I’ve never done drugs, and though I’ve tasted alcohol, I’ve never had a whole drink. I don’t even drink coffee. I had a small cup once – it was like drinking battery acid. I had to poop all morning. I once had a sniff of Scotch. I thought, I should be cleaning my sink with this stuff. It’s not some moral objection – drugs and booze and caffeine just have no appeal to me.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about fear. For me the crucial question is not how to climb without fear-that’s impossible- but how to deal with it when it creeps into your nerve endings.

When I protested that it seemed like too serious a situation to rely only on the sun and wind, Piero drew an analogy to climbing. Sometimes you find yourself in positions where falling would mean death. So you don’t fall. It helped me understand. The nomads just don’t make mistakes.

On the summit, part of me wished that someone, anyone, had noticed that I’d just done something noteworthy – though maybe it was better that I didn’t have to talk to anybody. How could I have expressed what my last few hours had been like? It was enough that I knew. I didn’t make a sound. I took off my shoes and started hiking down the Cable route. It was only then that someone noticed. “Oh, my God,” this dude blurted out. “You’re hiking barefoot! You’re so tough!

But no matter how hot the chick is, say if I was standing at the base of El Cap, and she urged me to free solo some route, my answer would be “No way.” For example, I can’t tell you how many people over the years have pressured me to drink alcohol. We’ll be at a party, and somebody will taunt me, “Alex, just try this beer, it’s not gonna hurt you to take a sip.” I’ve never given in. Booze doesn’t interest me.

In a real sense, I performed the hard work of that free solo during the days leading up to it. Once I was on the climb, it was just a matter of executing. The.

There is no adrenaline rush. If I get an adrenaline rush, it means that something has gone horribly wrong.

I think there is a way to do things right to tread lightly on the world.

The diet for climbing all the time isn't really different from the diet for living. It's not like cardio sports where you're burning a bajillion calories every day.

A hangboard is a little piece of wood with edges, holes, and slopes. There's different strategies for different things - hanging, varying grips, adding weight. If I do a hard finger workout, I'm definitely sore.