Free Solo
2018 film by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Why this is trending
Interest in “Free Solo” spiked on Wikipedia on 2026-07-08.
Categorised under Entertainment, this article fits a familiar pattern. Entertainment topics frequently surge on Wikipedia following major media events, premieres, or unexpected celebrity developments.
GlyphSignal tracks these patterns daily, turning raw Wikipedia traffic data into a curated feed of what the world is curious about. Every spike tells a story.
Key Takeaways
- Free Solo is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform the first-ever free solo climb of a route on El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park in California, in June 2017.
- It was released in the United States on September 28, 2018, and grossed over $28 million at the worldwide box office.
- Synopsis Climber Alex Honnold has been dreaming of free-soloing the 3,000 feet (900 m) rock wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a feat no one has performed.
- Freerider is graded at 5.
- Honnold is a shy loner who has lived and traveled alone in his van for several years, but recently he is sometimes joined by his new girlfriend Sanni McCandless.
Source note: This page combines GlyphSignal analysis with attributed reference material from Wikipedia. GlyphSignal adds trend context, traffic history, categorization, and editorial interpretation. See how we build these pages.
Source summary
WikipediaFree Solo is a 2018 American documentary film directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin that profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform the first-ever free solo climb of a route on El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park in California, in June 2017.
The film premiered at the 45th Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2018, and also screened at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award in the Documentaries category. It was released in the United States on September 28, 2018, and grossed over $28 million at the worldwide box office. Free Solo received acclaim from critics and numerous accolades, including winning Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards.
Climber Alex Honnold has been dreaming of free-soloing the 3,000 feet (900 m) rock wall of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a feat no one has performed. His choice of big wall climbing route on El Capitan is called Freerider, a route that was created by Alexander Huber in 1998, and which Honnold has completed several times with protection equipment. Freerider is graded at 5.13a (7c+) in difficulty, and no climber has ever completed a big-wall free solo at such a grade of difficulty in rock climbing history.
Content sourced from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0
