Alex Honnold, Hazel Findlay, Mikey Shafer: How three climbers scaled the world’s largest unexplored rock face

CNN
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In a world hyper-connected by technology, transportation, and smartphone screens, few places are truly untouched. But for mountaineer Alex Honnold, some such places in the harshest and most unforgiving environments still exist and are ripe for adventure.

Honnold had sweaty palms and a rapid pulse as he climbed Yosemite’s 3,200-foot granite monolith El Capitan without a safety rope. This incredible achievement was immortalized in BAFTA and Oscar-winning National Geographic’s breathtaking documentary Free Solo.

After the film’s success and his rise to stardom, Honnold set his sights on Ingmikortilak, a formidable, unexplored 3,750-foot rock wall that juts out of the frigid icy waters of Greenland. The sheer rock is more than twice the height of the Empire State Building.

“I’m never going to do a climbing project that’s going to be at the Oscars again. I’m able to put those expectations aside and focus on projects that I’m excited about and inspired by,” he says. told CNN Sport.

The 38-year-old athlete joined professional climbers Hazel Findlay and Mikey Schaefer on a six-week expedition featured in the National Geographic documentary “Arctic Rise” to climb the formidable mountain range known locally as “The Other Thing.” Challenged the sea cliffs.

Honnold has made many first ascents around the world, but said, “This was my first time climbing a wall of that size, that size.”

Tackling the world’s largest unscaled wall might be a dream come true for any mountaineer, but the circumstances were anything but. Honnold and his team had to battle unpredictable weather, snowstorms, rolling loose rocks, and delays in the delivery of climbing equipment. .

Despite its reputation, Honnold is not completely unfazed, calling the sea cliff Ingmikortilak “quite intimidating” and “daunting” due to the varying types and quality of the swirling rocks. It is expressed as.

“When we first saw the wall from the boat, we were all pretty, and we were like, ‘Oh no, that’s amazing,'” he says.

Findlay, who made the first ascent with Honnold, told CNN that despite careful planning and a television crew, the team faced a surprising number of “unknowns,” especially the pressures they felt making the documentary. He said he faced expectations.

“As a climber, I think you’re used to tackling that level of unknown. I don’t know if you can really have an adventure without the unknown, but it’s definitely just part of the experience.” Findlay explains.

“But when you’re producing for TV, there’s even more pressure. You have to be really successful or you’re wasting money and putting people’s jobs at risk. is.”

After weeks of trekking to the cliffs with a team that included glaciologist Dr Heidi Sebest, Greenlandic guide Adam Kelsen and adventurer Aldo Cain, the climbers set their sights on the formidable buttress.

“That wall was really loose and the risk was much more difficult to manage. We felt we could do everything we could to make the wall safe, but it could still be too dangerous. ” Findlay added.

Honnold explains that he approached the “almost overwhelming challenge” of a six-week expedition and mountain climb the same way he approaches all projects: “breaking things down into manageable pieces.”

“I think a big part of doing things that other people find scary is expanding your comfort zone and becoming less scared of things that you thought were scary before.”

“It means constantly scaring yourself in different ways and consistently doing things that are a little bit beyond what you previously felt comfortable with.”

He added that 10 years ago, many aspects of the expedition would have been very scary to him.

“If you’ve been doing something on a daily basis for 20 years, it’s not that scary. A lot of viewers watch that and think, ‘Oh, he’s living a normal life just like me.’ , I think you might think, “I do this sometimes.”

“No, no, this is what I’ve been doing five days a week, all year round, for the past 20 years,” he laughed.

Before arriving at Ingmikortilak, the team collected data to inform a “health check” of eastern Greenland that had not been completed for about 20 years.

The research team aims to improve our knowledge of the impacts that climate change will have on this important and vulnerable part of the planet, and will ultimately affect the rest of the world. We investigated the rock surface.

This involved climbing a 1,500-foot-tall rock wall known as the Poole Wall to measure the depth and density of a little-studied part of Greenland’s ice sheet in real time.

“Behind these really amazing walls, we’ve researched useful science. It’s a win-win all over the world,” Honnold explains.

“So much of modern science is about access. If you can put the right people in the right places, you can make meaningful contributions to science with relatively little effort,” he added. Ta.

Sebestre told CNN that the Arctic is currently warming three to four times faster than the rest of the world.

“By gaining a deeper understanding of what is happening in Greenland, we will have better data and a better understanding of how changes in the Arctic may affect other parts of the world.” We can provide predictions,” she explains.

A recent study from the California Institute of Technology found that the Greenland ice sheet is losing an average of 30 million tons of ice per hour as a result of human-induced global warming.

“Our present and our future are inextricably linked to Greenland,” explains Sebestre.

The island has enough ice to raise sea levels by 6 to 7 meters, he said, adding that cities such as London, New York and Miami are on the “front line”.

“And at this point, we have a choice: Do we continue to invest in fossil fuels as we are today? If you want to give, you need to think long and hard about how much you want it.”

“We are only reluctantly agreeing to increase our investment in fossil fuels. But we really need to understand how high the risks are. By 2070, sea level rise 1 meter could happen.

“So for the younger generation, tomorrow is tomorrow,” she added.