Plant Chat: Alex Honnold
It is such an honor to have Alex Honnold, professional adventure rock climber and plant-based enthusiast, on my blog today! Alex is an athlete whose audacious free-solo ascents of America’s biggest cliffs have made him one of the most recognized and followed climbers in the world. A gifted but hard-working athlete, Alex is distinguished for his uncanny ability to control his fear while scaling cliffs of dizzying heights without a rope to protect him if he falls. His humble, self-effacing attitude toward such extreme risk has earned him the nickname Alex “No Big Deal” Honnold.
Though Alex often downplays his achievements, his rope-less climbs have attracted the attention of broad and stunned audience. He 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.” Alex is sponsored by The North Face, Black Diamond, La Sportiva, and Goal Zero, and is the founder of the Honnold Foundation, an environmental non-profit. And to this day, he maintains his simple “dirtbag-climber” existence, living out of his van and traveling the world in search of the next great vertical adventure.
You can follow Alex on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and you can order his latest book, Alone on the Wall, here.
It was so fun having Alex on the blog, answering some in-depth questions about his life on the wall and plant-based inspiration. Read on!
What made you interested in plant-based diets, and why did you make the switch to become a vegetarian?
My sister has been vegan for something like a decade and an ex-girlfriend was vegetarian and then vegan throughout our multiyear relationship so I’ve definitely been exposed to the ideas for a long time. But the main thing that finally drove me to give up eating meat was learning more about the impact that meat consumption has on the planet. A few years ago I started the Honnold Foundation as an attempt to do something positive for the environment – I realized that the easiest place to start was with my own diet. And I did feel better once I stopped eating meat, though that might just be because I eat more fruits and vegetables now. But basically giving up meat was the simplest and healthiest way for me to do something positive for the world.
You are an avid rock climber! What fascinates you about this particular sport?
Haha, avid is one way to put it. I’ve basically been climbing full time for 20 years; it’s pretty much the only thing I’ve ever really done. I suppose at the heart of it is just a love for the movement of climbing. I like swinging around and using my body and eventually getting to the top of things. And now as a professional climber I enjoy the opportunities to travel and interact with the natural world.
How did you get started with rock climbing?
Being a vegetarian, how do you fuel your sport with plant-based foods?
What are some particular foods you like to take with you when you climb?
On big climbs, like the spires I’ve just been climbing in Patagonia, I take a lot of processed bars and nut butters and things like that. Foods that are easy to carry and calorically dense. But on a normal day of climbing at a crag, somewhere that you lower back to the ground after each climb and access isn’t as big an issue, I try to take normal foods like fruits and nuts and bread. I don’t really cook much. I’ve lived in a van for the last 9 years so most of my cooking is adapted to the lack of a sink to clean up with – I do everything in one pot and try to keep things simple.