Ep. 810: Climbing El Capitan at 70 Years Old - Dierdre Wolownick
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 28 February 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At 55, Dierdre began long-distance running and has done numerous marathons, half-marathons, and other races. At 59, she began rock climbing, and at 66, she became the oldest woman to climb Yosemite’s iconic El Capitan. This year, she celebrated her 70th birthday by going up El Cap again and camping on the summit.
She’s from New York City and has taught five foreign languages on three continents for 44 years. Her writing has appeared in books, in magazines worldwide, and has won awards. Her independent publishing company produced several award-winning and international sellers. A musician all her life, Dierdre founded and conducted the West Sacramento Community Orchestra, and played in many community orchestras on flute, clarinet or piano/keyboard.
Oh yeah, she’s also the mother of climbing legend, Alex Honnold.
You can find her book, The Sharp End of Life pretty much anywhere.
Blog: www.dierdrew.us
Instagram: @dierdrewolownick
Facebook: Dierdre Wolownick
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | you know, you go farther down, all the mountains obstruct, but there's no obstruction up there. |
| 0:05.2 | So I called AAA, and we talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. |
| 0:10.0 | Because they didn't know how to find me. |
| 0:12.1 | I told them where I was, and I don't think that's really computed with the guy on the phone, |
| 0:16.6 | and he kept saying, well, what's the address? |
| 0:44.4 | Thank you. And he kept saying, well, what's the address? Hey, folks. Welcome to the Adventure Sports Podcast. I'm your host, Mason. Today we're talking to Deirdre Wollinick. |
| 0:56.8 | If you remember that name, that's because we had Deirdre on the show a few years ago to talk about climbing El Capitan, which is a giant rock face in Yosemite Valley in California. |
| 1:01.6 | I think it's the largest rock face of the world, or at least one of them, 3,000-plus feet straight up, and it was, it's iconic, first of all, but it was also made very famous through |
| 1:07.5 | the documentary Free Solo back in 2019. Free Solo featured Alex Honnold, who was |
| 1:14.2 | basically free solo and climbing that rock without any rope. Alex Honnold is Deirdre's son. |
| 1:21.6 | So, yeah, she's the mother of Alex Honnold, which is pretty cool. So she started climbing after |
| 1:27.1 | Alex introduced it to her, but we see where |
| 1:30.4 | Alex gets his drive and his creativity from. Deirdre is multi-talented, extremely smart, well-traveled, |
| 1:39.3 | and just an all-around pretty inspiring person. And so once Alex introduced her to climbing, she decided to |
| 1:46.3 | go for some pretty big projects. So at 66, Deirdre became the oldest woman to climb El Capitan, |
| 1:53.7 | and then this past year, at 70 years old, she again climbed El Capiton to celebrate her 70th |
| 1:59.9 | birthday and became the oldest woman once again to |
| 2:03.1 | climb El Capitan. So let's go ahead and jump in so Deirdre can tell her story. And also between when we |
| 2:08.3 | recorded this just a few weeks ago, and today Deirdre has welcomed a granddaughter into this world, |
| 2:15.4 | Alex Honnold's daughter. So congratulations, Deirdre. |
| 2:18.3 | I hope you're doing well. |
| 2:19.2 | Hope that's going well. |
... |
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