Why extreme sports fanatics like Alex Honnold do what they do – new National Geographic series goes inside their minds
- ‘Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin’ looks at why people like rock climber Alex Honnold and snowboarder Travis Rice take the risks they do
- In other episodes you can watch surfer Justine Dupont get almost wiped out in Hawaii, and explorer Sarah McNair-Landry get hunted by a predator in the Arctic
The impetus behind Edge of the Unknown with Jimmy Chin, a new 10-part National Geographic series, came from the fascination generated by Free Solo, the gripping 2018 documentary that showcases pro rock climber Alex Honnold’s rope-free climb of a 900-metre (3,000-foot) vertical rock face at Yosemite National Park.
“One of the things that happened after we made Free Solo was a lot of people wanted to know the story behind the story,” said Jimmy Chin, who executive-produced Free Solo and Edge of the Unknown alongside his wife and production partner, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, and is himself an avid mountain climber.
“We were being asked a lot of questions about risks, and why people do these things. In a way, this show was a response to those questions, and these were a lot of the stories and athletes that had inspired me.”
Edge of the Unknown is one of those action documentaries that have a compelling narrative and a dramatic storytelling voice. Other recent examples include The Rescue (also helmed by Chin and Vasarhelyi), about the rescue of 12 boys and their soccer coach from a flooded cave in Thailand, and Fire of Love, a 2022 documentary about two volcano explorers who died doing the thing they loved.
In creating Edge of the Unknown, Chin and Vasarhelyi wanted to highlight individuals who risk it all to indulge in sports that could potentially kill them.
One episode, “Riding the Avalanche”, focuses on snowboarder Travis Rice and the avalanche that nearly killed him.
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In “Eaten by Jaws”, you can watch surfer Justine Dupont get almost wiped out at the infamous “Jaws” surf break in Hawaii. And in “Hunted in the Arctic”, the explorer Sarah McNair-Landry is hunted by a predator while attempting to cross the Northwest Passage.
Chin himself is the subject of “Live Another Day”, in which he talks about how a class-four avalanche shifted his perspective on life.
“We explore some of their most vulnerable moments in a way, and also the most challenging moments they have,” Chin said. “They put it all out on the table. And I felt like if I was asking them to do it, I should do it as well. So it’s a very personal series for me.”
Chin was speaking during the D23 Expo 2022, the large Disney fan-club event that runs every year in Anaheim, in the US state of California (National Geographic is part of the Disney family).
In an intimate sit-down with fans, Chin and Honnold engaged in a lively back and forth about risk, ambition and motivation. Honnold’s episode, “Before Free Solo”, was shot before that epic Yosemite climb, during his training in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains.
In the voice-over, Honnold talked about how, in many ways, his Morocco climbs were especially treacherous: the rocks cut his skin more, his fingers were sweatier, there were small “razor-sharp holes” in the mountain faces, and he had to “stand on tiny edges and make precise small movements” with his feet while his rubber shoes heated up and “cooked” his feet.
“We spent a month in Morocco filming this, and using it as a tune-up for Yosemite,” Chin said.
Fatherhood hasn’t yet changed anything, but we will see. I always feel safe. I care about my own life more than anyone else does. I want to stay alive
Honnold said that filming the episode provided him with a valuable month of training.
“It’s one of the coolest projects I’ve ever worked on,” he said. “I definitely feel fear. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have to do all the preparation work. I would just go. The correct way to manage fear is to gradually broaden your comfort zone until your comfort zone includes things that seemed previously impossible.”
Honnold recently became a father for the first time, and he and Chin discussed how that would affect his willingness to continue climbing.
“Fatherhood hasn’t yet changed anything, but we will see. I always feel safe. I care about my own life more than anyone else does. I want to stay alive,” he said.
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“The biggest difference with risk-taking is there have been few things that are worth it. There are things that aren’t inspiring or challenging enough, and I’ve now done most of those things.
“There are few things out there that are exciting enough to draw me in, and that’s a healthy way to ramp down your risk-taking. I’m pretty content with that.”
Chin and Vasarhelyi currently have five projects under way, most of them documentaries. They have also just finished filming their first narrative feature based on the story of Diana Nyad, who in 2013 swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 64. American actress Annette Bening plays Nyad.
“It’s exciting in the same way that climbing is exciting,” said Chin of his debut feature film.
“There are a lot of different disciplines within climbing and within filmmaking – exploring something new that’s creative and hoping to expand our knowledge of the craft. When you do that, you can become better across the board. You learn so much from it.”
