MLB, NBA, and NHL to pay their athletes.Alex Honnold is worth just over $2 million dollars – which is impressive for someone in the rock climbing sport. His average yearly income is approximately $200k annually. The average climber will only earn about $15,000 a year from the sport alone.Honnold is almost certainly the highest-earning rock climber on the planet, and puts his net worth at around $2 million.
| Annual Salary | Weekly Pay | |
|---|---|---|
| Top Earners | $98,500 | $1,894 |
| 75th Percentile | $62,500 | $1,201 |
| Average | $53,275 | $1,024 |
| 25th Percentile | $31,000 | $596 |
Contents
How much does Alex Honnold get paid?
Alex Honnold is worth just over $2 million dollars – which is impressive for someone in the rock climbing sport. His average yearly income is approximately $200k annually. The average climber will only earn about $15,000 a year from the sport alone.
How much money do mountaineers make?
| Annual Salary | Weekly Pay | |
|---|---|---|
| Top Earners | $98,500 | $1,894 |
| 75th Percentile | $62,500 | $1,201 |
| Average | $53,275 | $1,024 |
| 25th Percentile | $31,000 | $596 |
Who is the highest paid rock climber?
Honnold is almost certainly the highest-earning rock climber on the planet, and puts his net worth at around $2 million.
Do you get money for climbing mountains?
Most people with aspirations apart from solely climbing and in expectation of a better remuneration end up setting up their own climbing/guiding businesses. Those that run fairly well can make between INR 5–15 Lacs per annum (I am speaking of averages).
How do mountain climbers poop?
It is common for climbers to experience diarrhea when embarking on high altitude climbs. As you can imagine, picking up poo when this happens can be challenging. Therefore, most climbers use wag bags or poop tubes when they’re climbing snowy high altitude peaks.
Does Alex Honnold still free climb?
The free climber rarely only climbs free solo
Numerous spectacular free-solo successes followed, most recently the “Freerider” on El Cap. Yet Honnold estimates that he climbs no more than just five percent of his routes free solo.
Can you make a living climbing?
The best professional climbers can earn as much as $300,000 per year, although most get paid less than $10,000 per year. The range of professional climber’s salaries varies greatly.
Is mountaineering a profession?
Mountaineers are called professionals because of the technical knowledge and skills they acquire with practise, climbing, and then experience. But no one can ever become a full-proof professional because each climb has something new to offer and a mountaineer must be open and aware to learn the lessons.
Can you make a living as a mountain guide?
Mountain Climbing Guides make the most in San Francisco, CA at $36,555, averaging total compensation 19% greater than the US average.
Do free climbers ever fall?
Free soloing is the most dangerous form of climbing, and unlike bouldering, free soloists climb above safe heights, where a fall can very likely be fatal.
How much does it cost to climb Mount Everest?
The price range for a standard supported climb ranges from $28,000 to $85,000. A fully custom climb will run over $115,000 and those extreme risk-takers can skimp by for well under $20,000. Typically, this includes transportation from Kathmandu or Lhasa, food, base camp tents, Sherpa support, and supplemental oxygen.
Who is the greatest climber ever?
Jim Bridwell. It’s impossible to create a list of the world’s best rock climbers without including this man, Jim Bridwell. Bridwell’s career spanned two different eras of climbing history, and he introduced the world to a whole new style of climbing.
How many bodies are left on Mount Everest?
While some bodies have been removed, it is estimated that over 100 remain on the mountain. In addition to bodies, discarded climbing gear, oxygen bottles, and other detritus from years of dangerous expeditions litter the mountainside, earning Everest yet another unofficial title: “the world’s highest trashcan.”
How much does it cost to climb Mount Everest 2021?
How Much Does It Cost To Climb Mount Everest? As of 2021, the average cost for a place on a commercial Everest team, from either Tibet or Nepal, is US$44,500. A minimalist attempt to climb Everest could be organised for about US$20,000.
Can an average person climb Everest?
Yes, but there is no cap on how many people can make the climb.
Do free climbers get paid?
The income that they earn will vary based on how popular the climber is; household names like Alex Honnold can pull more than six figures a year, while lesser-known people will earn far less (the average pro climber only makes $5,000, in fact).
What does Sanni McCandless do?
Sanni McCandless is a transition coach for outdoor-focused individuals who want to create more tailored, intentional lifestyles and find agency in their own lives. In her work, she helps people overcome the doubts and concerns that constantly get in the way of living fearlessly and feeling fulfilled.
Is Alex Honnold sponsored by North Face?
Honnold is sponsored by The North Face, Black Diamond, La Sportiva, Ando and Stride Health and is a board member of El Cap Climbing Gyms. He is the founder of the Honnold Foundation, an environmental non-profit.
Are Alex and Sanni still together?
Honnold married his longtime girlfriend, Sanni McCandless, in September 2020. The couple has a home in Las Vegas, Nevada. They welcomed their first child, a daughter named June, on February 17, 2022.
Alex Honnold’s Net Worth – How Wealthy is the Famous Rock Freeclimber?
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Alex Honnold’s Early life
Alex Honnold’s Education
How did Alex Honnold build his net worth
Alex Honnold’s productivity habits
How rich is Alex Honnold
Alex Honnold’s next big climb isn’t Free Solo, it’s free solar – CNET
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Human potential
The man in the van
Witness the fitness
The Faustian bargain
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How do avid climbers make a living? : General
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Do Climbers Make Money?
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How Do Professional Climbers Earn A Living? – 2022 Methods
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How Do Professional Climbers Earn A Living – 2022 Methods
How much do professional climbers earn
How it is likely for me to get climbing sponsorship
How do climbers earn a living
How I can start earning money as a climber
In summary – How do professional climbers earn a living
How do professional climbers make money? (Celebrity Interview)
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How do Professional Climbers Make Money? – Ascentionism
Lots of people who climb dream about doing it professionally, but it’s not always easy to see how climbers earn a living. I’ve written the following guide to explain it in more detail!
So, how do professional climbers make money? Sponsorships are the main way that professional climbers get paid. Other income can come from public speaking events, guiding, or books/movies.
Unfortunately for the sport, there isn’t really a climbing ‘league’ in the way that you have organizations like the MLB, NBA, and NHL to pay their athletes. Instead, most climbers earn their money through sponsorships with various brands. The income that they earn will vary based on how popular the climber is; household names like Alex Honnold can pull more than six figures a year, while lesser-known people will earn far less (the average pro climber only makes $5,000, in fact).
How Do Professional Climbers Make Money?
For those who don’t know, a sponsorship is basically where a brand pays you to be a representative of their product. They may do this for a variety of reasons:
Build trust within a niche: When average, ever-day rock climbers see someone like Adam Ondra using Black Diamond gear, it’s a testament to how high-quality that gear is.
When average, ever-day rock climbers see someone like Adam Ondra using Black Diamond gear, it’s a testament to how high-quality that gear is. Build an image: Sometimes brands just want you because to build their own image. A famous example of this would be the Marlboro man, where no-name ranchers were sponsored because they had the right ‘look’.
Sometimes brands just want you because to build their own image. A famous example of this would be the Marlboro man, where no-name ranchers were sponsored because they had the right ‘look’. Get a message out: Sometimes you’re sponsored simply for the size of your audience, or because you can connect with a certain group of people (like climbers).
Traditionally, it was only big-name companies like North Face or Patagonia who would sponsor climbers. This meant that those climbers would earn decent salaries, but it also made it harder for up-and-comers to break onto the scene.
Social media has changed this in recent years with the birth of ‘influencers’ — people who take on brand sponsorships and share them to their thousands or tens of thousands of followers.
Social media influencers are less likely to have one company paying them a liveable salary and are more likely to get paid by multiple brands on a per-post basis.
The climbing world hasn’t been immune to the injection of social media influencing. I personally know people who are sponsored by various local companies to post pictures with their apparel.
If you’re just starting out your career as a rock climber but you’re not yet big enough to attract the attention of a mainstream, big-name brand, working with smaller companies can be a great way to earn a little income while you slowly build up your name.
What Are Some Other Income Sources?
Aside from sponsorships, pro climbers have a range of other ways of earning income. Some of them are better than others!
Public Speaking
In the past, public speaking was the main source of income for climbers who didn’t have large sponsorships. Athletes could take their stories of survival and perseverance in the wild and craft them into valuable life lessons; individuals or companies will then pay to learn these lessons.
Public speaking can be a great source of reliable income, but it also comes with a caveat: you need a few harrowing, death-defying, life-changing stories for it to work. Your average dirtbag cruising around America in a minivan won’t cut it as a public speaker.
Stunts
Stunts are another great way for climbers to earn a living, although they usually require a pretty high degree of skill. Here, you work with film crew on commercials or movies to film scenes as a stunt double for the actor.
The most recent example I can think of this is the Point Break remake, where Chris Sharma portrays the main character Johnny as he free solo’s up a cliff:
Information Courses
Info courses are more of a product of the internet age, and they’ve been slow to gain traction withing the climbing world. The tides are beginning to turn, however, and I think you could see a lot more of these types of courses coming out in the next few years.
Info courses are basically just a package of information that gets bundled up and sold to you. This is most commonly done in a video format and can cover a wide variety of topics.
An example of this would be Mark Smiley’s video courses
Affiliate Deals
Affiliate deals can go hand-in-hand with information products. Affiliate deals are like a sponsorship, except you get paid on a per-unit-sold basis.
In authoring this website, I’m an example of someone who has an affiliate program (although I’m far from a professional climber). Any time you buy something using a link from this website, I get a (very small) kickback from the company you buy from.
Guiding
Guiding is another way that pros can supplement their income. Not a lot of the big names do it — you’d be far-fetched to find Tommy Caldwell leading an intro to belaying course — but it can still be a great way to earn money for those who don’t have a massive fan base, or simply people who love teaching.
Will Gadd and Adrian Ballinger are two of the big names I can think of who still guide despite being well-recognized and respected within the climbing community.
Writing/Photography/Filmmaking
Finally, lots of climbers will try their hands at other artforms to reach audiences and make a more reliable stream of income. By documenting their adventures, climbers are able to sell the final product without really needing to go out of their way and do too much work (although photography, writing, and filmmaking are still extremely difficult in their own right).
A great example of this would be Jimmy Chin, the famed alpinist and filmmaker who’s created world-class movies like Free Solo and Meru. There are also some very well-known writers, most notably John Kerouac or Gabriele Filippi.
Other Ways to Make Money Climbing
So, that’s about all the ways that professional climbers can earn an income.
However, being a pro isn’t for everyone. Some people (such as yours truly) simply are not, and probably won’t ever be, a good enough climber to make it as a pro.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t make a career out of rock climbing. Below, I’ve listed some of the other ways that you can make a decent living while still staying within the rock climbing world!
Work at a Climbing Gym
The first, and probably the most obvious answer, is to work at a climbing gym. If you’re manning the front desk, this is more of a temporary gig to pay your bills.
Climbing gym employees, though, can end up making a decent living. If you transition into teaching courses or even routesetting, you could find yourself making a decent salary while spending all of your time in the gym.
Be a Marketer
Marketers probably make the best salary of anyone in the climbing world, although they do have to work for it. As a marketer, you spend most of your time travelling, visiting outdoor retail stores and pitching them on your products.
Marketers can make close to $100,000 a year, although it’ll take about ten years in the industry and lots of 60-hour weeks to get there — plus lots of time on the road (without having spare days to check out the local crags).
Become a Digital Marketer
Do you like writing and/or filmmaking? Want to make some money while also learning about the climbing world? Do you enjoy shouting into the void and not getting any response back for almost a year?
If so, digital marketing may be for you. Writing informative online content in exchange for ad revenue, affiliate deals, and the odd lead gen is a good way to earn side-hustle money while teaching yourself about climbing, and if you really hit it big, it could (theoretically) provide you with a full-time income.
Work in Retail
Probably the simplest and least-inspiring climbing-related job is retail. By working the floor of your local Atmosphere, REI, or other department store, you’ll get to learn lots about gear, help people make the life-changing decision to buy their first pair of shoes, and maybe land some sweet employee discounts.
Making a decent living wage off of retail can be hard, but if you’re a college kid or you’re just looking for a way to pay the bills, it could be a good option.
Alex Honnold’s net worth
He is best known for his professional rock climbing. While there are many great rock climbers in the industry, he is the only one to date to have free solo climbed El Capitan. Among his peers, he is considered one of the top climbers in the entire world.
Alex Honnold’s Early life
Honnold was born in 1985 in Sacramento, California. He comes from Polish and German parents who nurtured his love of climbing from the age of five. He continued to hone his skills as a teen and even participated in competitive climbing events where he often won.
Alex Honnold’s Education
Alex attended Mira Loma High in California. Once he graduated from high school in 2003, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. He studied engineering but had a rocky start during his freshman year. When he took time off to prepare for the upcoming National Climbing Championships in Scotland, he decided to forego further studies.
How did Alex Honnold build his net worth?
Alex Honnold is worth just over $2 million dollars – which is impressive for someone in the rock climbing sport.
His average yearly income is approximately $200k annually. The average climber will only earn about $15,000 a year from the sport alone. Those on the top of their game can earn as much as $300k a year.
Alex saves a lot by living modestly and also staying on the road for most of the year. He has a militant personality which can also help in building net worth. He has an impressive array of climbs in 2007 from the Yosemite Salathe Wall to the Green Mile in California in 2010. Alex also climbed the Yosemite Triple Crown in 2012 and the Torre Traverse in Patagonia in 2016 among many others in-between. His most recent and notable climb is the one for which he has shot to further fame; as the very first person to free solo of El Capitan in the Yosemite National Park.
The bulk of his income comes from his appearances in documentaries, prize winnings from professional climbing competitions, and of course, sponsorships.
Alex Honnold’s productivity habits
To be a world-class climber, it takes motivation and dedication. His daily routine starts early each day and builds in plenty of exercise.
For Alex Honnold, not only does he need to motivate himself to succeed, but he also needs to beat the fear of free climbing. As shy as he is in social situations when it comes to free-solo verticals he has found a way to embrace the fear and use it to his advantage.
The fear gives him the energy to keep climbing while also bringing his moves into laser focus. The best way to apply these feelings is by actually listening to them and allowing them to guide your next move.
How rich is Alex Honnold?
Alex Honnold has been able to generate a net worth of $2 million dollars over the last handful of years from professional climbing.
Alex Honnold’s next big climb isn’t Free Solo, it’s free solar
Alex Honnold promised his mother he’d send a postcard.
That was back in 2010, just before embarking on a trip to Chad, the “dead heart of Africa,” a landlocked country bordered by Libya, Niger, Sudan and Nigeria.
A rock climbing trip to the Ennedi Plateau, a sprawling blank desert expanse punctuated by gigantic, contorted features. Pillars, arches, bewildering towers made of practically untouched rock.
Rock just begging to be climbed.
Back then Honnold was eight years from the release of Free Solo, the Oscar-winning documentary that chronicled his daring, ropeless ascent up the 3,000-foot face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. But he was no different from the Honnold I’m following now, over the next few days, as he hops effortlessly from speaking gigs to rock climbing to — bizarrely — a museum panel about landmines.
In some ways the diversity makes perfect sense. His is the schedule of a celebrity and, in 2019, Honnold is without doubt the most famous rock climber on the planet. Black-haired and dark-eyed, he squints purposefully, scrolling on a busted iPhone SE he has no interest in replacing. He’s bleary-eyed but friendly. A man engrossed in the process of trying (and failing) to find the perfect equilibrium on a friend’s rocking chair in Salt Lake City.
Free Solo catapulted Honnold to Hollywood levels of fame, but in 2010 he was already the boldest climber alive. He’d free soloed other challenging routes in Yosemite like Astroman and the Rostrum, climbs that require elite levels of strength, technique and endurance. He’d also scaled Zion National Park’s Moonlight Buttress in the same way, sans protection, in one of the most dangerous climbs ever attempted — a feat that grabbed the attention of the climbing world at large.
A UC Berkeley dropout born in Sacramento, California, Honnold began climbing in local gyms at age 10. Almost instantly, it became the focal point of his existence. He was never as talented or strong as the gymnastic-style athletes who dominate the competition circuit, but he quickly discovered his own climbing superpower: an otherworldly ability to control fear in high-stress situations. It’s a critical trait for a free solo climber, a style of climbing where the consequences are absolute.
If you fall — in most cases — you die.
If I’ve learned one thing from climbing, it’s the power of incremental progress. Alex Honnold
Back in 2010, Honnold was also only two years from another important goal: starting the Honnold Foundation. A nonprofit initially supported solely by Honnold himself, now augmented by funds from sponsors and public donations, his foundation helps fund solar projects all over the world. This year it’s on track to raise over $1 million.
“If I’ve learned one thing from climbing,” he says, “it’s the power of incremental progress.”
Honnold believes many global inequalities stem from access to power. He believes they could be alleviated, at least in part, by solar energy. Some 1.1 billion people — 14% of the world’s population — don’t have access to power. To Honnold, that’s a tremendous waste of human potential.
“You drive through these villages [in places like Chad] and you see kids playing around. If those kids were born somewhere else, they could be airline pilots or astronauts. They could do anything,” Honnold, 34, tells me. “But the reality is they’re going to wind up hurting their entire life. That’s just the reality of it. They have no access to education, no access to power, and no real way to change their livelihood.
“The unfairness of that bothers me.”
Honnold believes access to power can help iron out global inequality. James Martin/CNET
Human potential
But back to that postcard.
It didn’t take long for Honnold to realize his mother, Dierdre Wolownick, also an accomplished rock climber and marathoner, probably wasn’t going to receive one.
“When I landed in Chad and saw the situation,” remembers Honnold, “I was like, ‘I’m definitely not sending any postcards here.'”
The area of Chad he was exploring barely had roads, let alone a functional postal service. Reaching the rocks he and his party planned to climb required three days of grueling driving in the Ennedi Desert. They’d be eating dust, dislodging wheels stuck in sand. This wasn’t your regular climbing trip.
It was a harsh, unforgiving environment. And, en route, Honnold was shocked to see people living, and surviving, in one of the most remote parts of the world with no amenities, no utilities and — crucially — no access to power.
The phrase Honnold uses: eye-opening.
Alex Honnold, pictured here talking to me in Salt Lake City, did the unthinkable, becoming the first person to climb El Capitan without a rope. James Martin/CNET
“It was wildly different from my life in the US,” Honnold says. “I’d read books about the fact there are a billion people on Earth living without access to power. But it was another thing to actually go to those communities and meet a few of those billion.”
At one point during the trip, Honnold and his friends were held up at knifepoint. Honnold, perhaps the last person on Earth you’d rely on to accurately describe the true danger of a high-stakes situation, said it didn’t feel that threatening. “I was like, ‘Oh, kids will be kids.'”
Mark Synnott, Honnold’s traveling companion, a climber who helped organize the expedition, had a different view. He remembers young men in masks emerging purposefully from a canyon armed with large knives. He remembers having to ward them off with a gnarled tree branch. In the end, nothing was stolen and everyone was OK, albeit a little shaken up.
The robbery attempt, and the trip as a whole, stuck with Honnold.
“The thing is,” he says, “I never had to rob anybody. I grew up in middle-class California. Totally comfortable. I’ve never been in a position where I felt I should take something from somebody. I never needed to.”
The man in the van
In 2012, back when he was a scruffy nomad living and climbing out of a van perennially parked in Yosemite Valley, Honnold was already donating a third of his sponsor-driven income to solar-focused charities.
In those days, the Honnold Foundation was essentially a vehicle for Honnold’s own charity work. “It was just me donating money to environmental projects that I found inspiring.”
It was and remains a relatively simple organization. Based in Salt Lake City, with only one full-time employee, it focuses exclusively on solar projects.
The foundation’s broad goal: reduce the world’s environmental impact and address social inequalities by providing solar power access to those who need it most. The Honnold Foundation does this by providing funds to solar initiatives both at home in the US and abroad.
Alex is a humorous, curious, intelligent, and overall amazing kind of human. Rebekah Casey
Initiatives like SolarAid, for example, a company that replaces potentially hazardous kerosene lamps with solar batteries in remote, off-grid regions of Eastern Africa. SolarAid’s work is part of a broad, continent-wide attempt to completely replace every Kerosene lamp in Africa.
But the Honnold Foundation also works closer to home.
On projects like Grid Alternatives, a California-based nonprofit that’s installed more than 9,500 solar systems throughout the United States, Mexico, Nicaragua and Nepal. Since its founding in 2001, Grid Alternatives has helped low-income families save over $300 million and offset 820,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
A younger Alex Honnold in the French Alps with his sister. Dierdre Wolownick
Honnold feels like SolarAid and Grid Alternatives occupy opposite ends of the same spectrum. The work in Africa has a tremendous impact on the human life of individuals, he says, but doesn’t impact the environment like broader solar installations in the US.
“Putting solar panels on somebody’s home domestically is slowly greening the grid,” explains Honnold.
Honnold doesn’t just donate, he regularly volunteers. From Angola to Detroit, he’s helped install hundreds of solar panels across the globe. Sometimes he brings his mom along.
“Alex is a humorous, curious, intelligent, and overall amazing kind of human,” says Rebekah Casey, a deputy director at Grid Alternatives who’s seen Honnold regularly turn up to volunteer without fanfare. “His mom is awesome, too.”
Why start a foundation? Why not simply donate anonymously to worthwhile causes? That’s a question Honnold struggled with in the beginning. Ultimately his decision to start a foundation was rooted in the idea of public giving and inspiring others to do the same.
Cedar Wright, one of Honnold’s regular climbing partners (and a pro climber himself), believes Honnold wrestles with the idea of his growing profile and relative wealth from lucrative sponsorship deals and public speaking gigs. Honnold is almost certainly the highest-earning rock climber on the planet, and puts his net worth at around $2 million. He’s previously joked he makes about as much as a “moderately successful orthodontist.”
“I think Alex feels a little bit guilty he can make six figures to speak to a bunch of corporate drones for a couple hours,” Wright says. “He finds some solace in funneling a significant portion of his income into doing something positive.”
When Honnold starts climbing in the gym, people tend to stop and watch. James Martin/CNET
Witness the fitness
With back muscles hunched over a lean frame, and forearms packed tight with cables masquerading as tendons, Honnold has a physicality common to many strong climbers. He’s no different from the gym rats haunting climbing spots across the globe.
But Honnold is difficult to ignore as we enter The Front, a decked-out climbing gym in Salt Lake City, replete with cutting-edge training equipment. Before we even get close to the wall, he’s posed for six photographs with six different fans, shocked to be sharing the same space as the world’s most famous rock climber.
As soon as he starts climbing, everyone, including me, leaves Honnold alone.
Most world-class climbers, particularly athletes like Adam Ondra or Alex Megos at the forefront of roped sport climbing, tend to move fast on the wall, racing against the slow build of lactic acid in the forearms. Honnold is different. Despite holding multiple Yosemite speed records, Honnold is a marathon man. In the gym at least, Honnold climbs slowly, deliberately — focusing on perfect technique. A habit, perhaps, developed from time spent free soloing where the stakes are impossibly high.
Honnold does a lot of foundation planning in the gym between climbs. James Martin/CNET
Honnold is obsessed with the delicate subtleties of climbing. Stored in his brain is an encyclopedia of movements he can draw on in any situation. Like most climbers he loves to unpack the nuances. Should he drop his knee or open his hips? Can you do that move static or do you need to throw dynamically? It’s a conversation I could be having with anyone interested in moving on rock, only I’m having it with the most celebrated climber in recent history.
Honnold is acutely aware he’s being watched, particularly in gyms like this. It makes him wary. When he starts climbing, mobile phones come out. He’s being filmed constantly. If anyone else were to start climbing in the gym right now, he says, almost wearily, there would be zero expectations. He can only disappoint people.
But right now, Honnold is climbing strong. Together we take turns on a training board. I’m a relatively experienced climber and train three times a week. I can keep up on the warmup routes, but he quickly ramps up the difficulty. Before long I can barely do a single move.
Honnold tends to downplay even his most insane achievements; his nickname among climbers is “No Big Deal.” But even he’s happy to admit his current level of climbing fitness is high, the result of a sharp focus on hard training in gyms like The Front. A few weeks after our time together, Honnold completed his hardest ever roped route: a 5.14d called Arrested Development in Mt Charleston, Nevada near Las Vegas. Physically, he’s never been stronger. Technically, his best climbing is ahead of him.
But Honnold’s goals are drifting away from the mind-boggling ascents that made him a household name. Following Free Solo and his historic ascent of El Capitan, Honnold is dedicating more of his time to philanthropy.
“I think now that Alex has free soloed El Cap, which I think was his ultimate goal as a climber, he’ll be focusing a lot more of his energy into the Foundation and less into the next rad achievement,” says Wright, who spent time helping Honnold install solar panels in homes in the Navajo Nation.
Climbing is often thought of as a selfish pursuit, and that’s a theme well explored in Free Solo. It’s an easy leap to conclude that his foundation is a response to that. That rock climbing has made Honnold rich and famous and this is his way of giving back.
But Honnold doesn’t see it that way. To him, rock climbing and his work with the foundation are inextricably linked. It was climbing that allowed Honnold to travel, climbing that gave him an insight into other cultures. It was also climbing that made Honnold passionate about preserving the planet.
“I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with climbing being a selfish pursuit,” he says. “I’ve had so many incredible experiences that I care about the outdoors in a broad enough way to start something like the Honnold Foundation and try to be useful. By having impactful experiences in nature you wind up more inclined to try to protect the environment.”
The Faustian bargain
The biggest misconception about Honnold is that he is “weird,” a misconception fed by mainstream media coverage of his exploits. It’s an easy narrative to spin: Honnold as Spock from Star Trek, an always logical alien confused by the behavior of regular human beings. The bearer of the world’s weirdest Faustian pact: the man who exchanged social skills for the otherworldly ability to climb without fear.
But the narrative is wrong — or at best exaggerated. Honnold isn’t weird. And he isn’t awkward around people. Whether learned or natural, he has an easy way with friends and an ability to bring everyone, even strangers — including me — effortlessly into his orbit. We train, we talk. We nerd out over cutting-edge equipment like the moonboard, an app-driven training wall designed for hard training. Honnold recently built one in his own home.
“I consistently find Alex to be thoughtful and curious,” says Dory Trimble. She’s belaying Honnold, who is scrambling up a difficult route in the gym, with one tricky move he can’t quite figure out. She pauses to brace herself. Honnold is about to take a fall and it’s Trimble’s job to bear the weight, gently allowing him to abseil safely to the floor below.
Dory Trimble, the executive director of the Honnold Foundation. James Martin/CNET
“Alex pays attention and, if not empathetic, he understands. He sometimes gets written off as a weirdo in press coverage. But if you know an engineer, you know Alex.”
Trimble should know. As executive director and, until very recently, the only full-time employee at the foundation, she works with Honnold daily and keeps it growing at an exponential rate.
It’s in the climbing gym where Trimble and Honnold work through much of the foundation’s planning. In between climbs, he discusses scheduling. When can we do this meeting? When can we organize this event?
“I talk on the phone with Alex a lot,” says Trimble. “But the best way to get him for an extended period of time is to go to the gym with him.”
Honnold believes his love for the outdoors made him more inclined to protect the environment. James Martin/CNET
Honnold is the face of the foundation but Trimble is the glue holding it together. “The foundation, in its current form wouldn’t exist without Dory,” says Honnold. She’s helped scale up the operations of the foundation while insulating him from “much of the hard work.”
Trimble is a climber herself. That’s partly why she cold-called the foundation, why she worked as an unpaid volunteer before becoming the foundation’s first full-time employee. She initially offered to help Honnold and the team “tell their story in a different way.” That role evolved into Trimble eventually taking over the directorship to evolve the foundation from a baseline vehicle for Honnold’s own sizable donations to a fully fledged nonprofit organization.
It was interesting timing, Trimble explains. At one point during the production of Free Solo, director Jimmy Chin pulled Honnold and his partners aside. He knew Free Solo would most likely change Honnold’s life. He knew this was an opportunity for his foundation to take things to the next level. Chin suggested, in the nicest possible way, that everyone involved in the foundation needed to “get their shit together.”
Trimble was in charge of making sure the Honnold Foundation got its shit together.
“It wasn’t about fixing something that was broken,” explains Trimble. “It was about scaling up and increasing our ability to impact solar energy access worldwide.”
And she’s been successful. Today, Honnold’s contributions represent a small portion of the total donated to the Honnold Foundation. The vast majority of the Honnold Foundation’s holdings come from personal donors and corporate sponsors. In 2018 the foundation raised $445,186. In 2019 it’s already on track to breeze past $1 million.
The Honnold Foundation is in the process of growing up.
Fellow climber Tommy Caldwell thinks Honnold has climbed “foot by foot, more technical rock than anyone in history.” James Martin/CNET
Life’s work
Free soloing El Capitan, an achievement once believed outside the realm of reason, was a lifelong goal for Honnold. Today, in 2019, his next moonshot is tougher to pin down. When I ask about the Honnold Foundation, and the El Cap equivalent, he initially comes up blank. The issues of climate change are too tremendous in scope, he explains, the potential solutions too slippery.
“With the work through the foundation,” Honnold says, “it’s hard to imagine having a huge impact on the world, because I don’t even totally know what that looks like.”
But to Honnold, climbing, and his work on the foundation, is never about the achievement, it’s about the process.
“With climbing,” he says, “you see these big walls that seem impossibly large, but that doesn’t mean you don’t start chipping away at it. You build up the requisite skills, you work toward it, and then eventually you can take on something big.”
Honnold is “no bullshit,” a phrase I heard from multiple people. Trimble puts it best: “Alex says and does exactly what he means. He’s a person without subtext.”
So when I ask Honnold what he’s most proud of with regard to the Honnold Foundation, his answer is typically candid.
“In some ways, you could say the foundation hasn’t really accomplished anything,” he says. “There’s just so many issues facing the world. I don’t really know if there is an end goal to that. It’s more about the path you keep, keep working and keep moving forward.”
When you’re dealing with issues as broad and terrifying as climate change, the temptation can be to break ranks and quit. Is it possible to fix a problem of this scale? That’s a question Honnold struggles with.
But the idea of incremental progress, so ingrained in Honnold after decades spent climbing the world’s biggest walls without a safety net, is hard to break. It is, after all, his life’s work.
You see the wall, the obstacle in your path. You chip away. You take one step after another in the most efficient way possible and, before you know it, you’re ready to ascend 3,000 feet of blank granite armed with nothing but your hands, your feet and a chalk bag.
The light in the dark
Later that night we head to the Leonardo Museum in Salt Lake City. Honnold is part of a panel event exploring the issue of landmines. In 64 countries across the globe, there are an estimated 110 million landmines still lodged in the ground. In 2015, Honnold visited one of those countries: Angola.
It was a trip described as a “half climbing, half solar project.” Climbing was involved, including the first free solo of a route called Roadside Attraction, but Honnold also spent time installing solar units in villages that had no power previously.
In one village, the residents were unsure, so the decision was made to build a demo project. To install one single solar panel. To show how the panel worked and to prove that it did work.
It worked and, of course, everyone was happy with the result.
Honnold would go on to install 100 solar panels during his trip. Later an agreement with the Angolan Energy Minster was struck to install 3,000 more.
But it all started with that first solar panel. And one single light in the dark.
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