Free Solo

Climber Alex Honnold has been dreaming of free-soloing the 3,000 feet (900 m) rock wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a feat no one has performed. His choice of big wall climbing route on El Capitan is called Freerider, a route that was created by Alexander Huber in 1998, and which Honnold has completed several times with protection equipment. Freerider is graded at 5.13a (7c+) in difficulty, and no climber has ever completed a big-wall free solo at such a grade of difficulty in rock climbing history.
Honnold is a shy loner who has lived and traveled alone in his van for several years, but recently he is sometimes joined by his new girlfriend Sanni McCandless. On one climb with McCandless, while she is feeding his rope through a grigri on his descent, she makes a mistake, and he falls, suffering some vertebral compression fractures. He considers breaking up with McCandless over the incident, but they remain together.
In the summer of 2016, Honnold and Tommy Caldwell go climbing in Morocco to prepare for his El Capitan free solo. The film crew also prepares, discussing where to place cameras to best capture Honnold’s climb while minimizing distractions and interference, and also the ethical dilemma of documenting this climb, knowing Honnold may die on camera. Honnold accepts an offer to receive a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan in order to understand his brain's response to fear, and the results show that there is little activity in his amygdala in response to intense stimuli.
In the fall of 2016, Honnold sprained his ankle on El Capitan while traditional climbing (using ropes and protection equipment) on the first section of Freerider, the giant multi-pitch slab known as Freeblast and graded at 5.11b (6c). Not wanting to miss the chance to do the free climb that year, he only takes a brief break from climbing and resumes his preparations while his foot is still swollen. Around Halloween, Honnold and McCandless carve pumpkins with Caldwell and his wife and children. In an interview, Honnold says his family did not hug and the word "love" was not used in his household, as his father lacked the ability to form emotional bonds.
Honnold and Caldwell rappel down Freerider, and Honnold outlines his route, discussing the areas about which he is apprehensive. One section offers him two alternative pathways, which he calls "The Teflon Corner" (an internal right-angled section with a smooth slippery surface) and "The Boulder Problem" (a particularly intricate piece of the wall that has to be finished with either a jump or a wide "karate kick" stance). Both the crew and McCandless suggest abandoning the plan, and Honnold says he does not want his friends to see him die if he falls during the climb. News of the death of Swiss climber Ueli Steck, with whom he had climbed, causes Honnold to reflect on his own risk-taking, but Caldwell comments on how little it ultimately seemed to affect him. When he finally decides to try to free solo El Capitan, he abandons the attempt after the slab section of Freeblast, and filmmaker Jimmy Chin worries that the filming is putting unnecessary pressure on him.
After giving up on his plan to free solo El Capitan that season, Honnold and McCandless buy a house in Las Vegas. Then, on June 3, 2017, he again attempts a free solo climb of Freerider. McCandless leaves just before he starts, expressing her apprehensions in an interview. The film crew watches nervously as he makes his way through each of the most difficult parts of the climb, and one cameraman turns away several times, as he cannot bear to watch. Honnold completes the free solo in 3 hours and 56 minutes. He later does an interview with a journalist in which he contemplates his future, and the future of free solo climbing.