Alex Honnold Free-Soloed this 12-Pitch Squamish 5.12 a Decade Ago
It would still be a few years before Honnold free-soloed El Capitan, but he was in the midst of a soloing blitz when he visited Canada in 2014

In the summer of 2014, Alex Honnold made the first free-solo of University Wall to the top of The Chief via the Roman Chimneys. His free-solo caught many locals by surprise, as few had imagined anyone would ever attempt to free-solo the 12-pitch route. It took Honnold just over two hours to go from car to car. “It’s always represented that burly crack climbing style to me. It’s like the hard-man version of Astroman,” said Honnold.
The route was first aid climbed in mid-1960 by four university students, Glenn Woodsworth, Hamish Mutch, Tim Auger and Dan Tate. It was then freed over a decade later by Peter Croft, Hamish Fraser and Greg Foweraker. “They were now back on the route that occasionally met up with the original Grand Wall finish that Jim Baldwin and Ed Cooper had pioneered five years previously and had not yet been repeated,” said Ivan Hughes in his story about the route’s first ascent that you can read here.
During the same visit to Squamish, Honnold celebrated his 29th birthday by soloing 290 pitches over the course of one day. In only 16 hours, he averaged a climb every few minutes. “Some of the routes have been kind of wet, but it hasn’t been a problem,” he said while on the Apron. “Oh, this is gross. This is the 5.10c direct, which I’ve never actually done before… I’m getting my money’s worth.” He soloed 162 pitches on the Apron, about 5,000 metres of climbing by lunch. In the afternoon, he climbed another 138 pitches at the Smoke Bluffs.
Also in 2014, Honnold made the first free-solo (and only to date) of El Sendero Luminoso, a 15-pitch 5.12d on El Toro in El Potrero, Mexico. Watch him talk to Tim Emmett about soloing in Squamish in 2014 in the below video.