The main purpose of a documentary is to inform and educate. By watching any kind of documentary, it gives off background information of a real-life event. Watching this documentary, it would make your hands sweat because of the intensity that is going on. Free Solo is an interesting and crazy documentary about a guy whose name is Alex Honnold, that climbs tall mountains without any gears. Alex is from Sacramento California, he started climbing in an indoor gym when he was 5 years old because he was an introverted kid. He has been climbing many times a week by the age of 10. Growing up, he began to rock climb to help him stay focused and it helped him to change his mindset. As he continued rock climbing, it started to become his favorite hobby to do. His career has built up because he accomplished free soloing so many mountains. 

Free Soloing is about Alex Honnold’s life, how he accomplished the most challenging moment of his life of climbing the tallest mountain of his career. As he goes around the world to find a mountain to climb, he saw this mountain called El Capitan. As he looks at the mountain, he was scared to climb it because it’s a huge mountain that is 3000 feet tall. He kept telling himself that he would do it every next year and month but was too afraid to do it. Alex gathers these Camara team that are expert mountain climbers to film him Free Soloing up El Capitan so there wouldn’t be any problems going on as he climbs. Alex met this guy whose name is Tommy Caldwell, he climbed El Capitan with rock climbing gears. They become best friends and would help each other out and hang out. They spent time together climbing El Capitan so Alex can find a way to Free solo up the mountain because that’s what he is training for. He would write down notes to memorize his routes and his problems to get to the next part up the mountain.

While Alex prepares himself to climb the mountain, he lets his film friends know that he is going to climb the mountain. As they schedule it, they began to set up everything and get prepared for whatever happened. On the day where Alex begins, he gathers the stuff that he’ll need such as Chalk, walkie-talkie climbing shoes, and his chalk bag. He starts climbing the mountain while it’s nighttime because of the weather, which would affect his climbing and probably lead him to his death. As he is 200-500 feet up the mountain, he uses his walkie-talkie to let his camera team know that he can’t do it. He was too nervous to climb the mountain because having them watching him would cause an effect on him, so he told his team that he is going to cancel it.

After all that had happened, he plans to climb the mountain again while no one is in his way of looking at him while he is climbing. As he starts climbing again, his team gets prepared setting up the cameras, and plans out if there are any problems in case something happens with Alex. Alex starts off going fast up the mountain with the route he planned to use and reaches 1500 feet up the mountain. He reaches the problem that he had with the route he chose to take and surpasses it by using his technique called the Karate Kick. He continues up the mountain fast, his Camera team was so shocked and scared because he was so high up the mountain. As Alex is about to reach the top of the mountain he was smiling on his way there because he’s about the achieve the moment of his lifetime. Right as he got to the top, everyone was so happy and crying because it was the craziest moment of their lives watching Alex reach the top and for Alex achieving what he wanted.

After finishing this documentary, I was so shocked and thought to myself how did he just do it, he pursued it with excellence. The message of this film is about the challenges that you’re gonna have to overcome in life. The decisions that you make to experience new things or not because if you don’t, nothing will change in your life. Alex says, “It’s about being a warrior, this is your path and you will pursue it with excellence. You face your fear because your goal demands it.”