In The North Face documentary about that climb, his cameraman Cedar Wright says: “The sport of free-soloing is easy to understand. He went up this giant face without a rope. If he falls, he dies.”

Thankfully, Honnold has yet to put a foot wrong on a serious free-solo attempt. For the El Capitan climb he trained meticulously, familiarising himself with the route meticulously and practising in various locations around the world over the past few years.

“The sport of free-soloing is easy to understand. He went up this giant face without a rope. If he falls, he dies.”

He told National Geographic: “Years ago, when I first mentally mapped out what it would mean to free solo Freerider, there were half a dozen of pitches where I was like, ‘Oh that’s a scary move and that’s a really scary sequence. There were so many little sections where I thought ‘Ughh—cringe.’ But in the years since, I’ve pushed my comfort zone and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fell within the realm of the possible.”

He pulled out of a previous attempt at the climb last November after an hour because he felt the conditions weren’t right. But having completed a practise climb and rapelled down freerider a few days before to make sure everything was good to go, Alex Honnold decided that Saturday was the day.