Alex Honnold Breaks Down Iconic Rock Climbing Scenes | GQ Sports

hi everyone I'm Alex Honnold and this is the breakdown let's start with Mission Possible - this is actually my favorite I love this thing I actually filmed in this exact location once upon a time I shot a commercial right here and when we rappelled in we found plastic holes bolted to the wall and the only explanation was this is where they shot Mission Impossible was like a classic red sandstone towers are all southern Utah maybe northern Arizona that's the the white rim below him it's a confluence at the Green River at the Colorado River but I mean I think they're cutting between a bunch of different places and a bunch of different spires the W bar is illegitimate rest I mean that's like a legit way to rest rock climbing I definitely listen to music when I've found sometimes I mean you know if you have some cool soundtrack behind you while you're sending I mean how cool is that this is completely outrageous but kind of amazing I mean especially looking down here like other plenty of holes above them but no he just has to jump 15 feet sideways to a different shelf there is a history of Cour jumping sort of in climbing but it's typically if you sum it aspire and then you have to get off of it but you never just randomly jump from the middle of one wall to the middle of another wall for no real reason that's all kind of legit the whole sliding down just like oh gosh and then catching the whip if something is actually somewhat realistic I mean that's probably not even his hand you know if he was that cut up from having climbed halfway up a tower you probably shouldn't be climbing the tower without a robe typically if you have huge wounds on your fingers it's because you have poor technique and cracks I mean there's no way that Tom Cruise ripped those bigger chunks of his fingers I pride myself in good technique I do not have scars in my hands but I mean I got it just came from the climbing gym actually so I'm still chalky I'll be hanging by one hand on the lip of a sandstone thing extremely unrealistic but so rad I mean the reverse Iron Cross so rad and then notice that they just cut to epic sunset light and then oh now they're back to normal light but he looks so good at the sunset I mean nobody soul is like that on sandstone because it breaks I did this expedition in Chad and Africa once upon a time the climbing ax and Stern Tower is similar to this but worse rock because I was free soloing this tower that never been climbing for and both my footholds broke off at the same time like big plates of sandstone just like sheared away from the wall and so I was left just hanging there by my hands like oh my goodness total mission impossible craziness style so sick and this is actually pretty legit climbing like that's pretty decent movement he's got cool heel toe cam and he's like rocking over his foot I mean he looks you know okay his stunt double for all this was this guy Ron calc who's that you cemani legend from the 70s and 80s I mean I think that's why that you know they brought a high level of expertise to to this type of scene I think the reason I love this scene so much is that it's basically all there I mean it's Rio I mean he's on real rock he's doing real moves like it looks cool it's just totally over the top it's like turned up to 11 I mean he's you know he's shooting a rocket it's like he could've just sent him a text message but instead he's sending a rocket you know how you just snapchatted him and it's gonna self-destruct him ten seconds whatever I mean it's all it's all turned up to 11 a lot of my friends worked on Point Break and I've heard all about it I've seen the film but I watch on the plane I felt free to a lot of it's like not to create a film all right let's see it I'm like this is why I don't like climbing in the jungle because I mean that's just wet and covered in frigging boss and I like he's got an evolved shirt on he must be able to jake weimer we just funny cuz all my friends that were working on it responds to by evolved the time so I'm sure they were just hooking up the crews okay well so the pop I spotted okay so I mean what they were initially doing there is all just easy easy approach climbing basically what you do to get over some little cascade or something now they just cut to this dude is now suddenly a thousand feet off the ground actually rock climbing a technical terrain this is completely different know what he was doing two seconds ago he's actually live back in so you see that his body is arced in his foot he's basically counter-pressure between his hands pulling one-wayness foot facing the other way it's actually a great way to pose because it opens your body up to the camera you know this is all legit technique I mean he's climbing he's climbing up in a row looks good so this is a different type of Rocky and this is quartzite super feature and supposed to be super cool a lot of friends that have climbed on this wall in Venezuela things is cutting so quickly back and forth between random things that you don't really get a good sense of what they're actually climbing it's all realistic and except he's free so hugging a waterfall which is not realistic oh that's some extreme double die knowing right there that was sick well a dino is when you jump and then a double die knows when you jump with both hands oh so he just died knit - I mean this is a hospital this is epic oh he's about to die the whole hang with one hand and flailing with the other that's not a thing like no climber has ever done that basically because it's really really hard to hang on with one hand and so you can't just like flail your other hand basically if you're hanging on the - and you lose one of them you're basically just gonna fall off and die and spastically trying to grab on with the other hand and not being able to like that doesn't even make any sense because it's not hard to just grab back on next year hand oh my goodness gracious he just felt his death whoa is that a thing why are they that's definitely not a thing most soulless would not just let go and fall hood if you let me start trying to down climb yeah you whoa this is skip ethnic you just do the full Rose move iron cross thing this is getting really extreme I mean what they're climbing is not easy of course I'm not actually climbing it but but it looks sick Oh mono sick that's one of the more dramatic types of holes in climbing from French wanted well just you know one finger in there it's like a little hole in the rock so you can only fit one I mean you can just hang from one finger if you have strong metal fingers some of those shots you can see em hang it from to on you know like a big two finger on one hand small two finger on the other alternating things like that or sometimes front to or back to or middle to you know depends what you're telling the truth this is such a crazy scene I think this scene could have been better if it was more tastefully done like you didn't like that it's completely outrageous but doesn't look very dramatic I think that's Chris Sharma climbing in that one move it actually looks like the way Chris Moo's he's he's one of the most dynamic climbers on rock wait let's see that again that's a full cramp right there and and he had to there because it's a very small hole very hard to hold and so he rolls it in to get full power on it like basically the three grips that you're grabbing the edge if this is the edge you can go open-handed where your fingers are open you can go like half crimp or a full crimp where you close your hand into a full fist basically and your thumb comes over because your thumb is a finger so I mean if you think of your you know it's basically 20% stronger if you wrap your thumb over it and crank down on your fingers it's it's relatively realistic climbing they're doing real things I mean it is you know a couple the world's best climbers climbing on is one of the most and present walls in the world so it is kind of amazing but it's just all too over the top and sort of outrageous I'm kind of over this clip this clip size this is from my childhood I would like this let's see it so this is this is legitimately the beginning ball cap and he's actually climbing this is the beginning of the three Ryder actually this is what I started up yeah this is what I crew told him which is funny because now it's showing him over on the nose which is a root that's there two hundred feet to the right this is called chimney counter-pressure between two different walls this is totally legit totally normal so this is a root called outer limits at the cookie cliff which is down valley ten miles and then this is separate reality which is another random cliff and disseminate this is also not an El Cap but it still looks cool I've actually posed for photos and basically that same place because you can just dangle off the live and it looks sick the camera guy should've been further left and you'd see the valley behind him rewind a little further yeah so when you're climbing a crack you basically put your hand in and then you change the shape your hand to conform to the crack pressure between the meat of your thumb in the back of your hand is what constricts you into the crack and then if a crack is bigger than then that size then you can basically cup your hand and now you get pressure between the back of your hand like your knuckles in and your fingers flush thumb and then if it's too big for that then you start getting weird things where you can make a fist or like you don't think fist or if it's too big for your fist then you start doing two hands or you know hand in a fist or stacking your hands it's called and that's why crack climbing is fundamentally one of the safest feelings and in free solar you feel like you your bones are locked into the wall and you're not actually using any muscles to hold on but at least this is tastefully done you know it's not like over the top it's not turned up to 11 I mean you know there's okay if it's beautiful he's climbing so he's going up the side of the booth like this is the nose right now yeah I mean this is much closer to real rock climbing and especially real free soloing he's moving exciting more methodically he's placing his feet carefully he's you know moving with with intention it's not like crazy jumping around I mean this is what free soloing looks like and then this is just some random studio concrete thing this isn't even real rock El Cap is granite you somebody is all granite and normally that means that it's beautiful sheer clean really nice well-formed rock the what he's holding on to right there is just concrete mold or you know some kind of weird fake thing and granite is the most inspiring because it forms these big mess eaves that are really impressive I regret inform you that the record for free climbing El Capitan is in no danger of being broken that's a classic misuse of free climbing versus free solely because he's free soloing but he just called it free climbing free climbing means using your hands and your feet to climb up the wall but also using a rope or protection the free soloing means that your free climbing by yourself which means that you're not using anything to assist you and you don't have a partner and so you want to rope either because it's their classic Mallory quote oh now he's falling to his death and that is El Cap behind him I think they actually did some kind of crazy multi hundred foot rope vaulting for that shot I think Star Trek 5 is pretty legit pretty realistic particularly for having been made thirty years ago whenever it was the original El Cap free solo I never heard of this I'm like that's a real climbing rope oh wow this is a terrible blade but he's doing a legitimate clip really bad oh there's a dragon I think the scariest thing is when you put your hand into a crack and a bat hisses back at you because bats make this super high pitch and the snakes and spiders and things actually potentially depending where you are in the world could potentially kill you an acquaintance in you somebody got bitten by rattlesnake on top of a boulder but that's just bad luck this is all surprisingly realistic in a lot of ways one of my friends has a classic story basically that exactly happening that like the Blair gets pulled all the way to the wall and slams into the wall the climber Falls super far there's tons of slack meant on the drag and all the distance of the Blair getting pulled upward not that unrealistic I didn't totally understand that I mean he has a rope but it's like weird that he swings so much and he broke a rock I don't totally get it but like why isn't wiring his feet on and then when it cuts to that it looks like a totally different type of rock than the inside of the well it's all sort of weird better performance without a rope kind of not really the way it seems like a bit of a stretch that if you weren't able to do it with a rope you take the rope away and now you can do it I'm like no it's because that all looks pretty easy I mean the hold hanging onto that stuff is easy but the stuff below the card overall I think it's kind of hokey I don't really get it oh this is one of the worst scenes that all of Hollywood climbing that's in the volume on your safety [Music] nothing about this would ever ever happen if your gear withstood the initial impact of stopping five people you know if you think force is mass times acceleration if you decelerate five people following super far down the wall once they stop it's not as if there's any more force being generated on the piece of gear that held them you know if it held it once it's not just gonna fall out after I mean in general climbing accidents are sort of this all-or-nothing like eat it happens or doesn't if it happens it all goes bad and if it doesn't in the member it's fine it's trying to place another piece of gear which makes sense because if all your lives are hanging off one piece of gear you definitely wanna place a backup but this whole thing a bit flexing and it moving I mean that doesn't really make sense cuz once it's fully loaded it's fully loaded feel bad for the gear manufacturers because any climber sees that and they're like oh that's metolius orange cam like everyone knows what they're using or sort of like it's kind of poor form to just like throw some climbing manufacturer under the bus and this is all kind of crazy the fact that they're hanging out in space because they're basically aren't any sandstone walls in the whole world that are overhanging the whole way like that so they should be touching the wall and this is the type of situation where each of them should be like let's take one deep breath compose ourselves and do the right thing which is never to cut the rope and cut your partner means ticular that's your father so that is or maybe that's the what he just died that sucks that might be in Manama silence but everything about the scene is horrendous because I mean this is probably the worst scene in all of Hollywood climbing well this isn't climbing this is freerunning oh God but well this is ice he's coming he's barehanded he's they're gonna glacier I don't I don't know I don't understand what's happening but you can't really climb ice barehanded this isn't a thing whoa this is Savage you definitely can't just hang off in high school with your hand that's not a thing everything about this is totally outrageous I mean if you had to get onto this glacier somehow you definitely walk around yeah I've definitely climbed ice but I mean if you were faced with an obstacle like this above you you definitely go around it you would never just go over it like this this isn't a thing I don't even is this even in the movie I don't remember this at all this looks so bad this is actually probably the least realistic thing we've seen so far that was horrible but the thing is there a lot of other fun scenes and cliffhanger that I think are kind of classic and kind of kind of interesting my overall thoughts are that typically in a Hollywood movie it's all for entertain any way it's not really trying to be realistic and so everything's always turned up you know dialed up way too extreme and I think that maybe some subtlety might make some of the scenes more powerful in fact I mean I think you know certainly if you see free solar I mean I think it's pretty gripping and because it's subtly you know because it's tastefully done I think that the most realistic scene in any Hollywood movie is Clint Eastwood climbing a desert towering in the Eiger sanction and actually in general climbing the eye that all the climbing in the Eiger sanction is very realistic like I could talk about climbing all day like sorry guys

Channel: GQ Sports

Views: 10,760,305

Rating: 4.9150028 out of 5

Keywords: alex honnold, climbing, free solo, rock climbing, rock climber, alex honnold 2019, alex honnold interview, alex honnold gq, alex honnold rock climb, alex honnold rock climber, alex honnold climber, alex honnold climbing, alex honnold free solo, alex honnold breaks down, alex honnold solo, honnold free solo, honnold, rock climbing scene, climbing scene, alex climbing, sports, gq sports, gq

Id: R7qSiEKntQA

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Algapaf]

"Oh yeah he just died. That sucks" hahaha

[u/legendarysamsquanch]

One thing that got my attention, Alex has got some big, fat fingers.

[u/chasteeny]

"Oh wow that's a terrible belay ... but he's doing it"

[u/TheBigBadBuddha]

Honnold doesn't have hands he has climbing paws.

[u/Useless]

Alex is a national treasure.

[u/loafydood]

Super bummed he didn't do this scene

[u/aspz]

That was awesome. Thanks.

[u/michaos]

Cliffhanger is the best! He smashes new holds in the ice as he climbs (actually, hangs). That's some proper crag development.

[u/bilweav]

Love that Star Trek V wins for most realistic. LOL.