Ondra Comments on Honnold’s El Cap Free-Solo
Adam Ondra is one of the world’s top climbers and said that free-soloing Freerider 5.12d on El Cap in Yosemite is more difficult than soloing 5.14d. Below are Ondra’s notes on the historic ascent.
“It was clear to me that Freerider was his main goal,” said Ondra on Facebook. “I was asking him about it but he was mysterious about it as the dark side of the moon.
“‘I have a kind of project,’ he told me. In November, he bailed it – I think I saw him that day, he had some fixed ropes there. I’ve heard that on Saturday, he had no ropes there (in order to cross out the possibility to escape from the route) – the hardest pitch was filmed from fixed cameras with no cameramen who could influence him.
“It’s definitely the biggest thing that ever happened in the world of free-solo climbing, it’s simply unbelievable. We can only discuss whether the free-solo climbing is good or not, whether we should write about it or not. Anyway, it takes tremendous amount of courage to free-solo Freerider. From my point of view, it is easier to solo a 9a [5.14d] sport route than this one.
“Offwidths are no problem for Alex – that’s like taking a stroll for him. But the 7a [5.11d] slabs down there are said to be really awkward, then the Enduro corner – I can imagine how awfully slippery it is. Moreover, free-soloing is way more difficult – you skip the belaying points and thus around Enduro corner you climb four pitches that have around 100 metres altogether and the difficulty gets to 8a [5.13].
“I thought that he will wait until autumn. I haven’t expected him to climb the route in June. But it kind of makes sense because he doesn’t like cold weather – he prefers warm temperatures. The individual moves in the route are not so difficult so you can stop from time to time and chalk up. But you really need dry conditions. When it’s too cold it tends to be slippery, and you really don’t want your feet to slip during free-soloing.”