Free Soloing an Unknown Mountain

by

Free Soloing an Unknown Mountain (June 8, 2026)

BY ROB BEELER

People who climb a thousand feet of rock with no rope are among the most prepared humans alive. Alex Honnold went up El Capitan with nothing but chalk because he had already rehearsed every hold a hundred times, until the rope became a thing he no longer needed. The preparation was the safety equipment.

We’re free soloing too, but our wall has a cruelty Honnold never faced. Not only have we never climbed it before, it also keeps changing shape while we’re on it. And you can’t rehearse holds that don’t exist yet. 

This came up on a call with pubs this week, simply to discuss how everyone was feeling with everyone going on: “I struggle with what we can actually do.” 

How do you prepare for a climb when you can’t see the route?

Not with a step-by-step plan. A plan is a list of moves, and it only works if the wall stays put. The first time a hold crumbles, your plan is just directions to a place that’s gone.

Anthony Hitchings at the Financial Times carries something better: a model. Instead of a planned sequence of moves, he operates from a working theory of how his wall behaves. He feeds it his real numbers, and it tells him where the holds are. When the world shifts, he doesn’t tear up a plan. He changes an input, and the model redraws the route. 

A plan tells you the moves. A model tells you how to find new ones when the wall moves first. Anthony will share his approach tomorrow at Navigator London. 

Rory Latham at WPP is also speaking at Navigator London, and I say he has more than a model. He has a mission. If a model is an instrument, a mission is a compass, and on a mountain you’ve never climbed, a compass beats a map every time. 

Rory’s points are one way: get real information into the hands of brands so money moves with trust rather than suspicion, and fix the unglamorous plumbing instead of blowing it all up. When the wall throws him something he’s never seen, he doesn’t freeze hunting for the missing step. The mission tells him which way to reach.

So that’s the climb: no rope, a face nobody has mapped, and the only fatal move is freezing.

You don’t survive it with a memorized sequence. You survive it with an instrument or a compass, something that adapts when the rock does. Scratch developing a playbook unless it is written in pencil.

One last thing, because free soloing is the loneliest picture in all of sport. One person, one wall, nothing else. But climbers are a famously tight tribe, and they trade something they call beta, the hard-won knowledge of how a route actually goes. 

You climb it alone, but you never have to figure it out alone. 

That’s what this community is for.

PS. Don’t look down.

Navigator London is officially sold out! But as we pivot our attention to the rising temperatures of the summer months (and hopefully some well-deserved time off for many of you), don’t forget to start making your plans for the fall.


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