40 THENEWYORKER,MARCH2, 2020
“Free Solo,” the documentary about
Alex Honnold’s ascent of El Capi-
tan, in Yosemite, directed by Jimmy
Chin and his wife, Elizabeth Chai
Vasarhelyi. (Honnold and Chin are
both North Face athletes. Neither
was in Puerto Rico, since they were
busy promoting the film’s Oscar can-
didacy, telling the story about the
story.) “Free Solo” is in large part
about the emotional and ethical chal-
lenges of documenting what could
well be the hero’s gruesome demise.
Jenni Lowe-Anker said, “Don’t think
for a minute that Conrad and Jimmy
and all of us who know what Alex
was doing weren’t terrified he was
going to die. It was kind of like,
Shit, if he dies, everyone is going to
be vilified.”
The best athletes were pushing the
threshold of what was possible, partly
because the gear allowed them to, and
partly because the gear manufactur-
ers expected them to. “You’re only as
good as your next climb,” I’d heard
people say. “You can get insecure, be-
cause you’re expendable,” Mark Car-
ter, the snowboarder, said. “People
want my job.”
Meanwhile, because of global
warming, the mountains were chang-
ing. Ice was melting, and so condi-
tions that had always been lethally un-
predictable were becoming more so.
Experience, both of the individual and
the transmittable kind, isn’t keeping
pace. The beta, as climbers call accu-
mulated information about a route,
has a sell-by date.
The North Face does not offer its
athletes health insurance or life in-
surance. The pay can range from sub-
stantial six-figure annual salaries for
the stars (who have agents that typi-
cally handle the negotiations) to four-
figure stipends, or even just free gear,
for up-and-coming “ambassadors.”
“The athletes would pursue these
activities with or without us,” Arne
Arens, the president of the North Face,
told me. “We know the inherent risks.
We try to limit them as much as we
can. They choose the objectives. Our
role is to make it as safe as possible.”
Generally, the athletes develop their
own projects and pitch them to the
company, which in turn shapes them
not only to market the brand but also
to road test new technology and gear.
“If it weren’t for the athletes, we
wouldn’t be able to push the limits
ourselves,” Arens said.A
t dusk, a thunderstorm swept in
over the beach in Puerto Rico.
Lightning struck a nearby headland,
and the surfers panic-paddled to shore.
Most of the athletes had gathered
under the mess tent, the metal poles
of which were anchored in what the
storm had turned into an ankle-deep
pool of rainwater. One bolt and we’d
all be toast. Faces shone in the blue
squall twilight. I talked to runners, rock
climbers, snowboarders.
“Do you want to hear my story?”
Jim Morrison asked. With his part-
ner, Hilaree Nelson, Morrison had re-
cently completed a long-coveted first
descent on skis of Lhotse, the sum-
mit adjacent to Everest. He took me
aside and solemnly told me about the
deaths, in an airplane crash, of his wife
and their two young children. The ac-
cident left him alone, completely gut-
ted, considering suicide. The story he
was telling, and pitching, was one of
renewal: his partnership with Nelson;
his life with Nelson’s sons, who were
with them in Puerto Rico; the triumph
on Lhotse. I heard about other proj-
ects. An English climber named James
Pearson was exploring sawanobori, the
Japanese art of climbing up flowing
streams and waterfalls. The Italian
mountaineers Tamara Lunger andSimone Moro were planning a win-
ter ascent of Pik Pobeda, in Siberia,
reputed to be the coldest climb on
earth. Jess Roskelley, of Spokane, and
Hansjörg Auer, an Austrian, huddled
to discuss some big icy rock walls, of
the kind that Anker favored; a route
in Canada had caught their eye. All
of it seemed a long way from a beach
in the Caribbean. As the night wore
on, the climbers refilled their camp-ing mugs with rum punch from a
cooler, while the skiers and snowboard-
ers twisted up joints on the porch of
their villa. The ultra-runners mostly
stuck to seltzer.
The main event that night was the
passing of the team captaincy, from
Anker to Hilaree Nelson. The ath-
letes assembled under the tent and
laughed and hooted along as a pro-
cession of them stood to toast and
roast Anker. Lowe-Anker, at her first-
ever athletes’ summit, made a few re-
marks on the courage and forbear-
ance of climbers’ mates—the loved
ones at home. Humbled and a little
tongue-tied, Anker stood and intro-
duced Tate, who, adopting a priestly
stance, said, “Hilaree, come here. You
stand here. Conrad here.”
“This seems like it could be Cath-
olic or something,” Anker said. “But I
think this is more pagan.”
“The love I have for this man is as
deep as I’ve ever experienced,” Tate
said. “We have a heart connection.”
A few weeks before, he said, he’d been
on the Lowe-Anker family’s ranch in
Montana, building a jack fence with
Anker and Max Lowe, and had floated
the idea of “a ritual of transfer of
power.” Now he produced some rit-
ual objects. “This belt I’ve suffered
and worn in ten Crow Sun Dances.
I’ve earned the right to be an elder.
So know that. And this silk scarf
comes to me from a women’s collec-
tive in India.” He described a tradi-
tional dancing troupe from India he’d
got to know.
With the scarf, Tate bound together
the wrists of Anker and Nelson, their
mates looking on with some measure
of bafflement at this quasi-matrimo-
nial sacrament. A few people in the
back got the giggles. “The energy in
this room, and the love of these peo-
ple, is the authority that this moment
signifies,” Tate’s voice boomed. “This
man is transferring the power to this
woman. We honor them and bless them,
and we wish you the best, Hilaree.”
Confession: I was one of the gig-
glers. As a knee-jerk eye-roller, I was
wary of Tate at first. The apparent
hodgepodge of recycled folklore, cul-
tural appropriation, performative gran-
deur, and Jungian bubble magic re-
minded me of some people I have