GREAT WIDE OPEN EPISODE 3: THE ROCKSTAR

blessed are those who live out their dreams that's difference between listening to the knock on the door and going and answering [Music] god that was great [Music] what a glorious place to be [Music] death [Music] what's the dialogue that you have just this morning i went out scrambling for a couple hours and i was doing a route that's like pretty hard and there were multiple times where i'm like oh i'm not trusting this foot and if this foot slips off like i will die and obviously i trusted the foot and the foot didn't slip and that was fine it all worked out but just like having those kinds of experiences like day in day out you know throughout the year it's like obviously you're much more you have a much closer relationship with death everybody dies eventually in life it's more a matter of how you lead your life to get there i guess [Music] from time to time we come across someone who can do something so remarkable that it defies belief and in this case seems to defy gravity it's the story of alex honold alex honold is the living definition of defying the odds and living beyond limits he doesn't let minor details like let's say gravity get in the way of his pursuit of the next extreme adventure alex arnold is probably one of the most unlikely heroes of the climbing world it's like the kind of guy just when his name is mentioned i just get a big smile on my face he's like this super goofy like awesome dude that just so happens to be the most badass climber ever alex climbs fast and light and often without ropes completely free solo one fall you die i think he was probably the first person that got video doing these big wall free solos in a way that everybody that watches it it's like they get vertigo or their palms sweat when they watch it and that just made him famous his ability to control his fear is like no one else in the climbing community it's just a switch that he can flip if he knows he can do something he can do it whether it's five feet off the ground or a thousand feet off the ground alex has the ability to take giant things and make them seem small and simple in only a way that geniuses can do sometimes when other climbers hear what you've been doing they say it's unsustainable which really is their code for you know you can't keep doing this and stay alive i hope alex doesn't die on the wall one day but given the fact that that's what he does more than anything else the chances are pretty high that something might happen someday i think he's so aware of himself when he's climbing that i like to think that he's maybe the one that's going to pull it off why do you have to add that extra challenge why do you need the higher stakes [Music] i guess like the short answer is we up the ante a little bit you just get more from the experience i just hope that if i do die in some accidents someday it's not just like oh he made all these horrible decisions like what a terrible mistake because it's like no i mean i understand that there are risks involved but the hundreds of days of joy that i get going out and being in the mountains like i'm willing to take those tiny chances okay so this is everybody we're going yeah why not so we're gonna hike a few miles into the backcountry to mathis crest which is this amazing bridge and then you wind up right at the bottom of this other like iconic feature called cathedral peak and then normally you climb that as dessert it makes it for this cool little roller coaster because you're going up and down along the ridge and then through this notch and then up cathedral it's really cool i just realized i'm digging your skin into my skin that's probably going to make your fingers stronger let's throw it out there brady have you done this before i've done almost nothing with walman before maybe freestyling on alex honold's advice which is not always good to follow really what do you think of jared's escapades last night alex i gotta say i'm very impressed jugging out from that point sounds kind of badass everything is on muerte every clive the whole mathis part is basically three to five hundred foot drop on each side probably one of our teammates is really lagging so we're gonna have to cut him with a knife no no we're not gonna cut him like oh [ __ ] you have a knife what's that for you to cut them with a knife oh no i don't need the whole time she's dangerous how are you feeling because okay so you're good yeah because from here we're cutting like cross country like to the other side of that mountain because once we get to there then it's like a point to point back to here but like if you're good we're good if i got rid of the weight in my bag but i'm just gonna drink the water in a second i mean it's a tough thing to do he's embarrassed i mean alex is [Laughter] whatever you guys want to do all right look at that look at that now we're good we're good [Music] so right over here we're looking at the ridge look at that [Applause] how old were you the first time you climbed mouth this crest uh probably like 19 or 20 or something i didn't really start climbing outside until i was like 19. [Music] i started camping here as a kid with family camping trips some of my early memories are having cookies and milk with my dad at the wanna tunnel overlook we'd bust out the cooler with some cold milk and we'd have cookies and we'd enjoy the view with rydalville falls and el cap my dad had spent thousands of hours belaying me in the gym he was younger he was like a big hiker he was way into the mountains around tahoe and everything he would go to the climbing gym with me and just belay and belay and he would climb a little bit just to break up my climbing you know so i could rest and he would just like climb a route or two but he would just keep belaying keep belaying i was never like a prodigy the way some climbers have been he saw that i loved climbing and so he would just take me climbing and i climbed a lot i'm bummed that dad hasn't gotten to see what my life has become because he would be so stoked on the climbing and all the adventures and the expeditions and when i get to go overseas he died after my first year of university fight out of a heart attack running through the airport he was 55 at the time he was making a connection in phoenix and just keeled over it's like pretty grim i think that had a big influence on my perception of risk and risk-taking because i look at the life that he led and then still dying at a young age and you know the things that he would have loved to have done with his life just made me more aware of the fact that everybody's time will be cut short at some point the important thing is what you do with your time nice took us two hours to the base nice work hey you're officially a champion thank you well at least until you [ __ ] yourself on the first pitch 5.0 in exactly two hours [ __ ] thank you no thank you i'm impressed we're about to climb mathis crust which is a glorious beautiful route [Music] okay you're off wagon you're moving too fast easy [Music] so how about you untie and i'll take the rope for now and then we can just solo it next to each other yeah i mean look how cool this is [Music] as soon as i took off the rope it was like oh now we can play [Music] okay so it's alex's fault mom thank you alex there's some solitude there's some freedom and it certainly raised the stakes and gave me a more fulfilling experience oh [ __ ] we're jogging huh as soon as you guys all walked away james and rob and i were like pretty impressive like how hard he tries the intensity and the effort you know because i've been climbing so long i sort of get complacent a little bit i give just enough effort to do what i'm trying to do you know i don't just like go to the death all the time you just try so hard because it's all fresh for you it's you know you have that enthusiasm coming to a new sport you're learning really quickly you're improving really quickly and it's all very exciting it's nice to see that passion you know [Music] mathis crest beginner i'm just i'm just as winded my holes man this is really christine isn't this amazing oh look you can see our cap can you yeah that little line over there that dropped the vertical line i'm pretty sure that's okay isn't that cool the mountains can humble you in a way that almost nothing else can because you can be out having a great day and also the wind picks up and then you get turned around and then your headlamp doesn't work and pretty soon you're like oh wow i could like perish by myself out in the woods because i just totally botched it and you realized that like nobody would know nobody would care wilderness wouldn't care puts you in your place in the world you know you realize that you're just like this little speck just to see all of this without yeah it's amazing cities or towns i mean [ __ ] yeah some smart [ __ ] who uh fought to keep this [Music] how's the team doing team's doing awesome we're freaking cruising this thing and this is like super fun how many hours until we get the night in like two hours it'll be dark but i mean we're doing great and everyone has a headlamp and this is like i'm i gotta say i'm very impressed with everybody this is pretty fun chocolate cake no here we are man they're just hanging out up here stairs [ __ ] red with it one and only alex hollow how you doing just scared alex that's pretty [ __ ] up [Music] what would you say to your father if he walked up and sat next to you i don't know it'd be a very long conversation i mean there'd be a lot of catching up to do i'd probably say thank you for you know supporting me as a kid and getting me outdoors and like giving me these experiences allowing me to blossom into this lifestyle i doubt i'll ever stop doing the easy so long in the mountains the scrambling on ridges i'll probably never stop that anything i've learned as a person is like entwined with climbing and certainly becoming a professional climber has seriously changed me typical human beings it's never enough we are going to climb cathedral peak because we haven't had enough you know free soloing with alex just isn't enough [Music] alex if you believe in me anything's possible thank you i'm gonna go over to the snow and see if i can ride it just cause like you know i mean what's what's the point being in the mountains if you don't enjoy the ride [Music] this is [ __ ] terrific [Music] so we climbed this beautiful route mathis crest we stated down some snow which was super fun and then we wound up soloing cathedral peak in the dark which really like sort of capped off the whole adventure okay are we ready we are ready let's do it for you this is sick just like lean across then you have those plates out right yep and uh and you're going to be putting your whole hand in basically yeah good good it's called muscle yep [Music] not only is it my first time climbing cathedral it's my first time my first day free soloing and we started at five o'clock and it's now in the middle of the night a lot of faith going into this stuff tonight really great life lessons to the summit oh my god wow once we're up here for a bit we should all turn off our headlamps so you can actually see the high country it's pretty broad how do you hope to die i hope to die at like 94 in my bed just peacefully just fall asleep yeah surrounded by grandkids or whatever you know yeah we'll see that's the ideal i'm not saying that's the most likely scenario so when your son comes to you and says dad i'm gonna free solo el cap what do you say i'd say you better be freaking training you know i hope you're really fit come on look at the elbow look at the elbow that's how you make it hit yeah one more look at the elbow oh more wait one more oh awfully vigorous in the middle of the night dude

Channel: JARED LETO

Views: 1,045,267

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Id: U1nruyhR1Uk

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 18 2021