Alex Honnold free-soloes The Phoenix (5.13)
- Monday 19th December 2022
In 2011 Alex Honnold free-soloed The Phoenix, the uber classic 5.13 thin-hands crack in Yosemite; filmmaker Peter Mortimer shares the back story in newly released footage.
Prior to Free Solo, the award-winning documentary of Alex Honnold’s 2017 epoch-defining free solo of Freerider, little footage of Alex Honnold free-soloing had ever been seen; hardly surprising given the seriousness of the routes that Honnold was soloing! However, in footage just released by videographer/filmmaker Peter Mortimer, Honnold is seen free soloing The Phoenix (5.13) high above the Cathedral Falls in Yosemite.
Having abseiled in and practiced a few moves, Motimer pulls up Honnold’s harness and abseil rope and Honnold commits. Immediately in a no-fall zone, Honnold slowly works his way up the 130 foot crack. The initial tips-laybacking and then flared finger jamming gives way to 80 foot of overhanging thin-hands before the difficult exit right at the top high above the valley floor.
The Phoenix was first climbed by Ray Jardine in 1977 using siege tactics and prototype Friends and given the unprecedented grade of 5.13a. It was first on-sighted by Jerry Moffatt in 1984. At the time of Honold’s solo in 2011 it was the hardest route every soloed in Yosemite.
Watch the film below…