BURSTWhat’s the best way to train for a Netflix free solo? By free soloing, of course!
Alex Honnold is putting in the work before his highly anticipated rope-free ascent of Taipei 101.
On Jan. 11, Honnold announced that he had finished a 43-pitch quadruple solo link up on Mount Wilson in Red Rocks.
“It was a good adventure but my overall takeaway was that I don’t love scrambling on Mt Wilson… probably my last time messing around like that,” he wrote in a social media online post.
He started off with seven long pitches of 5.11- on Cactus Flower Tower, working his way up The Warrior. It’s a 303 metre (994 feet) trad route that goes up a huge dihedral on the north side of Cactus Flower Tower for five pitches, eventually finishing up the face for the last two.
Honnold then made a descent via a gully to the base of Aeolian Wall, a prominent diamond-shaped feature on the right side of Mount Wilson.
There, he made his way up Gift of the Wind Gods, a 10-pitch 5.10c trad route that spans 394 metres (1,300 feet). It’s described as having one steep bulge, followed by a face climb linking cracks and a ledge system to the summit of Wilson.
Honnold then scrambled up and over the main summit of Mt Wilson and descended the Resolution Arete into Inti Watana, another 5.10c on the Aeolian Wall.
Inti Watana is a 606 metre (2,000 feet) line that combines face and crack climbing. This trad route is 12 pitches, but Honnold said it could be turned into a 17-pitch run when combined with climbing at the upper portion of Resolution Arete.
Honnold then scrambled up to the start of Dogma, a 5.11c, where he says he made it up to the crux before deciding to turn back.
Instead, he wound up making an onsight solo of Willy’s Wild Ride, a nine-pitch 5.10+ route up a giant dihedral on the left side of Mount Wilson’s Horseshoe Wall.
Honnold said at sunset he made his way across the South Summit and down the southern scrambling route.
All in all, he was back in the car 12.5 hours after starting.
The link up isn’t the first he’s put up in Red Rocks. Previously, he made a giant effort in 2022 called the Honnold Ultimate Red Rock Traverse (HURT), a 126-pitch solo mission.
It spanned 35 miles and 7,000 metres of vertical gain (23,000 ft) and took about 32 hours to complete.
Honnold’s adventure comes shortly before his solo of Taipei 101, scheduled for broadcast on Netflix on Jan. 23 at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.
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