Before Free Solo (Full Episode) | Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin

Twenty-two minutes of preparation, and that is the reason to watch it rather than a reason to skip. This episode of National Geographic's Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin follows Alex Honnold pursuing the idea of soloing very large walls in Morocco, and it sits in the years around his El Capitan solo.

This is for climbers interested in how a top soloist approaches line choice, exposure and risk assessment on remote walls. Scouting and route reading take most of the runtime, and Chin, who had the camera for the Oscar-winning film, uses footage that never made it there. Skip it if you want a named route, a grade or an extended climbing sequence. The episode privileges decision making over movement, and it is tightly focused on that.

What works is the field preparation. Watching Honnold decide what he will and will not solo, on rock he does not know, is closer to the real discipline than the send footage most people associate with him. What it gets wrong is that the episode assumes you have seen Free Solo. Without that, the Morocco trip floats without an anchor.

El Sendero Luminoso is the counterpart: six minutes of Honnold actually soloing a 1,500-foot limestone wall in Mexico, no preparation shown. Watch this one to see the thinking. Watch that one to see what the thinking is for.