{"id":254047,"date":"2026-04-06T13:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/254047\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T13:26:13","slug":"from-sacramento-to-the-world-stage-alex-honnold-keeps-redefining-whats-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/254047\/","title":{"rendered":"From Sacramento to the World Stage, Alex Honnold Keeps Redefining What\u2019s Possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

This story is part of our April 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n


\n
\n <\/p>\n

\n Alex Honnold prefers ascending the sheer walls of Yosemite,
\n Denali or Patagonia. But when giant rock formations or a
\n skyscraper are unavailable, a 15-by 6-inch piece of tulipwood,
\n embedded with a variety of small, narrow holes, works well.\n<\/p>\n

\n The world\u2019s most renowned rock climber \u2014 sometimes without safety
\n equipment \u2014 Honnold has spent the past 30 years stretching and
\n lifting his body on fingerboards. With names like Beastmaker
\n 2000, Frictitious Megalith, BananaFingers and Trango Rock
\n Prodigy, every climber seeking improvement works these
\n fingerboards. The various angled indentations of the apparatus
\n for finger grips are essential to training.\n<\/p>\n

\n Uncanny arm and leg strength are extreme flexibility requisites.
\n While using as few as two fingers, climbers utilize hangboard
\n workouts to replicate the often millimeter-thin depth or lack
\n thereof in rock crevices. The goal is to build specific tendon
\n and muscular strength to maintain tiny, often unforgiving holds.
\n One whole-hand gripping style is called the \u201cmeat hook.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBasically, climbing comes down to being able to hold onto the
\n rock,\u201d Honnold says in a recent telephone interview with
\n Comstock\u2019s. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of the most important thing. Obviously,
\n going climbing is the best way to practice. But in the absence of
\n actually climbing, something like a hangboard is one of the most
\n specific ways in which you can train.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The 40-year-old Sacramento native is a husband and father of two
\n young daughters who now lives in Las Vegas. In January, he added
\n to his growing legend by climbing Taipei 101, the tallest
\n building in Taiwan, without ropes. It was broadcast live (with a
\n 10-second delay if the climber fell) on Netflix, with an audience
\n of 6.3 million. The skills and fearlessness needed for the climb
\n added to Honnold\u2019s reputation as one of the best athletes in the
\n world.\n<\/p>\n

\n He trained while climbing in several countries and in Red Rock
\n Canyon, a conservation area 17 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.
\n He also visited China several months in advance for a
\n reconnaissance climb during which he often waved to onlookers far
\n below.\n<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Honnold lived out of vans for several years, preferring their
\n convenience to travel to rock climbing destinations. (Photo
\n courtesy of Bruce Aldrich)\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold trained compulsively with stationary wooden mounts. He\u2019s
\n had the contraptions in two of the three vans he\u2019s owned and
\n lived in for years. He also has a small portable style, called an
\n edge, for hotel room workouts.\n<\/p>\n

\n Climbers most often excel in solitude or with a partner. Honnold
\n holds multiple solo records and has team records with best friend
\n Tommy Caldwell. He has several other climbing partners, including
\n Sacramento professional Carlo Traversi. Solo and with partners,
\n Honnold has done thousands of climbs around the world, the
\n majority in obscurity.\n<\/p>\n

\n But three of Honnold\u2019s free solo exploits \u2014 climbing with hands
\n and feet alone without ropes, harnesses or protective gear \u2014
\n changed everything.\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold\u2019s climbing prowess first attracted a mainstream audience
\n in 2011 in a 13-minute \u201c60 Minutes\u201d segment. The show set up his
\n ascent of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, a two-hour free
\n solo trek, which was then the sport\u2019s first. With former
\n correspondent Lara Logan as the interviewer, the broadcast was
\n compelling.\n<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0Touchstone
\n Brewing Company Climbs High: A microbrewery opens alongside
\n Sacramento Pipeworks climbing gym<\/a><\/p>\n

\n The climbing community knew of Honnold\u2019s unique traits. His
\n laid-back style resulted in an acronym nickname, \u201cNBD,\u201d or No Big
\n Deal. But the segment was Honnold\u2019s introduction to the world.
\n His large dark eyes appear perennially curious; his short black
\n hair is perfectly unkempt. His 5-foot-11, 160-pound frame is
\n sinewy and lean. Logan inquired about the climber\u2019s perceived
\n large hands. They\u2019re not. But his fingers are wide, as if 20
\n digits are molded into 10.\n<\/p>\n

\n In 2017, Honnold became the first person to free solo El Capitan
\n in Yosemite. The effort, which the climber planned for eight
\n years, took three hours and 56 minutes. The intimate footage of
\n Honnold ascending the nearly 3,000-foot route was the focus of
\n the 2018 Academy Award-winning documentary \u201cFree Solo.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cMany of the gyms in Sacramento I grew up in still exist, so I
\n still have a soft spot for where I grew up.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\u2014 Rock climber Alex Honnold<\/p>\n

\n His recent Taipei 101 climb was broadcast as a sporting event
\n with several announcers, including professional wrestler Seth
\n Rollins. It showed Honnold at close range ascending the
\n 1,667-foot, 101-story, largely metal skyscraper. It took 91
\n minutes.\n<\/p>\n

\n Recreational indoor and outdoor climbing is a mainstream family
\n activity. Professional climbing is an outlier. Speed climbing
\n made its debut at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo (it was held
\n in 2021 because of the pandemic). USA Climbing is the national
\n governing body, managing competition and team selections. The
\n sport will return in the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.\n<\/p>\n

\n But the majority of pro climbers in the United States and
\n internationally are as far removed from the status quo as the
\n remote peaks they challenge.\n<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Honnold scaled Taipei 101 in January, an event broadcast live by
\n Netflix that had anxious viewers around the world holding their
\n breath. He took a selfie at the top. (Photo courtesy of Netflix)\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cA lot of us operate more independently,\u201d says Sacramento-based
\n climber Traversi, who estimates the country has fewer than 100
\n men and women pro climbers. \u201cBut most of those aren\u2019t making a
\n living. If you\u2019re looking at those making a living, it might be
\n 20 to 30.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Traversi, 37, founded The Boulder Field climbing gym in
\n Sacramento in 2018. Beyond his success in multiple climbing
\n disciplines, he\u2019s a photographer and filmmaker. He has also
\n trained with Honnold for years.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was a sub-category of our sport,\u201d says Traversi of Taipei
\n 101. \u201cThere are a lot of similarities between what happens when
\n you climb a building and when you are climbing rocks. But there
\n are a lot of differences as well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n He adds, \u201cI definitely consider what Alex did as more of a
\n spectacle, like a show and not necessarily a sporting event. I
\n thought it was cool. I talked with Alex in the fall. He just
\n seems intrinsically motivated to do it regardless of the show and
\n the money and all those factors.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold, who was raised in Carmichael and graduated from Mira
\n Loma High School, began climbing as a child. A family tale has
\n his mother, Dierdre Wolownick, discovering her son at age 2 on
\n top of the family refrigerator and, within a few years, on the
\n home\u2019s roof.\n<\/p>\n

\n Wolownick climbed as a youngster and returned to the sport in
\n 2009. She climbed El Capitan (with safety equipment) at age 66 in
\n 2017 and has continued climbing into her 70s. She moved from her
\n long-time Sacramento home to Las Vegas to be closer to her
\n grandchildren. It\u2019s resulted in her son less frequently visiting
\n the area where he once regularly trained in local gyms, including
\n frequent workouts at Sacramento Pipeworks.\n<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0Filling a Niche:
\n Boutique gyms are helping satisfy the growing demand for unique
\n workouts with activities such as rock-wall climbing and mixed
\n martial arts<\/a><\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was very difficult to raise a kid like that because he was
\n dedicated to getting vertical when he was born, just as he is
\n now,\u201d Wolownick said in an interview with this writer in 2018
\n after her son\u2019s El Capitan ascent. \u201cIf I had known what he was
\n going to wind up being, it would have been easier.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cAlex and his sister kept wanting to go up on the roof, and I was
\n saying, \u2018No, no, no.\u2019 He was only 5. Who lets their 5-year-old go
\n up on the roof? I knew he did it. He went up, and he came down,
\n and he was safe. So I said, \u2018The next time you go up there, get
\n all the leaves out of the gutters.\u2019 So now every time he comes
\n home, he goes up on the roof and cleans out my gutters.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold\u2019s mother also first took her son to the Rocknasium in
\n Davis when he was 5. When he was 10, Honnold\u2019s father, Charles,
\n who died of a heart attack in 2004, began taking him to Granite
\n Arch Climbing Center in Rancho Cordova as often as five days a
\n week.\n<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Alex Honnold has climbed some of the most difficult routes around
\n the world. (Photo courtesy of Black Diamond Equipment)\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey used to make fun of my dad,\u201d Honnold says. \u201cI would climb
\n to the top, come down, and climb again. My dad was the belayer
\n (holding the rope). He would have this epic loop of rope
\n stretched across the floor. It was like a joke at the gym, but he
\n would be like \u2018whatever.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n With Honnold\u2019s skills quickly improving, he traveled around the
\n state with his father for junior competitions. Mainstream sports
\n were never part of his youth. He remembers physical education
\n classes and running some, but he had little interest in any sport
\n except climbing.\n<\/p>\n

\n The death of his father (his parents had divorced) and both
\n grandfathers within a few years were troubling. Honnold left UC
\n Berkeley after his freshman year, took the family\u2019s well-worn
\n 2002 Ford Econoline van and began his climbing pilgrimage.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt was a heavy family time, but I think the main thing I took
\n away from that is a reminder that life is short,\u201d Honnold said
\n during a 2018 talk at the University of Southern California
\n Performance Science Institute. \u201cYou should do the things you want
\n to do. It was a reminder that you don\u2019t have forever.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI should do the things I want to do,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s the
\n biggest lesson I\u2019ve taken from all of that. But climbing is just
\n a fundamentally dangerous sport. I have had a lot of friends die
\n in various accidents. This past year has been particularly grim.
\n You\u2019re constantly reminded. Every time something like that
\n happens, you\u2019re asking, \u2018Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing
\n what I want with my life? Am I making the right decisions? Am I
\n on track?\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold\u2019s climbing wanderlust lasted nearly a decade. He drove
\n nearly 200,000 miles around the country, purchased bags of pasta
\n for 69 cents at Walmart and was perfectly content at dinnertime.
\n He earned less than $1,000 a month. The climber started the
\n Honnold Foundation in 2012, giving one-third of his earnings to
\n environmental concerns. It\u2019s now raised more than $13 million.\n<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0Northern
\n California \u2018Horse People\u2019 Spare No Expense for Their Passion<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Honnold\u2019s nomadic life changed dramatically shortly after the \u201c60
\n Minutes\u201d broadcast. The segment, which aired three times, had a
\n viewership CBS estimated at 20 million.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cAt the time, the producer was like, \u2018This is going to change
\n your life,\u2019\u201d Honnold says. \u201cI was like, \u2018No way. How can a TV
\n program change your life?\u2019 And it kind of did change my life. All
\n of my social media exploded. I did get a lot of corporate and
\n public speaking-type offers. All of a sudden, I just had a lot
\n more public exposure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Corporate sponsorships arrived. Public speaking engagements,
\n including a TED Talk and corporate presentations, were scheduled
\n around his climbing conquests. Honnold purchased a new van. He
\n wrote and co-wrote books and appeared at book signings, often
\n staying twice as long as scheduled. He met his wife, Sanni
\n McCandless Honnold, at a book signing in Seattle in 2015. The
\n couple moved to Las Vegas in 2017 and married in 2020. Their
\n daughter June was born in 2022; Alice followed in 2024.\n<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Honnold met his wife, Sanni McCandless Honnold, at a book
\n signing. They married in 2020 and have two daughters. (Photo
\n courtesy of Netflix)\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold, who also hosts a podcast and co-hosts an
\n outdoors-oriented cable network travel program, was so accustomed
\n to living in a van that hotel stays took adjustment. He says the
\n bathrooms were \u201cfar away.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Through his 30 years in the sport, Honnold has had several,
\n albeit infrequent, incidents. In 2012, Honnold had a plan to
\n climb all 15 peaks in California with 14,000-plus feet of
\n elevation. One day, he was on North Palisade in the Eastern
\n Sierra and in trouble.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBasically, this rock was falling on me, and I sort of Super
\n Mario-styled it and triple-jumped down some ledges, and I stuck
\n this ledge,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was 6 feet, then 5 feet, then 4 feet
\n farther. The rock went down my arm and scraped my leg. But I was
\n fine. I was a little shaken up and a little concerned. But I
\n didn\u2019t fall off the mountain. That kind of stuff happens
\n sometimes.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The percentage of accidents among free soloists is small because
\n a mistake of any consequence is likely a climber\u2019s last.\n<\/p>\n

\n Climbing magazine reported 68 free solo climbing deaths occurred
\n in the U.S. in 60 years, beginning in 1950. Thirty deaths
\n occurred via falls, 23 because of avalanches and 15 because of
\n bad weather or heart attacks.\n<\/p>\n

\n The niche within the niche sport doesn\u2019t have an international
\n governing body. Accident data is compiled from national park
\n reports, climbing magazines, alpine clubs, news articles and
\n climbing forums. Between 1980 and 2017, when Honnold free-soloed
\n El Capitan, at least 13 prominent climbers had fallen to their
\n deaths.\n<\/p>\n

\n Last October, Balin Miller, 23, of Alaska, died on El Capitan
\n when he accidentally rappelled off the end of his rope following
\n a solo climb of a route called The Sea of Dreams. According to
\n multiple reports, Miller\u2019s effort was livestreamed on TikTok by
\n an enthusiast in Yosemite Valley who didn\u2019t know the climber.
\n Miller fell 3,000 feet to his death.\n<\/p>\n

\n Honnold is asked constantly about the dangers of his job. He
\n doesn\u2019t avoid discussing it, nor does he dwell on it. He
\n completed his first free solo climb in 2005 and retains the
\n discipline as a small segment of his occupation.\n<\/p>\n

Related:
\n Sacramento\u2019s Daniel Susac Makes San Francisco Giants Roster Ahead
\n of MLB Debut<\/a><\/p>\n

\n After he completed his El Capitan ascent, Honnold rested for a
\n short while, then called McCandless Honnold to share the news and
\n inform her he\u2019d be home in about six hours. After descending, he
\n greeted a friend who asked Honnold what he was going to do. The
\n climber replied that it was a good time for a hangboard workout.\n<\/p>\n

\n While Honnold travels the world seeking his next climb, his
\n schedule and family responsibilities means infrequent trips to
\n Sacramento.\n<\/p>\n

\n \u201cBut when I do go, I definitely go to the gym (Boulder Field),\u201d
\n he says. \u201cI tend to go there because it\u2019s a nice facility, and
\n it\u2019s owned by a friend. But many of the gyms in Sacramento I grew
\n up in still exist, so I still have a soft spot for where I grew
\n up.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n \u2013\n<\/p>\n

\n Stay up to date on business in the Capital Region:
\n Subscribe to the Comstock\u2019s newsletter
\n today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of our April 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here. …\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-254047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}