
El Capitan’s Dawn Wall Climbers Reach Top at Yosemite - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/sports/el-capitans-dawn-wall-climbers-reach-top.html
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001sky
There is alot of permanent and semi-permanant installtion set up on the route.
There is alot of outside help. There is alot of "aid" being used to actually
climb this route and to resupply it. To me this this is free climbing like gym
climbing is "free climbing". The level of "technnical difficulty" is high, but
that deosn't seem to be the whole story.

The feat is immensively impressive, but use of the word "free climning" here
is starting to become almost meaninglesss when there is that much permant
aid/infrastructure and siege tactic being applied to the problem.

If these 2 guys were alone and hauled up their own gear/disposed of waste, and
actually climbed the route sequentially...rather than using aid to rest
between pitches...something seems to suggest they would have faced a
significantly greater obstacle.

So the media hype around a "free climb" here is overblown. On the other hand,
its kind of ??? we as the public need to hang our hats on the "category/name"
here to appreciate what these guys are doing.

That label seems needed market the climb and their sponsors... or apparently
the public would be inclined to take it so seriously (??).

Kinda warped view...but it is what it is.

~~~
gamblor956
You're being downvoted because you're misunderstanding what "free climbing"
means. It is a technical climbing term meaning that the weight of the climber
is supported by the climber himself at all times during ascent; safety gear
such as ropes are used only to protect against falls. "Solo free climbing" (or
"free solo climbing") is climbing without any gear, including safety gear. It
is basically suicide on a climb above 25 feet in height.

This climb is historic because it is the first time any person (let alone two)
has managed to climb the entire height via free climbing methods, that is,
without using ropes to bear some/all of their weight during the ascent.

Eventually, someone will try to free climb El Capitan similar to the manner
you described: pitch by pitch, without returning to a base camp, resting along
the way. However, such a climb is a long ways off; it took nearly a decade to
plan this climb. Planning a climb with shifting camps will likely take another
several years just to plot out plausible routes and resting points.

~~~
jonah
I think you've hit it - this First Free Ascent set a benchmark. Others - maybe
'001sky - can improve upon their time.

For example, a much easier, more popular route - The Nose - wast first free
climbed by Lynn Hill in 1993 in four days, in 1994 she re-did it in 23 hours,
in 2005 Tommy Caldwell and his then wife did it in four days and two days
later Caldwell did it by himself in 12 hours. The time required has been
falling since with Alex Honnold and Hans Florine, making the current record
ascent in 2:23.46 on June 17, 2012.

These guys bagged the First Free ascent of a much harder route. Surely others
will attempt to free the Dawn Wall and may do it in less time. It remains to
be seen if it's humanly possible to do something this difficult in under a
day.

~~~
masterj
Small note: Alex and Hans did not set the speed record by freeing the Nose.
They definitely aided sections.

Only 4 people have successfully free'd the Nose. The 4th happened only last
November. So far it happens about once a decade.
([http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/jorg-verhoeven-free-
cli...](http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/jorg-verhoeven-free-climbs-the-
nose))

------
sandworm
As a former wall climber (Squamish, UBC Varsity Outdoors Club) I've been
laughing all day at the coverage of this. The reporters cannot get their story
strait. This isn't a first assent. This isn't even a free climb by some
standards. And the ropes are definitely not "only for safety". Ropes are
everywhere on a big wall, from hauling gear to hanging belays. They catch
falls, but often also hold people to the wall (belays/rests/sleeping ect).
Dawn Wall was first ascended in 1970. This is a first "free" assent as in it
is the first non-aid assent.

The various forms of assent range from "getting to the top by whatever means"
through "betas" to a true "on-sight" and even the ridiculous "free solo".
There are plenty of records still to be set on this route. An on-sight is
pretty much inconceivable on a big wall (no prior knowledge, just show up and
climb) but clean assents (no falls on any pitch) will happen one day.

The history of the Yosemite decimal system speaks to the increased ability of
modern climbing. A 5.10 free route was once considered the hardest thing
humanly possible. Now we have 5.14 as 5.10, with modern rubber, is easy. I've
seen noobs do 5.10a top-rope (no fall risk) on their first day. Not everyone
can, but most noobs can battle their way up a 5.8 once they get the hang of
things. A 5.10 near the ground is a totally different beast than the same
pitch up on a wall, but concepts such as "exposure" danger and distance are
not part of the yosemite decimal system, only technical difficulty.

If you really want to scare yourself, look at aid climbing standards. Aid
climbing is where you use devices to actually pull yourself up the rock. This
is how Dawn Wall has been tackled since the 70s. Aid pitches are graded from
A0 to A6 based not so much on difficulty but fall danger. A0 is basically a
5.xx route with some pulling on gear. A3 means many not-solid pieces in a row,
resulting in 10-20 meter fall potential. A5 means only the belay will hold a
fall, so you could go 70+meters before the rope catches. Basically, A4 and
above means fall = hospital. The legendary A6, which I doubt exists, means
even the belay stations won't hold = certain death.

Oh, and "big wall" means climbing that could/should involve sleeping on the
wall. But elite climbers regularly flash up well-traveled yosemite walls in
hours, They are still big walls.

~~~
dimxasnewfrozen
Why leave such a condescending comment? What they did was remarkable.

I'm also a climber but this attitude drives me nuts with the climbing
community. It's not a dick measuring contest. Why even mention aid climbing
and that it's more scary and that climbing 5.10 is for "noobs"? That has
nothing to do with what these guys did. These guys didn't do it for their ego
or because it's "scary". They did it because it's extremely difficult and
they've been working on it for 7 years. They did it because they were so
invested mentally and physically that it was a challenge they needed to
complete.

But yes, I do agree that the media has/had no idea how to cover this - it's
been pretty awful.

~~~
sandworm
Condescending to the media coverage. If the climbers do an interview and
announce, as CNN did, that they have completed the "First assent of El
Capitan" then I will have a very condescending comment for them too.

Ego is part of climbing, much more so when you have cameras following you.
There is something innately gratifying in climbing to a place normal people
cannot go. These guys aren't Buddhist monks humbly surmounting a climb as an
exercise in meditation. It certainly isn't all ego, but to say that ego isn't
part of the equation is disingenuous.

~~~
dimxasnewfrozen
I agree. Ego is definitely a part of climbing otherwise climbers wouldn't have
a reason to push themselves. But Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson climbed
that mostly for themselves. I'm sure they enjoy the media coverage. Who
wouldn't? I'm sure their sponsors love it even more. But that type of ego is
much different than calling 5.10 climbers noobs and that aid climbing is more
dangerous than trad climbing/sport climbing/top roping (I'm not arguing that
it isn't, but there's no point putting down other forms of climbing). That's
what I was getting at.

I suppose I'm just annoyed by the amount of judgment that exists in climbing.
We all have our own motivations and aspirations when it comes to climbing.
Some climbers just feel like they need to prove something to someone else.

------
bobbles
So 19 days straight up on the wall?

How do they get supplies and food etc? I guess other people let it down to
them?

Do they just go to the bathroom into the wind or is this controlled?

I feel like many questions about climbing a wall for 19 days are not answered!

~~~
ojbyrne
This article (which is linked from that page) answers many of your questions:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/sports/on-el-capitans-
dawn...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/sports/on-el-capitans-dawn-wall-
climbers-downtime-is-surprisingly-routine.html)

Short answer is they returned to their base camp every day, and then went back
to their previous progress via ropes.

~~~
pimlottc
Huh, something is strange with the page you linked; I can't scroll down in any
way, in three different browsers.

~~~
thezilch
If your savvy about browser's dev tools, uncheck "overflow: hidden" on the
body tag. Presumably you block 3rd party / advertising JS? I've noticed more
and more sites that break (and maybe intentionally?) with 3rd party JS
disabled.

~~~
MarkSweep
Another way to get around this sort of thing in Firefox is to disable styles
on the page. From the menus it's View -> Page Style -> None. On Windows the
keyboard accelerator is ALT-V-Y-N.

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lsiebert
This article does a good job at pointing out how hard this is. There are
harder individual segments (two in the world go up to 5.15c) but this has
multiple 5.14 segments, and nothing below 5.12. 5.10 used to be consider
impossible, but better equipment and planning have allowed increased
difficulty in climbs.

~~~
erjiang
The rating scale has also shifted. A difficult route may have been graded a
5.10 when it was established, simply because that was the limit of the scale.
But if it were regraded today it might have a more precise grade like 5.12b.

~~~
justinator
It should also be noted that a lot of routes in Yosemite were never re-graded
and are just simply "5.9+". Hard routes with a too-low grade are known as,
"sandbagged".

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chrisseaton
How do climbers like these reconcile drilling bolts into the rockface with the
'leave no trace' ethic?

~~~
marcusrussi
Well, some of the bolts were already there, and I'm not sure if Tommy Caldwell
and Kevin Jorgeson actually drilled any of their own bolts, but I wouldn't be
surprised if they put in a few.

Bolts have always been a source of controversy in climbing – in fact, bolts
were the main controversy in the first ascent of the Dawn Wall (/ Wall of
Early Morning Light) back in 1970, so much that the first ascensionist's rival
Royal Robbins actually climbed the route and chopped the bolts off as he went.
There have been similar controversies all over the world, another notable
example being on Cerro Torre in Patagonia.

Unless a climbing area is a designated "sport climbing area", bolts are
generally not placed unless there is no other way to protect a stretch of
climbing. Climbers try to place devices that don't damage the rock (nuts,
cams, tricams, hexes, etc.) first, but sometimes none of those devices will
work as they all rely on jamming against something, and blank faces do not
have the cracks and holes into which jamming gear can be inserted. When this
happens, bolts are placed because there isn't any other way to protect the
climbers in the event of the fall.

So, I don't really have a good answer to your question except to say that the
use of bolts has always and still is a huge source of controversy in the
climbing community. These days, with sport "crags" being the exception,
climbers try to rely on other "clean" methods of protection before turning to
bolts, which is in stark contrast to past eras where bolts and pitons were the
predominant way to protect pitches.

~~~
steveax
Important to note that Robbins changed his mind and stopped chopping bolts 2
pitches into the 2nd ascent as (according to Lauria) "the quality of the aid
climbing was much higher than he had ever expected of Harding or Caldwell and,
of course, it was also taking us an awful long time to chop all those goddam
bolts." [1]

The seminal article on "clean climbing" was authored by Yvon Chouinard and Tom
Frost and appeared in the 1972 Chouinard catalog [2]

[1]
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Robbins#Wall_of_Early_M...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Robbins#Wall_of_Early_Morning_Light)

[2]
[http://climbaz.com/chouinard72/ch_page2.html](http://climbaz.com/chouinard72/ch_page2.html)

------
alayne
Yesterday I read about the Warren Harding climb up The Nose in 58 and Dawn
Wall in 70 which were also interesting.

------
beachstartup
question for climbers: what's more difficult to master, the physical or mental
aspect of doing a climb like this?

i imagine the intersection of people who have both sides of that coin covered
(in any sport) is vanishingly small.

~~~
freerobby
Physical, by far.

The number of people who lead climb multipitch walls is much bigger than the
number who can climb a single 5.14 pitch, even on a toprope in a gym.

Keep in mind that these climbers spend years relying on their gear and taking
no shortage of falls. They trust themselves and their partners. I don't want
to minimize the mental challenge here (I struggle with it when I lead climb in
a gym, let alone "trad" outside with my own gear), but for climbers at this
level with this much experience, the fear of falling is sufficiently small
that they're thinking about the climb rather than the consequences of a
misstep.

Climbing 5.14 pitches is a whole other story. Perfect technique isn't enough;
you also need a perfect physique -- lean and muscular in all the right places
-- and not muscular in the wrong places, because muscle is heavy. Conventional
climbing wisdom is that persistent hard work can take a fit person a long way
-- to about 5.12 or so -- but after that it comes down to genetics. I'm
reasonably athletic, have been climbing on and off for over a decade, and
multiple times per week for the last 18 months. I'll be ecstatic if I can ever
do a single 5.13 pitch.

~~~
prezjordan
Can you explain what these terms (5.12 vs 5.14) mean? Having trouble finding
definitions on google.

~~~
sliverstorm
Grade. 5 means roped climbing, the decimal means how hard of a climb it is
within the category of roped climbing.

5.6 can be climbed by any healthy adult, 5.7 by most. I reached 5.11 in a year
of climbing; I expect to reach 5.12 within 5 years, and 5.13 sometime within
my lifespan if I am dedicated and train relentlessly. 5.14 is only within
reach of the greats who live their lives to climb, and 5.15 has been climbed
by 2-3 people on this Earth.

~~~
ahlatimer
The current grades are more a snapshot of history than the physical limits of
humanity, IMO. Like the 4 minute mile, once one person did it, you saw several
people after that able to do it. In the golden years of Yose, 5.12 was this
crazy thing that only the elite did. Now it's something normal people can
achieve. Part of that is technology -- I wouldn't want to ever lead 5.12
without a set of cams -- but part of it is that it's just easier to get to
somewhere if you already know it's physically possible.

~~~
sliverstorm
Yes, but the world's fastest mile is still _3:43.13_ , which is not much
progress over the last 60 years.

More people will climb 5.14 & 5.15 in the future, but the progress of peak
potential is slowing.

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drallison
Amazing feat done just because it is there. Kudos to the climbers and their
support team.

