Climber Alex Honnold Scales 3,000 Feet El Capitan Without a Rope
It’s being described as the greatest feat of rock climbing in history.
A man has successfully climbed to the top of California’s 3,000 foot El Capitan rock without equipment. “It was exactly what I hoped for. I felt so good. It went pretty much perfectly,” Alex Honnold said after his solo climb in Yosemite National Park. It apparently took Honnold four hours to scale the rock without rope or safety gear. Honnold told National Geographic he was slightly nervous at the bottom. “I didn’t have much of a backpack, and the climbing just felt amazing.” He continued saying, “Not dragging 60 meters of rope behind you for the whole mountain, I felt so much more energetic and fresh.”
The climber has been climbing without a rope for 20 years and had been preparing to scale El Capitan for over a year, spending time training in the U.S., China, Europe and Morocco. In 2015, two climbers also made it to the the top without aids, however they used harnesses and ropes to avoid fatal falls — it took them two weeks to complete their ascension.
Read Alex Honnold’s full interview here and check out some video below, courtesy of National Geographic.
