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“I was only in the Valley for a week,” Alex Honnold said of his recent trip to Yosemite National Park. He’d gone there without his family, hoping to refresh his wall climbing skills on Mount Watkins, but when all his partners bailed, he resorted to smashing the speed record on El Capitan’s Salathé Wall (5.13b, 3500ft) instead. “No better time to rope solo than when all your partners have left you.”
Located on the southwest face of El Capitan, the Salathé Wall climbs a long slab section called the Freeblast into a series of wide and physical cracks, followed by an immaculate headwall. The 35-pitch route covers approximately 3,500 feet of terrain. Royal Robbins, Tom Frost, and Chuck Pratt made the route’s first ascent in 1961; Peter Haan made the first roped solo ascent in 1972; Todd Skinner and Paul Piana made the first team free ascent at 5.13b in 1988; and Alex Huber made the first individual free ascent in 1995. While the route now serves as the standard free climbing route on El Cap, this spring it became a race track for rope soloing.
Unlike its neighbor, the Nose, where intense competition has pushed the current speed solo record down to 4 hours and 37 minutes, the Salathé has seen just a few fast rope solo ascents in its lifetime. In 1992, Steve Schneider set the record with a 21:42 time. In 2013, Cheyne Lempe broke it with a time of 20:06. In early May this year, Byran Hansell rope soloed the route nine minutes faster, climbing it in 19:57. Then on May 17, Jordan Cannon attempted to set the record and was making good time but got stuck behind a party on the Enduro Corner/Headwall. He ultimately topped out with a 21:30 time. Seeing that there was a race for the Salathé rope solo speed record, the ever-competitive Honnold jumped in.
“I don’t love it,” said Honnold of rope soloing. “I kind of hate it actually. But it’s a useful skill to have.”
Nearly nine hours faster
To retune his speed climbing game for the Salathé, Honnold first climbed the Nose with Connor Herson earlier in the week. Then he poured through Brent Barghahn’s blog learning as much as he could about rope soloing. He took a day to practice what he’d learned, climbing up to the Hollow Flake (pitch 13). (“I was basically freeing the Freeblast while rope soloing so I could learn how to do it,” Honnold said.) After a rest day working in the valley, he got up early and walked to the base of the Salathé Wall at first light with a double set of cams, a few offsets, and a backpack.
He rope soloed the Freeblast, the difficult flare of pitch 19, the Boulder Problem pitch, the Enduro Corner, the pitch to the headwall, the headwall, and the pitch above the headwall. The rest of the time he used a combination of daisy soloing, free soloing, and using a rope for short sections. He made it to the Block in just six hours, which is approximately 900 feet from the top, but then his climbing slowed down.
“The Enduro Corner and the Headwall just take a long time,” Honold said.
He passed two parties on the Hollow Flake and one in the Alcove. “There was a party up on the Headwall as I was climbing that I thought I was gonna catch but I never managed to. I was like, ‘Aww man I can’t even catch a wall climbing party.’ ”
Despite this, he still shaved eight hours off the previous rope solo speed record, finishing in a blisteringly fast 11 hours and 18 minutes.
Even though Honnold’s preparation for the ascent sounds pretty minimal, and even though he’s characteristically nonchalant about the significance of his time, it’s worth noting that he has done extensive prep work over the years—including climbing the route numerous times. He first freed the Salathé over three days in 2007. Two years later, he free climbed the route in a day, nearly linking the entire headwall in a single pitch (which goes at 5.13d when enchained) but falling at the last boulder problem. He then redpointed the second headwall pitch on its own. Later that same year, he set the Salathé speed record at 4:55 with Sean Leary.
Beyond his time on the Salathé, Honnold also held the solo speed record on the Nose from 2010 to 2023, and he soloed the Nose, Half Dome, and Mount Watkins in a single day in 2017. “Doing those, I never actually rope soloed whole pitches though,” Honnold said. Instead, he’d daisy solo or protect himself with a rope for short sections. “Maybe I should call it free solo plus.”
He also free soloed Freerider, which shares 90% of the terrain of the Salathé, in 2017. Rope soloing the Salathé is quite different though. “Free soloing the Freerider takes years of preparation whereas with rope soloing you can just go up there and do it and feel relatively safe. I read like three blogs and 27 links, watched a YouTube video, and was like ‘I got this.’”
Still, he doesn’t love the logistics involved in rope soloing. And on the day he soloed the route, he was tempted to go bouldering with a couple of friends instead. But ultimately he thought, “If I left the family for one week to come to Yosemite, I should probably go climb El Cap.”
Plus, the rope soloing gave him the opportunity to catch up with the innovations being made in the rope soloing game, particularly by Brent Barghahn’s Avant Climbing.
Honnold didn’t quite use any of the new gadgets, belaying himself with an unmodified Gri-Gri but it seemed useful for him to learn about.
“There were a bunch of things that I could have done better but that’s kind of the point,” Honnold said, before speculating that the record could be shaved down further. “I’m sure that the right person willing to really go for it could probably do six or seven hours.”
That said Honnold doesn’t think the time will drop as far as it has on other routes on El Cap. “It’s a long route,” he said. “And it’s more involved than the Nose with all the chimneys and stuff. It’s a grind. There’s no easy way to do the Hollow Flake.”
