The Heart-Stopping Climbs Of Alex Honnold

Another big, mainstream news piece on Alex Honnold, this time in a cover story for The New York Times Magazine.  Plenty of great insight into what makes Honnold tick, but I especially enjoyed this bit about Dean Potter:

Even Dean Potter, an openly spiritual man who describes free-soloing as part of a personal art form that includes base jumping, finds Honnold difficult to understand. “Alex is like Spock,” Potter told me. “I freak out at the top of solos and scream — like, super emotional.
Then I’m wasted emotionally for months. Alex just does it and walks away and does another.
” Honnold doesn’t like this kind of talk; he insists that he worked hard to develop his self-control, and he grows prickly at any suggestion that he is unlike other people. “Before Dean solos something, he has to, like, slaughter a goat and fly with the ravens,” Honnold joked, as if Potter drew on magical aid to see him through danger. “I don’t want to slaughter a goat and fly with the ravens. I just want to climb.”

Funny response from Potter last night on Instagram:

https://instagram.com/p/0Ri_7RmdEM