Oh, yeah. I wrote a book that is scheduled for release on September 1, 2022. It’s a book about the psychology of risk, specifically as applied to free solo rock climbing. It’s something I used to do back in the day when I was young and strong and full of myself. Then one day I nearly fell off twice on the same route and decided it was a bad idea. I didn’t stop, not exactly; but I stopped pushing my limits. Many years later, after the film Free Solo came out and Alex Honnold became a household name, people started asking questions. “You’re a rock climber,” they’d say. “Do you free solo?” I admitted I did, or used to, which led to more questions. “Why?” some people asked. “How can you do that?” others wondered. But mostly they asked, “Are you crazy?” The idea that free solo rock climbers were insane, mentally ill, suicidal, etc. seemed to be ingrained in the cultural psyche. Why would someone risk their life to climb a rock wall that was hundreds or even thousands of feet high without a rope? How could someone overcome the fear of falling and dying and even be able to leave the ground, let alone cling to tiny holds and keep going, where one mistake could lead to a long, fatal fall? They assumed there was something wrong with us—with me—some deep-seeded psychological defect that drove us up there. Did we have a death wish? Were we seeking attention? Did we hate our mothers? I wondered.
John Bachar free soloing in Joshua Tree, 1982. Copyright Jeff Smoot.
Of course, me being me, I started writing about it. At first, I wanted to explore what I called the “Honnold Effect”: the idea that impressionable people who saw Alex Honnold in the film or other media might try to emulate him, the same way that I and kids of my generation emulated our hero, Evel Knievel. The same way I emulated Mike Hoover, the producer and star of Solo, a 1974 film about a solo climber that was nominated for an Academy Award. I saw that film and knew I wanted to be a climber. Not just a climber—a solo climber, rugged, individualistic, not afraid of death, going alone where others feared to tread. Eventually I found a new hero: John Bachar, the California climber who was considered the preeminent free soloist of his generation. I saw him free soloing during a trip to Joshua Tree and again in Yosemite, and was inspired to free solo myself. I started with easy routes at first, but eventually was soloing routes rated 5.10 and 5.11. Then I tried a 5.12. Like I said, I was young and strong and full of myself. Icarus-like, I soared upward. Luckily, I made it safely back to earth, wings scorched, lesson learned.
My book, All and Nothing: Inside Free Soloing, explores the free soloing phenomenon through a variety of lenses: psychological, phenomenological, spiritual, and personal, including the tendency to view risk-taking behavior as deviant and harmful undertaken by deranged people bent on self-destruction rather than something that's quite normal, life-affirming, and even healthy according to some experts. I look at my own personal motivations for taking up climbing and eventually free soloing, as well as other climbers, some well-known, some new to the sport, and some who did not survive to tell their story except through books, articles, and interviews. I also interviewed several experts in the field of risk-taking psychology to find answers to those questions: Why? How? Are you crazy?
Somebody grabbed my camera and took this picture of me free soloing in Yosemite Valley, 1985.
Another thing I explored was some people’s concern that Alex Honnold and others who were being shown free soloing in films and other media were going to influence some kid to try it and get killed. They had a good reason to think so, since Honnold had said himself at the end of the film:
“Right now, there’s some kid that just read about El Cap being soloed and he’s like, ‘What’s bigger? What’s cooler?’ I mean, somebody’s going to think of something, and it’s going to be cooler, but I don’t know if that’s going to be me. Maybe. I don’t know.”
But he downplayed that in response to criticism, saying no kid was going to be influenced by the film to start free soloing because they’d get 12 feet off the ground and get scared. But I knew from my own experience that wasn’t true. Not all kids. Not me. Not Paul Ross. Not Alex Honnold. Not Alex Honnold’s mom. And not Elijah Baldwin, the 13-year-old boy who loved rock climbing and fell off a cliff in Utah a few months after the film came out.
Who says kids will get 12 feet off the ground and get scared? Not these kids!
I know those films and media heroes are influential because I grew up in the 1970s when every kid wanted to be Evel Knievel. He was our hero, jumping over busses and trucks on TV. We could directly emulate him by taking our Schwinn Stingrays and jumping them over our friends who were dumb enough to lay down and let us. Our parents worried we’d break our necks, and a lot of kids did get hurt, but that didn’t stop us.
I also turned the lens on the media—films and social media mostly—to find out if they were romanticizing or hyping free soloing in a way that would inspire some impressionable kid to try it, to be the kid Honnold said would be wondering what is bigger, cooler—what is next. There’s a lot of stuff out there that makes free soloing seem cool, which concerns a lot of people, mostly parents of young, impressionable rock climbers. Free Solo did a creditable job of talking about the risk, but a lot of films kind of gloss over it or don’t even talk about the risk. All you see is badass climbers having a great time. It looks cool; it looks fun. It's no big deal. Nobody falls and dies.
I was influenced by Mike Hoover’s film, and then by John Bachar when I saw him free soloing in real life. Bachar influenced Michael Reardon; Reardon influenced Austin Howell. Young people are easily influenced and want to be cool and not a loser. Advertising agencies know this and market at them with images of radical dudes doing badass things. If you think Alex Honnold is cool because he climbs rocks without a rope, you’ll want to do that so you, too, can be cool. Just like all those kids trying to reenact scenes from Jackass: The Movie or taking the Tide Pod Challenge or jumping their bikes like Evel Knievel. People die doing that stuff, but kids get caught up in that and do it anyway. It's not going to happen to them, they believe. Bad stuff only happens to other people.
This kind of thing happened every day in the '70s. Some days I was the kid on the bike; other days, I was one of the kids laying on the ground.
I thought it was ironic that Honnold said no kid was going to be influenced by him to start free soloing because they’d get 12 feet off the ground and get scared, because he was just such a kid, and so was his mother. One of my favorite parts of the book is my conversation with Deirdre Wolownick about when she was a young girl and was climbing around on these 30-foot boulders called Mile Rocks with all the other kids, leaping across a gap between the boulders, having a great time, not scared at all. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be up there, but went up there anyway. And Mark Radke and his friend, Ledge, jumping across the Strid, a six-foot gap on the River Wharfe, where falling in means certain death. And Paul Ross and his friends out looking for bird eggs and climbing a 200-foot cliff in Borrowdale Valley—twice, because it was so much fun.
Of course, kids are going to be influenced by people they look up to as heroes and try to emulate them. Kids love adventure and do dangerous things all the time. Not all kids, but a lot of them. Back in my day, we were all jumping our bikes off ramps just like our hero, Evel Knievel. Who do kids have to emulate these days? If it’s Alex Honnold, they’re going to be out there doing what he does—climbing rocks without a rope. Like Elijah Baldwin when he climbed a 200-foot sandstone slab at Snow Canyon State Park, made it to the top, then fell on the way down when a hold broke and lost his life.
Kids love adventure and take risks. It's part of growing up. Should we stop them?
Knowing that kids are wired to explore and be adventuresome and emulate people they think are cool, what do we do about that when it comes to free soloing? I explored that by talking with parents of kids who climbed about whether the film Free Solo had any influence on their kids, and about how they talked with their kids about Alex Honnold. I even went to see the film with a friend and his son, who’d never been climbing before and was being exposed to it for the first time by watching Alex Honnold free soloing El Capitan.
I think that’s my favorite part of the book. The parents really seemed to understand how their kids could be influenced by media and peer pressure, and engaged them in conversations about risk-taking so they would make good choices when confronted by those influences. But ultimately, they all said they would not forbid their kids from pursuing something in life, even free soloing, if they weren’t being reckless and it was really meaningful to them. Even my dad, who I interviewed for the book.
“It’s your life,” he said. “You knew what you wanted and what you were doing. It wouldn’t have done any good to say ‘Don’t do that! Are you crazy!’ ... I knew how you felt about climbing. It wouldn’t have been fair to say you can’t do that just because I couldn’t understand it. You’d done enough climbing and were smart enough that I knew you weren’t going to go out and get killed,” he said. “At least, I didn’t think so… How could I have stopped you anyway?” ... “It would be like trying to convince someone to stop smoking. They’re not going to do it. In fact, with kids, if you tell them not to do something, that just means they’re going to do it. So, tell you to quit climbing because it’s dangerous? Come on!”
As one climber said: "Use a rope, kids. You're not Alex Honnold."
My book is not the end of the story; it’s just one perspective on free soloing and risk-taking psychology. There’s a lot more that has been and will be written on the subject. At least, I hope so, because it’s such an interesting subject. I hope it’s introspective and evocative and not just titillating hype about what Alex Honnold is doing next. But who knows: Maybe that kid Alex Honnold talked about is out there. I kind of hope not, because I’m afraid for the kid that tries to do something bigger. I’m afraid for Alex Honnold if he’s the one who tries to outdo himself, although I think he’s done something bigger and cooler: he's a dad! No matter how much he tries to downplay it, that's a pretty big deal.
I have to say, though, that given all of the dangerous things people do these days, free soloing isn’t the worst thing. Yes, it’s is dangerous. So are a lot of things. But it can also be a very positive, life-affirming thing. That said, I certainly would not encourage anyone to do it. I did it for a lot of reasons, realized it was a bad idea, and gave it up. I got smarter as I got older, I guess. I still do it sometimes, though, if I’m in the right place at the right time and get the “twitch” (as John Bachar called it). For the most part, I’m content not to. But if you dropped me off in Joshua Tree or Tuolumne Meadows on a nice fall day with a pair of rock shoes and a chalk bag, I don’t know. Actually, I do know. I’d be up there, I know it.
If you'd like to read it, you can order a copy of my book here: https://www.mountaineers.org/books/books/all-and-nothing-inside-free-soloing.