Alex Honnold is extraordinarily strong in both rock-climbing terms and general athletic terms, but his greatest “strength” is a mix of finger power, endurance, and mental control rather than just raw gym numbers.

How “strong” is he in climbing terms?

When climbers talk about how strong Alex Honnold is, they mostly mean what grades he can climb and the styles he excels at.

  • He has free soloed big walls up to around 5.13a (like Freerider on El Capitan), which is elite-level difficulty even with a rope.
  • He has climbed hard sport routes up to around 9a (5.14d) and high-end traditional routes up to about E10, showing very high maximum difficulty, not just “endurance” on easy terrain.
  • He has also done cutting‑edge long linkups like the HURT traverse in Red Rock, covering about 35 miles with roughly 24,000 feet of elevation gain and 18 summits in just over 32 hours, which speaks to huge endurance and resilience.

In pure performance terms, he’s not at the absolute top of modern “limit bouldering” or competition climbing like some specialists, but he is near the top of the world in combining high difficulty with huge exposure and length.

Physical vs mental strength

Alex is very strong physically, but his real superpower is how well he can apply that strength while calm in terrifying situations.

  • Physically, he needs exceptional finger strength, core strength, and body tension to hold tiny edges for hours at a time on big granite walls.
  • His projects involve enormous volume of training and rehearsal, building specific strength on the exact moves he’ll later solo, so when he actually does the climb it looks smooth and “easy.”
  • Mentally, he is famous for controlling fear; long profiles of him emphasize how he trains his comfort zone so that extremely dangerous sequences feel routine to him.

So if you imagine a spectrum from “max bouldering power” to “superhuman composure on a 3,000‑foot wall,” Honnold sits extremely far toward that second end while still being very strong on the first.

Recent feats and what they say about his strength

Even in the mid‑2020s, he continues to show that his capacity for hard, committing climbing is still very high.

  • In October 2022 he completed the “Honnold Ultimate Red Rock Traverse,” a massive day out with big cumulative climbing and running, which underlines his ultra‑endurance and efficiency on rock.
  • In January 2026 he free‑soloed the exterior of Taipei 101 in Taiwan, grading it roughly around 5.11; that’s a level many climbers struggle to lead with ropes and gear, let alone on a skyscraper without a rope.

These kinds of objectives show that his “strength” is not fading into safe exhibition climbs; he’s still operating at a level where a small mistake could be fatal, and he backs that up with both physical and mental capacity.

How does he compare to other top climbers?

Within the climbing world, most people would say Honnold is not the single strongest climber on earth in terms of pure difficulty but is arguably the greatest big‑wall free soloist in history.

  • Competition and cutting‑edge sport climbers often climb harder single‑pitch routes (well into the 9b/9c range), but they do so with ropes and in a more controlled environment.
  • What makes Honnold stand out is taking already hard grades (5.12–5.13 big‑wall terrain) and climbing them alone, with no rope, often thousands of feet off the ground; respected outlets have called his El Capitan free solo “one of the great athletic feats of any kind, ever.”

So in everyday terms: his raw strength is world‑class, but his unique combination of strength, endurance, technical skill, and psychological control puts him in his own category.

Forum / “trending topic” angle

In forum and social discussions, people often debate “how strong is Alex Honnold really ,” especially compared with modern competition stars.

You’ll usually see a split like this:

  • One side argues that, because he doesn’t push the very hardest grades in bouldering or sport anymore, he’s “not the strongest” if you only look at numbers.
  • The other side counters that free soloing El Capitan and similar routes is so far beyond normal risk tolerance that it’s almost a different sport, and that his mental strength plus all‑day endurance makes simple grade comparisons feel irrelevant.

Put simply: in 2026, if your question is “how strong is Alex Honnold,” the answer is that he’s still one of the strongest all‑around big‑wall climbers alive, and almost unmatched when you factor in doing it all without a rope.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.