Alex Honnold is a professional rock climber whose audacious free-solo ascents of America's biggest cliffs have made him one of the world's most recognized climbers.

Why you should listen

A gifted but hard-working athlete, Honnold is known as much for his humble, self-effacing attitude as he is for the dizzyingly tall cliffs he has climbed without a rope to protect him if he falls. Honnold has been profiled by 60 Minutes and the New York Times, featured on the cover of National Geographic, appeared in international television commercials and starred in numerous adventure films, including the Emmy-nominated Alone on the Wall. He is the subject of the documentary feature Free Solo, which was released by National Geographic Documentary Films.

Honnold is the founder of the Honnold Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes solar energy access worldwide. To this day, he maintains his simple "dirtbag-climber" existence, living out of his van, donating a significant portion of his income to the Honnold Foundation and traveling the world in search of the next great vertical adventure.

Alex Honnold’s TED talk

More news and ideas from Alex Honnold

Live from TED2018

Wow. Just wow. Notes from Session 7 of TED2018

April 13, 2018

What we need sometimes is a little awe, a little wonder. This session of TED Talks was designed to provoke an exquisite human emotion: the sense that the world is bigger and stranger than you’d known. Without further ado, wow. A blueprint for how humans and machines can coexist. American researchers are leading AI discoveries, […]

Continue reading