Nevada Through the Eyes of Elite Climber Alex Honnold

Foreign.

You are listening to the Fromer Travel Show.

I'm your host, Pauline Fromer.

And if you're a person who thinks that documentaries are dull, you never saw the documentary Free Solo.

My guest was the person who was the star of that documentary.

You may have seen him recently scaling the outside of Taipei 101.

And you're going to see him in the very near future in a really interesting looking new travel series on outside tv.

It's called Get a Little out There with Alex Honnold.

I have Alex on the line.

Hey Alex, first of all, I'm so glad you're still alive and that I can talk to you.

I am too.

Thanks for having me.

Sure.

My daughter is a big climber and when I saw that you were doing a series on your home state of Nevada, which I hadn't realized was your home state, it all clicked into place because she's always told me that's an extraordinary state for climbing.

Right.

So can you talk a little bit about that and then we'll talk about the series?

Yeah, So I mean I live in Las Vegas, which is the best four season climbing in the country.

There's incredible climbing access all around.

But yeah, the state of Nevada has, I mean, has mountains everywhere.

So there's rock all over, there's climbing all over, there's mountain climbing.

It's.

Yeah, it's incredible.

And so is it the rock that makes it really incredible or is it the community?

Is it the.

Well, you don't use gear, so I can't say it's the gear.

No, no, I use gear.

I use gear, you know, in a few of the films and things.

Yeah, I'm known for not using gear.

But no, the thing is, is that, and actually this is what makes Nevada such an incredible resource for climbing is that it's the day in and day out, sort of like after work type climbing access.

That's, that's amazing.

Cause there are a lot of places in the US that are great climbing destinations.

Like say Yosemite in California.

You can go to Yosemite, but that's only really good for a few months a year.

Like during the, the main climbing season, then it's too hot or too cold or too snowy and, and it's not easy to live there full time.

Sure.

Whereas in Nevada there are a lot of places where you can live in a, in a city and yet still have incredible access to rock and incredible access to nature.

Just kind of incredible access to the outdoors more broadly.

Right, right.

So in this new series which will Be on outside tv.

You go beyond climbing.

But do you do any climbing in this?

Will people be able to watch you gripping their armchairs at home as you go up the face of a steep.

Whatever.

I mean, I'm not going to do a travel and adventure show without doing a little bit of climbing.

Yeah, there's, I think two of the episodes have full on rock climbing in them and then a couple of the other episodes have sort of mountain climbing where we summit peaks.

I mean, basically each episode focuses around some kind of outdoor adventure and I got to choose the outdoor adventures that I wanted to do.

So it's all things that I wanted to do around the state of Nevada.

But then each episode is also coupled with the, the, the cultural experiences, the sort of discovering the state.

And ultimately those are actually the things that I found personally more interesting which, which surprised me about making the show because I kind of went into it excited about doing these adventures in different places, like summoning different peaks and climbing certain walls and, and those were all cool.

But it was kind of meeting all the people and seeing the towns and basically like learning about the places is really what stuck with me more.

Huh.

Well, let's talk about the cultural side of the state.

What adventure culturally did you have that I think that you think will surprise people is available in Nevada?

I don't know.

I mean, that's the interesting question.

I mean, so like I went like mining for turquoise outside of Tonopah, Nevada and I went out with a man who labeled himself as a farm to table miner.

Like he would, basically he could do the whole operation from finding, you know, basically from starting a mind of extracting the gems to polish him, to eventually selling them.

I mean, it's just interesting.

I felt like everyone I met was a real craftsperson or like an artisan in some way where they had some kind of particular skill.

I mean, because you don't wind up living in the middle of nowhere in Nevada for no reason, you know, like most people are there in the same way.

Like, you know, I've traveled in Alaska before for climate expeditions and when you meet people up there, you're always like, oh, like everyone has an interesting story around them.

And I felt like as I, as I toured around rural Nevada, I was like, oh, everybody has a story.

Everybody has an interesting skill set or like they have something that has brought them to this place.

Sure.

Before we leave the guy, does he call himself a rockhound?

I've heard that term.

He didn't use that when I was talking to him.

I Mean, I was struck by the farm to table miner because I was like, oh.

To me, it gave a really clear image of basically him driving out into the middle of the desert that looks like nothing, some mountainside, and then basically blowing it up and then mining it and like finding pieces of rock and then polishing them.

And while I was with them, I mean, I found some chunks of turquoise that.

That over the course of a couple episodes, I wound up turning into this beautiful silver necklace for my.

For my wife that I gave her that I thought was so cool.

You know, it's like I just hadn't seen people work with their hands like that and like manipulate just like to.

To have a craft, to have a skill.

I was like, oh, it's.

It's something that you don't see very often in.

In the modern world, I don't think.

Yeah.

Do you happen to know is obviously you had a film crew with you.

You had him picked out to talk to because he was an interesting guy.

Are these types of rock hunting adventures open to just average folks?

Could somebody.

Yeah, you can just go look for turquoise.

And there are a lot of things like that in Nevada.

It's like when this is one of the things I love about Nevada is that a lot of the opportunity is just so open and wild.

Like, if you want to go have an adventure, you want to go do a thing, you just drive out and do the thing.

You know, it's like there aren't that many rules and there aren't that many people.

And it's like, it's pretty.

You know, it's like you get a little out there.

It's like you just go out and do that.

So you said this guy went out and he just exploded.

Did he own the.

No, no, no.

I'm.

Yeah, that's.

That's.

I'm sure it's all like lease, you know, I'm sure there's a whole process to it.

But I'm saying that like, from a.

From a lay person like myself that doesn't know anything about it, it looks like you just drive it in the middle of nowhere on a mountainside.

And then it's just him with like a giant backhoe and, you know, some simple explosives, and he's just mining and you're kind of like, oh.

It made me realize that, you know, I've always thought of mining is like a big sort of industrial scale, you think, like mountaintop removal for coal and where it's like insane scale.

I didn't realize that there were sort of like, mom and Pops mining operations, you know, like, sort of artisanal.

Like, basically just dudes out looking for gold.

You know, things like that, where you're kind of like, okay.

Like, I didn't realize that there was, like, a whole small scale to that, but.

No, I didn't realize that either.

That's.

And that's just kind of one craft.

I mean, in another community, you know, I met somebody who's, like, silversmithing, but basically he's, like, doing really fine engraving work on silver.

And it's like, you just don't often see people working with their hands like that.

And, like, really having devoted their entire life to mastering a skill.

And so, you know, it's like each episode of the show, we're doing these outdoor adventures, and I'm like, they're.

They're fun, they're cool, and they're certainly a beautiful way to see the state.

But then you meet these people, and you're kind of like, oh, it's just so, so interesting.

You know, it's so different to me.

Right, right.

And looking at the previews for the series, I got the feeling that Nevada is as weird as Florida.

I mean, you have these really fascinating museums and iconic sites, like the Forest of Cars.

The Car Forest, yeah, totally.

And the Clown Motel.

And then there's an ET or an extraterrestrial museum.

Can you tell us a little bit about those?

Yeah.

You know, it's funny you say that.

As weird as Florida.

The thing is, though, I think that Nevada is sort of weird in a.

In a quirky, sort of wholesome way.

I think of some other places, like, say Florida is kind of weird in an unwholesome way.

You know, you're kind of like.

It's like.

It's, like, kind of seedy.

You know, Nevada is like.

I don't know.

I mean, is that fair?

I'm like.

I think of Florida.

I don't think so, because, I mean, to me, I think of Nevada as being the home of Las Vegas.

And there's some pretty seedy parts of Las Vegas.

Yeah.

It's funny because when you live here and you basically spend all your time doing outdoor recreation, like, actually, so I live kind of on the edge of town, and it snowed last night, and so the mountains are covered in snow, and it, like.

It looks like the Rockies.

It's like these epic mountains that are covered in snow.

It's like, lightly snowing right now on the edge of Las Vegas.

And so that.

Yeah, people think of it as, like, the seedy Casinos.

But you're kind of like, man, there are jagged mountains all around it with rock climbing everywhere.

It's like.

I mean, the outdoor recreation is incredible.

Yeah.

No, my.

My daughter, when she goes.

I think she goes to Red Rock usually.

Yeah, that's in one of the episodes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, good.

All right, so tell us about.

Tell us about the car forest.

What is that?

Well, so that's something that I had seen driving north on the 95.

You know, obviously, I've driven around Nevada my whole life because, like, I've traveled the west quite a lot.

I lived in my van for a long time rock climbing.

And so, you know, I've, like, driven the 95, the highway.

And you're like, that's a weird thing.

Like, what's that all about?

What I didn't realize.

So it's a bunch of cars, like old cars, basically just speared into the desert.

Like, some of them are held up on, you know, like, there's some buses and things that are sticking straight up out of the desert.

Vertically.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, I climbed both of those just out of principle because I was like,

this is kind of fun.

But.

But.

So I always thought it was sort of a monument to the cars themselves, but actually, as it turns out, the cars are just a canvas for a graffiti artist.

People can come and just paint or draw or do whatever they want on.

On the cars.

And so.

So there's all kinds of intricate art, and then other people just draw over it and keep.

You know, it's basically just like a limitless canvas for anybody who's interested.

So it's gonna look different every time you go there.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And actually, so the International Car Forest thing is like kind of one of the.

I had several experiences like this while making the show, but it was places that I'd kind of known about my whole life, but it never actually stopped in on because I was kind of like, that seems weird.

And then I visited it, and I was like, you know what?

Now that I know what this is, I'm gonna stop here with my family because I think my kids.

I have two small daughters, and they actually make an appearance in one of the episodes because we go rafting together in the Black Canyon below the.

Below the Hoover Dam.

But, you know, the Car Forest, I was like, I'm going to take my kids here because they just think.

They think it's so cool, you know, it's like, so different.

It's so unusual.

It's like, where are you ever going to see that?

And again, it's spray paint.

Would they be allowed to.

Yeah, they'd be allowed to do whatever.

I mean, this is the thing with Nevada is, like, there's no entrance booth.

There's no line.

There's no people.

You literally just drive in and you do whatever you want.

Like, if you want to climb on the cars, you climb on the cars.

If you want to spray paint the cars, you spray paint the cars.

But there's no.

There's no rules around it.

And I mean, to me, that's kind of what I love about Nevada.

It's like, if you want to have an adventure, you have an adventure.

Yeah.

Very cool.

You also go to a museum about extraterrestrials, and I saw a little clip where you say that you don't believe in them.

Do you now, after visiting that museum and meeting the people, or do you just think they're all a little wacky?

No, I definitely don't personally believe in extraterrestrials the way they're presented.

But I will actually say that after visiting the museum, and it did gave me a better appreciation of.

Because the museum was kind of organized almost like by species, by, like, type of sightings, you know, and so it sort of like, broken into categories of, like, many people claim to see these types of aliens or these type.

And it kind of made more sense of the whole cultural phenomenon of, like, you know, UFO sightings and things, because when you group them all into sort of different types of sightings, you're like, okay, you know, I don't know.

Basically, like, the whole thing made slightly more sense to me.

I thought it was interesting.

Like, that was another.

That was another example where I was like, you know, I was like, do I care about an extraterrestrial museum?

But then after I went, I was like, you know, it's cooler than I thought.

And I did learn some stuff, and it was, like, kind of.

Kind of neat.

Yeah.

I gotta say, I was.

Very many years ago, I wrote a guidebook to Las Vegas, and I was really surprised by the quality of the museums there.

Like, the Nuclear Testing Museum, I think, is one of the best history museums in the United States.

So is the.

Have you been to the Mafia Museum?

Mob Museum?

No.

I've heard about it.

Totally.

Oh, my God.

It'll blow your mind.

It'll make you think that everybody's in the mob.

If you could look at American history through the lens of the mob, it's as spooky as the ET Museum.

So the Clown Motel, did they make you stay there?

That looked a little scary to me.

I didn't stay there.

Definitely not scary.

I mean, it's just another thing where you're like, oh, it's so weird.

It's so quirky.

There's a cemetery next to it.

There's all kinds.

And you're like, is this a real cemetery?

You're like, I don't know.

But it's.

It's just.

No, it's just another, like, super quirky Nevada thing.

And that's another thing that I've driven past so many times in my life and always been like, that's weird.

It never stopped.

And then you stop, and it turns out it's even weirder than expected.

And yet.

And yet, you know, like, it's.

It's fine.

I mean, I was surprised by how many people were there for the clown museum.

Like, of all the other people, there are, like, big clown aficionados who, like, come from all over the country because they're into clowns.

And I was like, this is so weird.

Wow.

Do people dress like clowns to stay there?

No, I didn't see any, thankfully, but no.

In some ways, though, it makes sense that, like, with some of these small towns and, like, rural communities and stuff, it feels like some folks have just embraced whatever the sort of fringe thing is, because it's like, you got to differentiate somehow.

You know what I mean?

Like, if you just have a little motel in the middle of nowhere on this desolate highway, you're kind of like, oh, you might as well make it a thing and, you know, like, draw people in.

And I feel like some.

Some of these towns have definitely done a good job of.

Of using what they have, you know what I mean?

Like.

Like making it interesting.

Well, speaking of these little towns, I mean, some of them are the sites of pretty fascinating history, and sometimes you can see that.

Did you cover the history of Nevada in the show at all?

Yeah, a little bit.

Just because a few of the small towns that we visited were once the biggest town towns in the state.

I mean, one of the things that I really got a kick out of, you know, you were talking about the International Car Forest.

That's in the town of Goldfield.

And Goldfield currently has a population 250 or something, but at one time was the biggest town in Nevada.

It was like a booming.

You know, it's Goldfield.

It's like giant mining claims.

And.

And they had a little thing that.

That back in the day, Las Vegas was just a train station with a sign that said, welcome to Las Vegas.

The Gateway to Goldfield.

You know, it's like people just stopped in Vegas to get off the train to go to Goldfield because Goldfield is the place.

Place to be.

And it's like, now you go to Goldfield and you see a couple burrows, you see a saloon.

It's like, you know, it's 250 people.

It's just such a different.

Yeah, so we covered that history a little bit.

Just because it's such an interesting.

It's an interesting aspect of the.

Yeah.

Did you do any cowboy stuff or.

Not really.

We did some cowboy poetry in Elko.

So we.

We did.

Covered cowboy culture a little bit.

And I was talking about the silver engraving.

I mean, that's kind of cowboy culture a little bit.

Because that's like, for bits and spurs or whatever.

It's like for the stuff on horses.

We didn't do any writing, but.

But I don't know.

Cowboy poetry.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know what that is.

You gotta watch episode five, I think is in.

Okay.

All right.

So is it all to the rhythm of clopping horses or.

No, no, it's more.

It's more like spoken word poetry with, like a western motif, you know, like Western culture poetry.

Yeah.

That's very cool.

But we had a fellow with us who was.

Who is a western poet.

And.

And exactly.

This is another thing where I was like, I'd never heard of it, didn't know anything about it.

And then I learned a bit about it, and I'm like, you know, kind of cool.

It's just fun to learn about all these new things.

Yeah.

What will you go back to?

Will you be going back to seeing spoken word poetry or you said you're gonna go back to the tree forest or the car forest with your kids.

What really drew you to come back?

Do you think that's interesting?

I mean, I actually think that a lot of the place, like the Clown Motel.

Don't know if I need to go back.

But a lot of it is more about how I'll see the state differently, traveling through it, you know, like, having learned more about mining, having learned more about the history of some of these places.

I think it's more that now, as I pass through it, I'll understand it a little bit better, and I'll understand these communities a little bit better.

And so.

And it definitely has made me much more interested in visiting some of these off the beaten path kind of places.

Know, like taking the more rural highways and just like visiting some of these small towns, because you just see how much, you know, rich culture there is in these towns.

Yeah, yeah, Very interesting.

All right, before I let you go, you said you had a lot of outdoor adventures that weren't climbing.

Did any of them get you out of your comfort zone?

You seem like a person who doesn't get scared easily.

Were any of them a little bit, I don't know, raise your heart rate?

Well, actually, they all, in their own ways, wound up being a little more adventurous than we expected.

Like, we filmed the.

The show in the fall, and as it turns out, it was kind of shoulder season.

And so two of the mountains that we climbed wound up being quite snowy and very windy.

And one of them.

One of them I climbed with a longtime friend and climbing partner of mine who I'd been on an expedition to Antarctica with in the past.

And so the two of us had climbed first ascents in Antarctica together.

And we were climbing this.

This peak in Nevada.

It was howling wind is in a Great Basin national park, and it was like ripping wind, freezing cold, snowing.

And we were like, you know, this.

This doesn't feel that different than going mountain climbing in Antarctica.

We're sort of like, oh, this is kind of extreme, you know, and so, like, I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't that cold, but it.

It definitely felt pretty.

It felt kind of full on.

We were like, wow, this is.

This is real.

And I think that was.

That was a recurring theme throughout the series for me, was that you just go out and, like, climb these mountains, do these things, and you're like, you know, it's kind of more adventurous than we expected.

Yeah.

Well, it sounds like it'll be a really fun show.

If people want to watch it, do they have to see it on TV or will it also be streaming?

I mean, what's the best way to watch it?

I'm actually not sure.

I mean, it's on outside tv, and then I think it's going to be online as well.

All right, well, I can't wait to see it.

Thank you so much, Alex.

It's been such a pleasure speaking with you.

Yeah, thank you.

Foreign.

Before I end this week's podcast, I wanted to talk about some crazy things that are happening in travel.

We've had a lot of travel disruptions in the past week, from storms on the east coast to unrest in Mexico.

In fact, I am taping this from Fort Lauderdale.

I got snowed in.

Well, I wasn't really snowed in.

New York was snowed in.

I was in Chicago.

So I couldn't get back to New York.

And I knew that I'd have to fly from Chicago to New York and then again from New York to Fort Lauderdale later in the week.

So when I got a notice from JetBlue saying that my flight might be effective, I thought, oh, my goodness, why even risk this?

So I flew directly to Fort Lauderdale, and poor me, I'm spending some time in the sun before I head back to snowy New York City.

I thought I was just going to be stranded for several days, and that's because I did everything wrong.

And I often say that it's my job as a travel writer to do everything wrong so that I can learn from it and then give advice to you, dear listener, and also dear readers.

This time I had the pleasure and the luck of being surrounded by some of the smartest people in travel.

And so when we all got stranded, I turned to Peter Greenberg and Samantha Brown and Angel Castellano, and I looked at them and asked them what they were doing.

And so some of these tips come from them, some come from my mistakes and also long, long history as a traveller.

So when things go really wrong and it looks like you're not going to be able to travel as planned because of disruptions, here are a couple of things you need to do.

The first thing is move fast.

In the case of the storms on the East Coast, a huge percentage, I want to say 80% of the flights in the United States were canceled.

That may be high.

I'm not sure if that's the actual percentage, but it was close to that.

And so I had a lot of competition.

I had in the back of my mind that once the airline alerted me that I had the possibility of changing my flight, that I should do it.

But I really wanted to get home on Sunday night, so I decided to risk it.

Stupid, stupid mistake.

By the time I tried to rebook myself on a flight, all of my fellow strandees were getting out Monday.

The earliest flight I could find was Wednesday, at least with my original carrier, which was United.

So I could have canceled and then rebooked a flight earlier on another carrier, but the price was going to be too, too high.

If I had been at the airport, the smart thing to do would have been to get online to speak to somebody at the counter, but at the same time get on my phone both texting and calling.

And here's a little tip.

Sometimes if you call the Spanish language line, the wait is a bit shorter and they will talk to you in English, okay?

So if you are stupid like me, you don't move right away.

What do you do?

Well, when you're looking for a flight, the key thing you need to know is where is that flight coming from?

If it's coming from an area that's totally snowed in, you may not get on that flight.

That flight that you've booked may not get to you or may be severely delayed.

So you can look at often airline apps, or there's a really good app called Flighty that's free to download and it will tell you where the planes are flying from.

So you want that plane to be flying from a nice, sunny, untroubled area so that it will get to you.

When you need to fly back to perhaps the troubled gateway you're going to as well.

You have to think outside the box.

You have to think, well, I was going to fly, but maybe I could fly to a destination where right outside the storm zone and then take a train or drive.

Obviously you don't want to be driving during a blizzard, but it kind of killed me because my flight probably would have landed in New York before the high winds and the meat of the storm arrived in New York City, but it was canceled.

If I had flown to somewhere that was right outside that zone, probably could have driven in safely.

What if it's another type of problem?

What if it's like cartels burning cars in the streets as we saw in Mexico?

For that type of situation, I would say whenever you're going outside of the United States, sign up with the State Department.

Sign up for their step program.

S T E P. It's an acronym.

And I can't for the life of me remember what it stands for.

But basically what it does is if something goes wrong in the destination you're in, our government knows to look for us and to reach out and to offer advice and maybe help.

If you don't sign up for it, they may not know that you're there.

So signing up for the step program is really important.

Also, knowing what the number is for emergencies.

Obviously it's 911 in the United States, but that's not a universal number.

So you want to know that number.

It's in every farmer's guidebook.

That's a number you should know before you go.

And also make sure that your airline has direct contact information for you.

Sometimes if you book through a third party, your airline may not reach out to you if they have to shift the schedule.

Okay, enough talk of doom and gloom.

One last housekeeping note.

I will be appearing at the Los Angeles Travel and Adventure show, which this year is in Long Beach, California.

I'm speaking pretty late on Saturday.

I'm speaking at 3:30pm so get there late in the day.

Don't get there when the door is open because you'll run out of things to see and do before I talk.

So get there late in the day on Saturday.

On Sunday, I'm speaking a little bit earlier.

I'm speaking 2pm on Sunday and you can get in free if you use the code fromersvip.

F R O M M E R S V I P. When you go to travelshows.com and you book your ticket.

One of the joys for me of doing these shows is meeting you all.

I tend to hang out at the bookstore booth and answer questions and chat with people most of the day.

So, you know, please don't be shy, come up.

I'd love to meet you, love to talk travel.

And that's it.

All right, thank you so much as always for listening to the Fromers Travel show.

If you like the show, show us your love by leaving a five star rating at Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you hear the show.

That's it for this week's show.

As always, I thank you so much for listening.

And to those who are traveling, may I wish you a hearty bon voyage.

Sour candy on the table Lazy afternoons in your sweatpants Watching cable well it feels so far away all the channels seem the same Trying to remember all the songs we like to play Cause those lazy afternoons don't come so far frequently these days oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever coming home?

I like you with your sour candy in the boothouse on the lake oh but I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate, I hate the way it tastes.

I can't get you off of my mind Looking out the window where we spend so much of our time Cause I miss the way about

But I

guess you can can't control those damn cards with dam babe I know the both of us are happy when we're free but would it be so hard to find your freedom here with me?

Oh it's been so long and I cannot help but wonder Are you ever jumping home like you with this hour candy in the boat house on the lake But I hate.