Story by Chris Van Leuven
“I’ve been writing my book for many years,”
Deirdre Wolownick shares from her home
in Sacramento, California, as we chat over
tea and cookies. She’s warm and friendly.
She’s home for the day between stops on
her book tour, which gives her a break and
helps her recover from her recent corrective
foot surgery.
This house has a brown piano in the
living room and family pictures in every
room, with many showing shots of the
family climbing together in California.
Deirdre’s books and Alex’s books are
lined up on either side on one bookshelf.
His titles include his autobiography Alone
on the Wall and Mark Synnott’s biogra-
phy The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold,
El Capitan, and the Climbing Life. Her
titles include English for (Foreign) Language
Students and her latest Allez! FoundationsThe Sharp End of Life
Alex Honnold’s Mom, Deirdre Wolownick, Wrote A Memoir
language,” she says. Earlier this past year,
Deirdre set her eyes on climbing big walls
with partners other than her famous son,
taking several trips to Yosemite to train
and prepare, but retreating due to crowds
and time constraints.
This spring, however, her corrective foot
surgery kept her inside in a non-weight-
bearing recovery period – “and still is, darn
it!” The doctors told her to expect a three-
month recovery and it’s taken more than six,
which has cramped her other engagements.
As she limps through the kitchen to get
an item, she has ice wrapped around her
foot. Since the book release on May 2 at
the outdoor store rei in Sacramento, she’s
been touring the western U.S. to promote
it. This spring and summer she’s speaking
at 20 cities from California to Washington,
with the list growing to include Colorado.
Her book, she says, is about “going forth,
going for your dream – not listening the
naysayers, not buying into other people’s
limits in you no matter how old you are or
who you are. Anybody can do anything if
they really want to badly enough. My son
exposes that concept constantly. I watch
both my kids do that. The only limits are
the ones that you accept for yourself.” The
book is also being published in France and
Spain in 2020 , so she’ll soon have a European
book tour coming up, which to her also
means climbing internationally. “There are
lots of places I want to climb on this planet.
I’m not getting any younger,” she says.
Deirdre plans to climb in Yosemite start-
ing in autumn 2019 , with her eyes on the
South Face of Washington Column, plus
she plans to climb in Italy, Greece, Mexico
and China: “I once lived in Japan for four
years. I want to go and climb the limestone
there, to do the sport climbs.” She also
wants to visit Ontario. “There’s a moderate
tower there that calls out to me,” she says.
The Sharp End of Life: A Mother’s Story is
available now.Chris Van Leuven is based in Yosemite.in Beginning French. There’s also The Sharp
End of Life: A Mother’s Story.
“It started out about Alex and me,” she
says of her memoir. “I was confounded
by this or that; he was a hard kid to raise
because he’s so different. The publishers
said it was great but they wanted to hear my
story. It became less about him and more
about our life together. The four of us.”
She’s referring to her son who needs no
introduction, as well as her daughter Stasia
who is two years older than Alex, and her
late ex-husband Charles Forest Honnold,
who died in 2004. She dedicated her book
to “Charlie,” penning that it was he, “who
made my life better in so many ways, and
who gave me the greatest gifts of all ... And
for Stasia and Alex.”
Born in New York City shortly after
WWII, Deirdre was raised in an immigrant
neighbourhood. “I was brought up to be an
obedient eastern European girl,” she says,
where her options were to be a housewife,
or either a secretary or a nurse. “That’s
what girls did. I never bought into that –
I never wanted to be like the people all
around me. That’s what the book’s about.
It’s about a lot of other things too.”
In 2015 , Deirdre, who speaks eight lan-
guages including sign language, retired from
teaching after 44 years, including 27 as a
college language professor. She then took
up the outdoor sports her children enjoyed.
Stasia got her into trail running and within a
few years, despite having felt reluctant about
running even a mile, Deirdre completed
several marathons. At age 58, she took up
climbing and at age 66 she climbed El Cap –
becoming the oldest woman to climb the
formation – in a day via Lurking Fear with
Alex and his friend Sam Crossley; the two
lead and cleaned the pitches.
As if writing The Sharp End of Life isn’t
hard enough, Deirdre wrote a second book
at the same time, a beginning French text-
book for colleges and high schools. “It’s
not just a text book, it’s a whole method- it’s a different approach to teaching
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