Interview: Tommy Caldwell Talks His and Honnold’s New El Cap Free Route

“It’s some of the sickest climbing in existence on Earth, I’m certain of that,” Caldwell says.

Tommy Caldwell is currently hanging in Tahoe with the kiddos. Returning to the phone after a brief interruption in our interview as he talks to one of his kids, he says, “Sorry about that. I’m on Dad Duty now.”

But a week ago, he was on El Cap duty. Along with Alex Honnold, Caldwell spent four days freeing a new route they had scoped, cleaned and equipped along with Kevin Jorgeson and photographer Austin Siadak.

Honnold and Caldwell’s new line combines parts of several other routes—notably Leo Houlding’s 2000 route up to El Cap Tower, Passage to Freedom—with many brand new free pitches.

Main photo: Austin Siadak

Read the the full interview on rockandice.com

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@tommycaldwell just posted about our recent journey up El Cap so I figured I’d join in. We climbed a new free line that follows @leo_houlding’s old route Passage to Freedom and continues 20 more pitches to the top. Incredible 5.13+ corners up high. @austin_siadak spent 4 days on the wall with us documenting and helping with all the bigwall toil. An incredible experience which reminded me that Tommy really is the best big wall climber in the world and that I still have a lot to learn. Nothing like El Cap to humble you…

A post shared by Alex Honnold (@alexhonnold) on Nov 5, 2019 at 5:42pm PST