Alex Honnold Got Caught in a Snowstorm and Learned a Lesson About Humility

I mean, I think that is kind of a root of anxieties, like modern life, like things trigger fight or flight that shouldn't necessarily, you know, it's like stress at work and your boss or whatever and it like triggers that same thing. Yes. But, um, yeah, it is true that in my life, at least the things that trigger fight or flight are like legitimate life or death sorts of situations where it's like, oh, you know, you are about to fall off a cliff or like, you know, like the storm is coming and you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're like, I'm about to get worked, you know. It's like, typically when I feel that kind of major anxiety, it's like for a real reason. And, um, I mean, it is interesting. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is appropriate that way. It's like, it's like, it's like the correct outlet for that kind of stress. It really does completely make sense as to, and also most of the guys that have met that do what you do. And I don't know if they met anybody that does exactly what you do, but guys that climb a lot, they're pretty chill. Yeah. It's a pretty... Well, dude, I think part of that is because you get worked by nature so often that then when you're in sort of normal life, everything feels pretty relaxed because you're kind of like, oh, I'm physically comfortable. I'm fed. I'm hydrated. I'm like, you know, my body is fine. I'm not about to just get hammered by nature, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's my philosophy about really difficult exercise. It's really important because it makes other things seem easy and the stresses of regular... I think we have those just like a standard base level of stress. And when you artificially impose a higher base level, electively, like whether it's through climbing or other kind of exercise, whatever you're doing, it makes the rest of life... Seem easy. Seem easy. Yeah. Dude, I had earlier this year, there was a winter storm warning for Vegas. It does snow in Vegas sometimes and the mountains, especially like get snow. There's a winter storm warning for this like storm coming through. And I'd climbed like 20 days in a row basically or something. And I wanted to use the storm day to try to hike this one section of the traverse that I'm trying to do of all these peaks. I figured I would like take advantage of a non-climbing day to do the one walking section to like figure out where the route goes. And so I went out in this crazy storm. And when I started, it was like snowing a little and I was like in crazy wind is really cold. And I was trying out these new waterproof layers just to see how actually I wanted to try them out before the jungle to see if they'd be good jungle layers. And so I go up into the mountain. Anyway, long story short, I get completely worked. It turns out visibility is nothing. I didn't know where I was going. I get lost in the mountains. And it wound up being basically too difficult of terrain to travel through in the snow. Like because I'd sort of taken it for granted, but in Red Rock and those mountains, you walk on these like exposed sandstone slabs all the time. But when you cover them in like six inches of snow, it's like really kind of horrifying. You can't just like walk up the slabs anymore. It's like now a total tobogganing death trap where you're going to like slide down. So I was like, anyway, so I go up quite a ways. Eventually, I just had to give up and like turn around, but I'm now, you know, 2500 feet like up this mountainside. And then I turn around and then it all is way more sucked in. I couldn't even see my tracks anymore because everything's like filled in and visibility is nothing. And so I had like a Garmin watch on. So I kept like looking at the little track on my watch being like, am I to the left or the right of the track that I came up? You know, like I am full mountainside keep falling down and you know, there's like you're falling. Yeah. But like sliding over things or tripping on rocks is really steep hillside with like and you're stepping through, you know, say six or eight inches of fresh powder. But underneath, it's still like loose rocks and cactuses and things like that. So it's like, you know, the terrain is not like a snow base or something. You're just stepping through it and falling over anyway. So I fell into cactuses a bunch of times. And so the thing is, I was totally have a thermic completely wet, totally worked. And my hand had all these cactus thorns in it. And my other hand was too numb to like manipulate anything. So I went up like biting the biggest thorns out and then just left the rest of them because it's just I just couldn't use my hands and just keep staggering down the mountain. Anyway, eventually I like made it back to the car, made it back to the house. And I had my wife pull all the thorns out because I like I couldn't really use my hand. That was so worked. But I was kind of like, but that was like my rest day adventure. You know, I mean, that's like, I mean, it turned out being it turned out being way more. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was hoping that it was going to go better than that. And it didn't really work out. But that is kind of the point that when you take on that elective love, you know, I was like, I had a goal that I wanted to piece together this section of a hike. It didn't work out that way. I wound up, you know, building a bunch of character instead. But, you know, you're just like, that's just a normal day out. You know, it's like when you're adventuring in the mountains, sometimes sometimes those winter storm advisors actually happened. It's just easy living in the desert. You're like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. And then you're like, no, it was not fine. It's totally crunk. That's pretty crazy. And that that does speak to what we're saying. Like if you're doing that kind of shit. Yeah. And that's just like a normal day. You know, like that's not even like the crazy like, oh, I thought I was going to die. I was just like, I was just deeply uncomfortable and like sort of on edge for, you know, a while. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. And that's just a really good episode of the Joe Rogan experience.