Is anyone watching Alex Honnold on Netflix right now?

What about Alain Robert? My understanding is that some of the routes he free soloed are considered higher difficulty than El Cap, just not nearly as long. Robert apparently free soloed 5.13d twice in the early 1990s. Interestingly enough, he also climbed Taipei 101 a few days before it opened, but he was hired by the building management to do it, so he had to wear a rope, whereas most of his urban climbs were free solos. Notably, it took Robert 4 hours, but it was apparently raining hard when he did it. Oh, and he free soloed one of the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, which is apparently much more challenging than Taipei 101.

In comparison, my thought was that Honnold wasn't as technically good, but he's better with long, endurance climbs. So, saying he's the best "without a doubt" is probably hard to claim. It seems that they just do different kinds of free soloing and Honnold's have been more iconic, but not necessarily better.

Is there actually a video of him saying he would never Free Solo what some of the "top free soloers" have done?

I thought it was fairly common knowledge that Honnold is a few rungs below the best technical climbers in the world (even when he was at his peak), but I thought his free solo accomplishments are right up there with the best ever.

Marc-Andre Leclerc soloed some things Honnold would never do, and Honnold might have said as much in the movie. But they're effectively different disciplines. There have also been some very hard solos of single pitch sport climbs (e.g. by Dave Macleod) that seem out of Honnold's wheelhouse. Again, different game. I bet any one of those climbers (if still alive) would tell you Honnold is the best soloist ever.

I respect what he does, but beyond climbing tall things and risking his life for attention, what is he actually good at?

He’s probably really patient, has excellent short- and long-term planning skills, and thrives under pressure.

I agree that you cant definitely say "comp climber is the best climber", but Honnold is not the best sport climber either. Its hard, as its different elements, so how do you compare? Greatest is perhaps a better word, or something he could be, but not best in the overall sense. Best free soloist, but skill, strength and technically he isnt near being at the pinnacle in anything climbing wise, a part from free soloing large walls. But he hasnt free soloed the hardest routes, for the grade, either. Im not a hater of Honnold, but I dont think Coloradoclimber was trashing Honnold.

Youre all so easily offended and see insults where there are none. But to clarify the comparison, Honnold is not particular close to the hardest trad climbing either.

As we all know track and field here consider this analogy.

Suppose you took a normal long jump pit and replaced the first 8 meters of sand with a pool of boiling hot acid, where anyone that failed to clear it was certain of death, and you invited some of the world's top long jumpers to have a go.

Suppose that most of them refused because they were afraid, but three of them decided to attempt. Say two of them fell into the acid and died and one managed to clear it with a mark of 8.1m.

Would you call him the world's best long jumper? No. Would you call him the world's best ... anything? I wouldn't.

If you took someone like Adam Ondra and put a gun to his head and said "OK, you have to climb Freerider without ropes or I'll shoot you", he would do it without difficulty. He just chooses not to because he doesn't have a death wish.

https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/entertainment/tv/2026/01/27/honnolds-skyscraper-payday?ahe=a631c91a39975c50664ce6e5b4998c4e0c7a90f636297baa3e612a37c9636acf&acid=4476516&lr_hash=

He's the best American big wall soloist. freerider is what, 5.13a, so not the first big wall solo of the grade. There's been a handful of 5.14a/b solos by the likes of Dave MacLeod, Alex huber, alfredo Webber

I'm scared to free solo my ladder on to my roof. And my place is one story.

Marc-Andre was not more proficient technically. He was just willing to take on more risk. To me he was both inspiring, and for obvious reasons tragic. Cutting edge alpinists like Marc-Andre tend to have a short shelf life.

Somehow the movie about him was more crazy than Honnalds

You have your climbing types mixed up. Sport climbing and bouldering are the highest in technical difficulty, so of course Honnold isn't the best sport climber.

I talked about the heart of the sport as adventure climbing, meaning big walls and difficult alpine routes. Historically, think of John Muir, the climber/mountaineer, explorer and conservationist famous as being the "Father of National Parks". There's the exploration aspect as in new places and mountains and walls and also new lines on walls and mountains. The beauty of the line also matters to climbers. Historically, climbers trained to get better at technically difficult climbing to support adventure climbing objectives. Bouldering, sport climbing, comp climbing disciplines became important for their own sake later. Honnold was the best in his niche of free soloing long, big, difficult walls, but that's a niche that's very much aligned with the original climbing aesthetic. Muir did lots of incredible and sketchy stuff in the mountains solo without modern climbing equipment in the 1800s, for example.

Free soloing a free climbing (meaning not aid climbing) route on El Cap is worthy of all the praise he's gotton. No, he's not going to do anything that impressive again with a wife and kids, but so what?

Stop promoting that L.A. garbage.

Oh, yeah, free soloing Taipei 101 doesn't really align with that heart of climbing aesthetic I'm talking about either. But not everything needs to be. That's why it's not seen as a big deal to climbers and even gotten some pushback from climber or two in this thread (and elsewhere). That doesn't mean it wasn't a cool thing to do though. He had fun doing something that he's always wanted to do as a fun/not so serious objective, had a good payday for a climber and got lots of attention from non-climbers. I'm happy for him, not mad about it.

For me, it was fun to watch people react him and comment in clips of him making some moves on the ornaments on Taipei 101. I was a climber in the '90s who free soloed stuff and it was cool to think back when I had the same focus, control of movement, and nerves. The last time I visited a cliff that I used to speed free solo all the time side-by-side with a climbing buddy in our running shoes (in middle of a trail run loop), I was amazed at how differently I viewed the cliff in climbing shape vs. not in climbing shape (decades later).

Of course it was. The stuff he climbed was orders of magnitude more dangerous than soloing within your ability on high quality rock. Not due to technical grade but due to objective hazards. Remote, horrible weather, loose rock, huge potential for ice fall and avalanche. And unfortunately, he didn't make it past 25.

That's nonsense and you've clearly never climbed in a high consequence situation. It's remarkable how much harder it is to climb when you know a mistake would be disastrous. Ondra and almost anyone elsemight as well pick the gun, because without experience and ability to manage the primitive fear response that he would face when being up there without a rope, he would 100% lose his reasoning and problem solving ability and fall off.

Of course he was more proficient technically as a total, you have to remember he ice climbed, Honnold is not proficient there. On stone Honnold was a grade above,