31-year-old Alex Honnold has just made himself one of the greatest mountain climbers in history, after he recently completed the 4-hour ascent up the 900-meter high El Capitan granite wall in Yosemite National Park in California, with no ropes or safety harness.

Photo credited to Jimmy Chin

Photo credited to Jimmy Chin

As the first person to pull off the feat, Honnold knew better than anyone else about the difficulty of the challenge, “you look up and go, ‘that’s a f****** big wall,” he told National Geographic. “It’s like, pretty crazy.”

Honnold has been dreaming about scaling the mighty wall without any safety gear for eight years, and began preparing for the daring ascent two years ago.

He scaled the route countless times, rehearsing it while climbing with protective gear and memorising each hole he had to grab and the way he had to position his body until he felt comfortable enough to attempt the “free solo” climb.

With a bag of chalk powder to improve his grip on the slippery granite, the most challenging part for him was to overcome the fear of death. His achievement even attracted the attention of scientists, who studied his brain to see how it copes with fear and if it is different than the average human’s, according to a report by National Geographic.

VCG Photo

Honnold, hailing from North Carolina, began practicing indoor rock climbing at age 11. He dropped out of the University of California Berkeley to conquer major summits around the world. Bu the Saturday climb, he said, was the peak of his 20-year climbing career.

VCG Photo

VCG Photo

VCG Photos

VCG Photo