Re: Any news from El Capitan?

Any eyes on/around El Capitan recently?

This guy
http://yosemitenews.info/forum/read.php?3,78228
was...

---

My wife and daughter stole me away to the Valley for my birthday. I had only an inkling of what was going on at El Cap, and we decided to stop at El Cap meadow to check it out. There were a couple of folks in the meadow...seemed like no big deal. As we were getting ready to walk out into the meadow a car rolls up with a seemingly lost tourist. She rolls down the window to ask for directions and I tell her that there are some climbers on El Cap. Her response..uh..yeah...I'm a producer with ABC and that's why I am here. I became her personal tour guide for the next half hour while she tried to make contact with somebody she was supposed to interview.
and btw she was looking for the wall....some giant wall that was being climbed. I guess in her mind it looked like some kind of nature-made Berlin Wall or something.
So after we parted ways, the family and I walked towards the base of El Cap on the climbers access trail just for fun. Chatted with some of the guys hauling loads and all seems to be going well. Weather is perfect for this...if anything one guy mentioned that they aren't climbing until mid afternoon because the wall is too hot for the best friction for their climbing shoes.
On the way to the face we saw that some folks were having fun on the alcove swing and I had never seen that in person before, so we scrambled up to the alcove and low and behold I got my first alcove swing on my birthday. It was pretty cool.

The best info for the climb imo is El Cap Report.

A lame couple of camera phone pics:


Alcove swing




Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2015 08:43AM by Bearproof.

Here is an update on the Dawn Wall climb.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/06/yosemite-tackle-toughest-rock-climb-world/21340075/

Quote
Bearproof
On the way to the face we saw that some folks were having fun on the alcove swing and I had never seen that in person before, so we scrambled up to the alcove and low and behold I got my first alcove swing on my birthday. It was pretty cool.
The best info for the climb imo is El Cap Report.

A lame couple of camera phone pics:

Thanks for photos (I fixed your links).


And Happy Birthday! Glad you had a great day in Yosemite!

.

Thanks!

Forgive my stupidity, but.....if these guys are using ropes to
protect themselves from falls, how is what they're doing
any different from what other climbers of this route have
done?

From what I was told most climbs of El Cap are done Aided...

Take a look at wikipedia / z web for more info on the different types of climbs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_climbing

---

A simple example of a "normal" assent would be when the lead climber goes up to an anchor, fixes a rope, goes back down to a point and then hangs or even swings on the fixed rope to get to another line of climb.

---

Old Dude

Yep. The only aids these guys are using are the single bolts to hold their "tent" when they sleep. Everything else is hanging on only by their hands and feet.

---

Check our our website: http://www.backpackthesierra.com/
Or just read a good mystery novel set in the Sierra; https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Falling-Rocks-Paul-Wagner/dp/0984884963

Quote
AnotherDave
Forgive my stupidity, but.....if these guys are using ropes to
protect themselves from falls, how is what they're doing
any different from what other climbers of this route have
done?

As chick-on noted, they are free climbing as opposed to aid climbing.

Free climbing is roughly defined as using only your body, i.e. hands and feet, it order to move up the rock. Ropes and gear are used for protection in case of a fall but do not aid in accent.

Aid climbing is roughly defined as using gear and rope to aid you in your ascent. For example, you would place a hook above you and then either pull on it to pull youself up or have a piece of webbing attached to it and step up on that webbing to move up.

On this topic here is a must see in my opinion (Make sure to check out video also):

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/06/375357301/free-climbing-yosemites-el-capitan-takes-a-team-and-time

Another link with photos.... http://www.lifebuzz.com/free-climb/

Here are a couple of shots looking up from the base of El Cap on Monday





And, once again, my favorite daily update is Tom Evans' El Cap Report here.

New York Times has an article about the climb in the news. VERY COOL interactive graphics where you see all of El Capitan then you can zoom into any part of El Cap and see people up close. I've never seen anything like that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/sports/el-capitans-dawn-wall-climbers-reach-top.html

Very cool. The New York Times was the leader on this whole story, and they did a great job. ABC News was a close second, I think, and they were streaming the top out live, which was pretty cool to watch. Congrats to the boys!

And if you liked that Gigapan of El Cap, then you will really like a Gigapan that covers pretty much the whole Valley. Check it out here.

Thank you Bearproof. Didn't know that exists. I'll be busy using this for awhile!

As I recall, Warren Harding was the first to climb this route back in the early 1970's? And he used a ton of hardware to do it, in a rather controversial climb. In fact, another climber (was it Royal Robbins?) was so offended he decided to climb the same route a bit later and remove all the hardware...

Only it was such a beautiful climb that he relented about half-way up, and then just climbed the wall and raved about it later.

Back then it was the Wall of the Early Morning Light, not the Dawn Wall. Pretty soon it will be called EL Cap a.m.

---

Check our our website: http://www.backpackthesierra.com/
Or just read a good mystery novel set in the Sierra; https://www.amazon.com/Danger-Falling-Rocks-Paul-Wagner/dp/0984884963

People are just not poetic enough now. I like Wall of the Early Morning light. What can I say, my dog's whole name is Sierra Nevada, Range of Light.