56 THENEWYORKER,NOVEMBER29, 2021
climb like that, we’re like the J.V. squad.
So many people are better at it than we
are. We just kind of like to hold our-
selves accountable.” The proposed dif-
ficulty grade on Empath, 5.15a, is part
of the attraction—Honnold has never
sent 5.15, which remains a fairly exclu-
sive club—though they both say that
they expect it to be downgraded. It’s
been repeated already by several climb-
ers. But they’re still excited to try it.
Honnold says sport is his favorite type
of climbing—a little-known fact, sim-
ply because he’s not extremely good at
it. He remains intent on improving.
“Tommy’s always been stronger than
me,” he said. “Though I might be slowly
edging up on him.” (Empath, it turns
out, won’t happen this fall. It was in the
burn area of the Caldor Fire, which
started in August and consumed more
than two hundred thousand acres.
Maybe next spring.)
The world of outdoor climbing runs
on an old-fashioned honor system. If
you say you sent something, you sent
it. You don’t need proof or even wit-
nesses. Climbers will add “asterisks” to
a send—where they compromised,
where the style was flawed. Honnold
gave me a list of asterisks for his 2019
climb of an El Cap route, Passage to
Freedom, with Caldwell. It was Hon-
nold’s first El Cap first ascent, and a
beautiful line, but the idea was Cald-
well’s. The project took a month, and
toward the end they were cutting cor-
ners, not doing every pitch
without falls, because Cald-
well wanted to see his fam-
ily, who were waiting in the
valley. They topped out on
Halloween, and Caldwell
sprinted down the back of
the mountain just in time
to throw on his Obi-Wan
Kenobi costume and go
trick-or-treating with the
kids in Yosemite Village.
A couple of days later, the two men re-
turned to one of the pitches, a long and
perilous traverse, and added a few more
bolts, to make it safer for the next party
that might attempt it. Calling big-wall
climbing a sport doesn’t really capture
much about it.
Technology is affecting the old
honor code. Boulderers, in particular,
can easily video their efforts now, and
breakthrough boulder sends without
video might not get the benefit of the
doubt. But sport climbs, let alone big
walls, can still go without documenta-
tion. Nobody asks Caldwell for proof
that he sent Flex Luthor in 2003. He
laughed when I asked about it. “Get-
ting somebody to film your every at-
tempt would have been seen as shame-
less self-promotion,” he said. Caldwell
half admires certain younger pro climb-
ers who “monetize” their climbing with
millennial ease, though he finds some
of the product placement and self-
promotion “cringeworthy.”
Wall-to-wall recording might be
more feasible now, but it’s still not re-
ally in the spirit of the thing. Consider
what is likely the most celebrated com-
petition in outdoor climbing: the speed
record for summiting El Capitan by the
Nose route. This is not free climbing,
with its meticulous, self-reporting ethos
of using gear only to catch falls, not to
help you climb. (Caldwell free-climbed
the Nose in 2005, in slightly under twelve
hours, which was eleven hours less than
the next-fastest climber.) For the Nose
speed record, you can grab anything you
want—old pitons, belay anchors, your
own rope. It is a mad dash in which
style goes out the window. It is also a
supreme test of skill, endurance, and
route knowledge, with few standard pre-
cautions observed.
The Nose speed record fell below ten
hours in 1990, and it has been easing
down ever since. In 2012,
Honnold and a partner
moved it below two and a
half hours, and when that
mark was beaten, five years
later, he drafted Caldwell to
regain it. They recorded their
time for posterity by Hon-
nold pressing a timer on his
phone at the bottom and
yelling, “Go!” When they
slapped a designated tree on
the summit, he stopped the clock, and
they stared blearily at the time.
After numerous practice runs, Cald-
well and Honnold got the record back.
Their belaying was unorthodox, inev-
itably, as they raced upward, mostly
simul-climbing but adapting their ap-
proach to various pitches, obstacles,
and pendulum swings, dashing through
bivouacked parties waking up on ledges.On one practice run, in a section of the
wall called the Stovelegs, Caldwell fell,
about a hundred feet. On video, it’s
heart-stopping. A falling body accel-
erates exponentially. Honnold caught
him, of course, and Caldwell arrested,
slammed into the wall, and immedi-
ately began traversing left to get back
on route. He could have safely fallen
three hundred feet from that spot, he
told an interviewer afterward—it’s not
how far you fall, it’s what you hit—but
the truth was that this orgy of brilliant
coördination was surrounded by peril.
As they were projecting the Nose,
two highly experienced El Cap climb-
ers, Tim Klein and Jason Wells, were
on another route, Freeblast, and fell on
a moderate pitch. It was never deter-
mined who fell first or why, though it
was clear that they were not conven-
tionally belayed. They were simul-climb-
ing. Later reporting found that, shortly
before the accident, Wells had been
chatting with another climber about
Honnold’s free solo from the previous
year. Klein and Wells were both killed,
leaving families behind.
Caldwell and Honnold were climb-
ing through another scene of dread.
Less than a year before, Quinn Brett,
a pro climber who had held the Nose
speed record for women, had fallen a
hundred and forty feet from a feature
called the Boot Flake, landing behind
an outcropping called the Texas Flake.
She had been left permanently para-
lyzed below the waist. Brett lives in
Estes Park; she and Caldwell are old
friends. Climbing the Boot Flake, Brett
had minimal protective gear. Caldwell,
sprinting up the Boot Flake, was su-
premely comfortable, but he stopped
on every lap and placed solid protec-
tion. “All of the accidents surrounding
the Nose and speed climbing lately
have stressed out my friends and fam-
ily more than they have me, honestly,”
Caldwell told a podcaster who inter-
viewed him and Honnold. But Becca
was down in El Cap meadow with the
kids, watching. Four days after the ac-
cident on Freeblast, Honnold and Cald-
well broke the Nose speed record again,
with a time of less than two hours.
These virtuoso performances carry
a moral hazard. Caldwell admitted on
the podcast that he felt uncomfortable
about setting a mark that other climb-