10-year-old Colorado girl is the youngest to scale Yosemite’s famed El Capitan | Hacker News Reader

10-year-old Colorado girl is the youngest to scale Yosemite’s famed El Capitan

latimes.com

17 pointsHillaryBriss28 comments

It's an impressive feat, but this article fails to mention that she wasn't "climbing" in the sense that most people use the term. She was jumaring, where you use devices to climb up a fixed rope. It's exhausting and not without skill, but it's not at all like free climbing by holding onto the rock. (See, for example, https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/10-year-old-girl-climbs-y...)

(Free climbers use ropes, but only to arrest falls, not to climb up. Free soloers like Alex Honnold don't even use that protection, though that's very rare and incredibly dangerous. This is "aid climbing" with ascenders. It does have dangers of its own: protection points can fail, and she's wearing a helmet because rocks do fall.)

Indeed... imo, an aided climb* of 600ft/day is not "climbing El Capitan", that's just quite a lot of rope climbing.

*edit - should have written jumaring

Aid climbing is not jumaring though. It means you use tools to get up. Most of the time the face is blank and you still need to get up painfully and add all the protections to go up little by little (aid climbing leading). Sometimes for higher grades of aid climbing (C3,A4,A5) this is very scary as there is almost nothing to hold on and you are literally pulling on very small hooks that barely rest on the side of the rock.

In this specific case I'm pretty sure that the two adults took the leads and the girl followed jumaring behind.

You're quite right - I mistyped.

For those interested, the Alpinist article from a week ago has much more detail (and some history).[0]

It looks like she led the first pitch of 5.7 free climbing and an A0 (easy aid climbing) bolt ladder. She otherwise followed and cleaned/removed gear for her father and a family friend in the party, who appear to be experienced. They planned for 4 days, but completed in 5. My understanding is this is a standard pace for amateurs and they were even outpacing other parties. The primary difficulties for a kid, besides the technical climbing, are maintaining focus for 5 days on the wall 1000s of feet up and sleeping on a small ledge, and carrying a large amount of heavy gear, relative to bodyweight.

[0] http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web19s/newswire-10-year-old-sela...

I'm pretty far from a helicopter parent, but I draw the line at El Capitan.

I'm not sure how dangerous this is. Its an aid assisted climb, so ropes are on, and taut the whole time. Climber uses the gear to get up. Assuming an adult is checking the gear all the way up it shouldn't be that crazy. It just takes a long time and is strenuous.

I had a friend die at Yosemite due to a falling rock. She was wearing a helmet too.

yeah, and bad weather is a risk too. But riding a bike and other kid things face similar risks.

I had a friend die in Silicon Valley due to a car crash. he was wearing his safety belt too.

My son has gotten 2 solo Victory Royales in Fortnite, he's 10, too.

Some people seem a different (superior) species.

No doubt some people do crazy things but I feel like the primary thing that enabled this is money and time

This. And committed parents.

This is a lot of training and committed parents. I'm doing a lot of aid climbing myself and anyone could be good at aid climbing if enough training and commitment is put inside it.

Good climb. BBC reported it as a free climb which is inaccurate though. She used ascenders

A free climb by a 10-year old seems (sadly) a way to have DHS come and take your kid away afterwards :(

I'm still impressed, even with ascending devices. For being 10 years old, that shows a lot of patience and deliberation.

Are these people all putting those bolts to hold ropes into the face of the rock? It's getting pretty stupid when fathers are taking their ten year old daughters up the climb. If it's dangerous it should be unlawful, if it's not then what's the point?

Placing bolts is allowed at Yosemite (see the bolting policy at the bottom of this page): https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/climbing_regulations....

The majority of the routes are not bolted (see the breakdown of climb by type on this page): https://www.mountainproject.com/area/105833388/yosemite-vall...

They climbed The Nose, which seems to be a mix of trad (traditional, no fixed holds) and aid (placing temporary protection, then using gear to climb up to the protection, then placing protection, etc.) climbing - more on the different types of climbing here: http://www.alpineinstitute.com/articles/expert-tips/rock-cli....

More on The Nose route: https://www.mountainproject.com/route/105924807/the-nose

More detailed look: http://www.supertopo.com/topos/yosemite/thenose.pdf

You can see in the map of the route that some belay stations are bolted, and in fact the original ascent did use bolts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nose_(El_Capitan).

> If it's dangerous it should be unlawful

The mountains, the oceans, and the deserts seem to be the last refuges of freedom. I hope that doesn't change.

Thanks for the information and i agree with your last point about freedom. But an adult shouldn't have the freedom to endanger a ten year old's life. On the other hand, if El Capitan has been tamed to the extent that the climbing of it has become safe and routine then I think there's an argument for putting the climbing of it to bed and instead preserving it in as pristine a state as possible.

What is the age of consent for something like this?

Nonexistent.

That's not a thing.

The closest thing might be Child Endangerment (or similar depending on jurisdiction) but I'd argue with the safety gear she had on it wouldn't pass the "reasonable person" test. Which is to say a reasonable person wouldn't find it unsafe to climb El Capitan with full safety gear, an experienced adult climber, and experience climbing smaller peaks herself.

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