Navy SEAL on Free Solo Climber Alex Honnold | Joe Rogan Experience

That's another thing that freaks me out is climbing. Did you do much climbing? I was a lead climber up until the point where I don't have a use of my ankle anymore because of the nerve injury. Oh. And it's funny is I'm actually, I don't like heights. Did you free solo at all? As long as I wasn't more like, than three feet off the ground, yes, I'm totally comfortable free soloing and moving laterally, but not vertically away from the ground. Cause I see, oh my God. Cause you see Al Donald's new doctor there. I watched that movie three times in a row. And here's the thing, I know he's alive. I know he was on your podcast. I listened to it. And in the final scenes, I realized I was sitting there white knuckling my recliner. Like my hands were sweating. I'm like, I know he lives, but it's still freaked me the fuck out. Wow. I mean that guy. Yeah, he's something. But you know, what's interesting about climbing is you get, the more exposure you have, the less it bothers you. Like I, so league climbing is interesting, especially if you are placing your protection as you go. If it's drilled in both. So you're saying league or lead, L E A D. Like someone's in front of you. You're on a rope. As a lead climber, you are probably setting the ropes, at least a mile job. You're setting the ropes for the people who are going to follow. Okay. Most of the time when you see people, well not most of the time, but one of the disciplines would be, there's bolted routes that go up a rock. So you can just bring, you know, carabiners and put the carabiner through that and you loop the rope through it and you're good to go. Another aspect would be is you don't use the bolted in stuff and you basically carry on your climbing harness a rack of gear. So as you're holding onto the rocks, you're trying to wedge a block or a stopper in or a cam system that it rotates to be smaller. And then as you release, it opens up. And if you pull against it, it locks itself into the rock. So you're setting your own protection and. I'm actually trust those things. That was the point that I was getting to. Sometimes you get to a place and you're like, this is the perfect piece of gear. And of course you're only like six feet off the ground when the perfect piece of gear. And then you'll get multi pitches up in the air. So you'd be two, 300 feet up in the air and you're a lead climber. So there's nobody above you and you're setting your own pro and you're starting to get emotionally involved in the situation that you're in. And you set a piece of pro and it's rattling around a little bit. So I don't know. We don't know how good that one's going to be, but we're going to keep climbing. And then the next piece of pro you set, not the most awesome piece because you're worried about the one beneath you and you don't want to fall. So you get it in there and then you just keep climbing. So sometimes it's awesome and sometimes it's terrifying. And then you got to think that if you do fall, all that force, if one pops and then the second one pops, you've got a lot of distance. Well, you got to think it's double the distance. If you're 10 feet above the last piece of protection you put in, you fall the 10 feet to the protection, then the 10 feet past the protection. Clink, clink, clink. And then it pulls on the pro. So it's actually double the height that you are above it. It's not, I've been probably more scared out of my mind. Actually the scariest I've ever been, you lived in Boulder, right? There's a climb there called the Bastille crack. It's in one of the national parks. And I was there with a buddy. It was just me and him in a world-class climber. And I was at the East coast command at the time. So budget was no option. I had the newest, shiniest stuff. I'm like taking plastic off of climbing gear to go climb this rock. This guy pulls up in a van with a Marlboro hanging out and tennis shoes that have laces probably on one of the shoes in an old pair of pants. And he's climbed like every mountain ever. So it's me and my buddy, we're climbing our way up. I'm leading this pitch. So you switch, one guy will climb, he sets an anchor, the other person comes up and they pick all the protection out so you can just switch. And then the other person leads the way on the next one. So I'm like halfway up this pitch and I can't move because I'm losing my shit. I'm like 15 feet above the last piece of protection that I just put in. I'm convinced that I feel my feet slipping off of the rock. I'm holding, I have my hand jammed into the rock. And then you make a fist to like, you know, prevent it from falling out. You can actually see Alex doing that in free solo as he's climbing up, they'll slide their hand in and then they'll manipulate the shape. So it pulls. And as my world is collapsing on me and I'm just sitting there, I've got full sewing machine leg, just sitting there, just shaking. I hear a voice just over my shoulder. He's like, hey man, just put the piece of pro right there. And I look over and this professional climber is right next to me with no rope in his fucking tennis shoes, smoking a cigarette, which is what he was using to point to where I should have placed the next piece of protection, cool common collected. And I almost fell off the rock because he scared me so bad. I was so freaked out at what he was doing that I almost fell. I'm like, you need to get away from me immediately. He's like, yeah, no problem. Just scurried up the rock in tennis shoes. Tennis shoes. Tennis shoes. But you're not supposed to use tennis shoes, right? I don't think it mattered. I think the guy, like he was a partial complete monkey. He just, when you're around world-class climbers, I mean, they can hang on an edge that is like a couple of pieces of paper. And this, and the Bastille crack is not a difficult route. So I'm sure there was one right next to it. And he just, as I'm freaking out, he's just sitting there just, Hey buddy. And I didn't know he was there. I literally almost fell off because he talked to me. Smoking a cigarette. Yeah, he was ashy. He's like, put a piece of pro right here. Get away from me. That's a different kind of, but I guess it's one of those things where it's like, you just get better at it. After a week of climbing, you will not feel bad about walking up to the edge and just standing there. Alex Honnold was telling us a story about one time he was free soloing and he was halfway up and he, well, he was in the middle of this journey up this fucking mountain. He realized he didn't bring any powder. So he didn't have any chalk with him. So his hands are sweating and he's just climbing with no powder. So he met a guy halfway up, these guys that were using ropes and they were doing it the right way and he's doing it with no ropes. And he goes, Hey man, can I borrow your chalk? And the guy gives him a chalk bag. And he goes, I'll leave it for you at the top of the mountain. So he takes the chalk bag, passes these guys, see how it just keeps going and then leaves the bag for the guy at the top of the hill. I'm like, what in the fuck, man, how could you start something like that? Like, and apparently he said that once you start climbing, you are committed to climbing. You're not climbing down then up. Yeah. Fuck, ha, ha, ha, look at that. There's not enough money in the world that would make me attempt the stuff that he does. And if I was a climber that had, or if I was like, you know, feeling like I'm kicking ass. Fill my hand, fill my hand. Sweaty? Fill my hand. Just talking about it. I sweat like a pig. I was watching it white knuckling. And if I was a climber and he passed me, he was like, hey, do you mind if I borrow your chalk? I would finish that climb and never climb again. Because I would realize that I am a complete and utter bitch in comparison to what he is. Like, if that's what's possible, and I'm sitting here like struggling, I'm like, I'm out. You're also built wrong for it. You know, I think the thin, wiry guys, it's the way to go. He also has like these gorilla mitts. Big ass fingers, man. His fingers are just used to, just grabbing. But he also said that he had gone through a series of injuries for the first time in his life, like recently, over the last few years. Yeah, that was in the movie actually. Like a compression of his discs and then a really bad strain on his ankle. And he was told to take six months off and so he just started climbing in a cast. So it's a different kind of human. I mean, he also lives out of a van. I mean, he's a world famous guy who's living in a van, traveling around, just fucking climbing rocks. Did you have him on after he had completed that climb? Like they were? Yeah. Okay, so he had been successful and they were just probably editing the project? I had him on earlier, like years ago. Yeah. And then I had him on again recently. Okay. Yeah. It's, the guy I would wanna talk to is Jimmy Chin, the photographer who is capturing all that. Oh, he's up there with him, right? And that's the thing. Oh, Jimmy. I would wanna talk. Well, and he talks about it a little bit, more so in the promos for the film, but the how sketched out he was to actually be involved and sit there and film and how much of a burden he felt to like stay out of the periphery and not engage, get engaged in the head space and make Alex do something different because the cameras were there that would of course cost him his life. Right. I can't imagine the pressure of doing that or just, I wouldn't do it. Like if a buddy of mine was like, hey, will you come film me, you know, free? I would say no, because I would be so afraid of just watching them peel off. Oh, can you imagine if you were up there filming and you watched the guy fall? That would be rough. And they're of course good friends. And. Look at that. Look at this guy. Yeah, this dude is a savage. Well, he's got his hands on the camera only. Well, he's got a bunch of stuff. So you see his foot, his left foot is in, he's kind of secure down there. He's got that carabiner. He's got one going to his harness. He's actually got two ropes going to his harness. So he's kind of angled in there. He's like a triangle, but he's a world-class climber in and of himself. We also has a giant ass camera bag. Look at that big ass bag hanging from his hip. Look at that position he's in too. Oh, fuck all this Jimmy. So that's how they get into position for a lot of it. He's Jumaring instead of climbing the rock, he's got basically ascenders that will allow you to push it up and then they lock on the rope. So he's got one leg in there and one arm and he's kind of Jumaring. We use those a lot of the times as well, but he's a world-class climber in and of himself. I kind of think you'd have to be, right? In order to- To be able to capture that? Yeah. Yeah, the team that I think they put together was like five to seven world-class guys, but there's a movie of him called, yeah, No Thanks. What is that? What is that guy doing? He is hanging probably 3000 foot over nothing, focusing on capturing the shot. Oh my God. I would be focusing on the urine streaming down my leg. Would it be, yeah. Oh my gosh. Soaking your socks. Oh God. Like I couldn't do that, but I could go to the edge of that cliff and zip up my suit, absolutely no problem and send that off there. And I bet you he would want no piece of that. It's so bizarre. Yeah. If he's shooting Alex, who's shooting him? Dude, good question. Is there a third person out? There's another guy around like, hey, let me get one of you. Mikey shooting Jimmy. In the free solo movie, I think they had a team of like five to seven people. They had, so they had long lens, they had people up there, they had remote cameras. I mean, it's a whole, they obviously had drones flying around. Yeah. Well, there was a film that, you know, besides this film, the recent documentary, which I think is called solo, right? Free solo. Free solo. Before that, there was also a late night, one of those news shows like ABC world news tonight or something like that. They did a whole piece on him and they had this one guy who was a, you know, world-class climber and said, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when he falls. Every innovator in the wingsuit world is dead. Yeah. It's, I mean, but at the same, I mean, I say that I would totally agree with that, but I also understand why he's doing it. I mean, the end state for all of us is predetermined and I would suspect having never talked to the guy that he would rather meet his end like that than at 80 years old as a geriatric. Yeah, I would imagine. Yeah. Which says, but that doesn't ease the burden on the people around him. And that's the piece that was the toughest for me when it came to wingsuit base. Look at him there. It's insane. What is wrong with that man? But meanwhile, he's such a nice guy. When you talk to Alex in real life, he's a sweetheart. You just, you root for him to quit. Like, man, you already did it. Stop. I've yet to hear him express desire to do so though. He's not quitting. You know, I mean, I don't know, man. Everybody's built different.