With no ropes, Alex Honnold conquered El Capitan's Freerider route over the weekend. Scaling the 5.12d/13a heartstopper in about four hours is widely considered the greatest feat in the history of the sport. Photographer Jimmy Chin was there to capture all the action:

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@alexhonnold composed and casual free soloing (sans cord) 2000ft above the deck on the Enduro Pitch of Freerider yesterday. Alex's process to prepare for his dream of free soloing El Cap has been an incredible, and sometimes stressful, journey to witness and be a part of over the last two years while filming him for a feature documentary (co-directed by @mochinyc). In some ways I expected (and prayed for) nothing less on his big day but it was still mind bending to see how relaxed he was in the final days leading up to the climb and of course during the climb - as seen here locked off reaching full extension with mere finger tips in contact to granite, feet smeared on nothing. What I've learned over the last 10 years about Alex is he isn't the kid that shows up to do well on the exam. If it counts, he's there to ace it, knock out the extra credit questions and finish early. I'd say he aced his final exam yesterday with extra credit for style and composure. When he got to the top, he looked at me and said "I'm pretty sure I could go back to the bottom and do it again right now."

James Kingston makes POV videos as he climbs tall structures around the world. In this video, he climbed the world's tallest residential building, which us in Dubai. It's still under construction. Once he got to the top, Kingston asked a man sitting in the cockpit of a crane if he could climb to the top of the crane, and the man told him to go for it.

It took me about an hour and a half to get to the roof of the building using the crane to get up the first 50 meters or so. It was then about an hour of stairs while trying not to die of dehydration. It was the warmest/driest building I've ever come across and I only had a small bottle of water with me.

I came across a few workers on the way up who wished me a good day and shook my hand. The workers in Dubai seem to mostly be from India and are some of the nicest people I've ever met. When I reached the rooftop the sun still hadn't risen so I had a bit of time to explore the place and take some pictures. The crane that runs up the side of the building must be somewhere over the 450 meter mark as the building itself is officially set at 426 meters and the crane arm sits above it by quite a distance. Put it this way... you'd be dead if you fell off the top of the crane and landed on top of the building.

Earlier this month, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson made the first free ascent of El Capitan's 3,000-foot Dawn Wall at Yosemite. This dizzying footage is sure to have your palms sweating. Read the rest