1/25/2024 0 Comments Alex honnold half domeWolownick’s book may be a motivational tract, but it’s not without nuance. New museum shows how they did itĪ modest building outside the park holds the history of Yosemite’s climbing greats Travel & Experiences Yosemite’s early climbers made their own gear for dangerous ascents. Wolownick writes of the desolation of suburbia and feeling trapped in an unhappy marriage though thankful her husband was more steady, and even joyful, in the presence of their two children. It wasn’t clear her story would end up this way. The long-time French (and Spanish and Italian and English-as-a-second-language) teacher clearly tries to live that aphorism, as evidenced by her scaling of parts of Half Dome, Cathedral Peak and other intimidating rock monuments, at an age when many people are challenged by a single downward-facing-dog pose. I say, ‘Just try it! Try it! You never know what might happen.’ ” A homemade sign in French in her home office proclaims: “ Vouloir, c’est pouvoir.” Rough translation: To want something, is to be able to do it. “Once you start and decide you want to do something, it can be powerful. “The most important decision is to start,” Wolownick said. (There’s also a second wedding ceremony for the couple coming in early November.) But, perhaps most importantly, she’s here to remind others to get off their duffs and out into the world, no matter their ages. And she has the arrival of her first grandchild - from Alex and daughter-in-law Sanni McCandless - to look forward to in February. She’s planning to write her next book on how to raise children to be environmentally attuned. Wolownick had only a cameo role in “Free Solo.” Not revealed in the film was that Honnold’s mother was the author of more than half a dozen books, a one-time community orchestra conductor and, she believes, the source of the stubbornness gene that helped make her son the most acclaimed climber in history. “I used to look at those tiny dots going up that granite wall and wonder what they saw up there and what they felt up there. “It’s all been an amazing experience, one I never could have dreamed up for myself,” said Wolownick, during a recent workout at Pipeworks, a climbing gym not far from her home in suburban Sacramento. If you run across her there, she might sell you a copy of “The Sharp End of Life: A Mother’s Story,” her 2019 memoir, and tell you how lucky she has been. She’s now in demand as a public speaker, serves as a senior advisor to La Sportiva outdoor wear and draws a small retinue of fellow climbers and admirers when she visits Yosemite Valley. Her famous son and occasional climbing partner, the 36-year-old Honnold, has helped amplify the attention. She was featured in USA Today after her birthday climb, profiled this week in the New York Times, as part of a series about people who pursue their dreams on their own terms, and soon will be the focus of the “70 Over 70” podcast, about late-in-life high achievers. But Wolownick’s attraction to Yosemite’s renowned “big walls,” including her 70th birthday jaunt up “El Cap” in September, has given her a special kind of celebrity. Other seniors - such as Japan’s Yuichiro Miura, who climbed Mount Everest at ages 70, 75 and 80 - have helped redefine what’s athletically possible for those in their golden years. It all started in early 2009, when Wolownick decided she had to try climbing if she ever really wanted to get to know her son. The one-time “lumpy old mom,” as she called herself, first set that record four years ago and has continued to finesse her way up several other fabled rock towers, emerging as something of an icon in Yosemite Valley’s climbing community. Yet even before the Academy Award-winning film provided a boost to a once-fringe sport, Honnold had inspired one important greenhorn to get up from her desk and out onto the rocks: his 58-year-old mother, who had never explored her daredevil side during a life as a writer, musician, artist and foreign language teacher.Ī dozen years after her son helped propel her renaissance, Dierdre Wolownick last month scaled the face of El Capitan on her 70th birthday, becoming the oldest woman to conquer the 3,000-foot-high expanse of granite that is climbing’s Mt. The film and Honnold’s quiet, self-effacing heroism helped transform climbing into a mainstream sport, one featured in the 2020 Olympics. The 2018 documentary “Free Solo” celebrates a wide-eyed, shaggy-haired ectomorph named Alex Honnold as he makes history - climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan without ropes or other safety gear.
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