On El Capitan’s Dawn Wall, Climb Thought to Be Toughest Progresses Slowly | Hacker News Reader

On El Capitan’s Dawn Wall, Climb Thought to Be Toughest Progresses Slowly

nytimes.com

100 pointswallflower40 comments

http://www.supertopo.com/inc/photo_zoom.php?dpid=Ojg7PjwgICE... [Warning: beta]

That's a pretty good breakdown of the route. One of them completed pitch 15 yesterday and today were mapping out pitch 16 / continuing pitch 15. There's contention over whether 15 or 16 is more difficult :)

Pitch 16 is the dyno pitch (video of him dyno-ing: http://vimeo.com/80908548) though it sounds like they might be doing a workaround to not have to do the dyno (they think its hard to do consistently.. for obvious reasons).

http://instagram.com/p/xb6x5Oj5dz - a picture of how high and exposed they are on El Cap.

And, more information just if you're still wanting to listen to a climbing nerd.

Free climbing means that they climb without "aid" - e.g. nothing is pulling them up the wall but themselves. They still use ropes and other devices for protection.

Pitch is a "section" like the article says, but you have to climb between these sections before you get any rest. Otherwise, you have to stayed glued to the wall on your own power. Once you get there, you set up camp and wait for the other person to climb up to you. Up you go the next pitch, etc. etc.

Dyno is a move that requires a person to leave solid contact with the wall and move to another place. This is usually seen as a leap from one hand hold to the next hand hold.

Traverse is a lateral, not upward movement.

Yosemite is one of the world's premiere Big Wall locations. To do this in this place is iconic.

Climbing can be very much like (a very physical) puzzle game. Especially for long climbs. You need the right gear, the right moves, the right body position, etc. in order to keep going. It's both mentally and physically taxing.

That dyno is one of the best ever :-)

I think Malcolm Matheson on Mirage comes close though: http://www.chockstone.org/Interviews/SCarter/hb3.jpg

Fantastic achievement if they pull it off.

Incidentally, Alex Honnold, one of the climbers interviewed in the article, is the star of one of the most frightening videos I have ever seen - him free-soloing El Sendero Luminoso:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl82D57P58

Even though I know perfectly well that nobody fell to their death on that climb, and have done a fair bit of climbing myself, I can’t watch this video without having a powerful physical reaction.

It’s mind-boggling what some people are capable of.

Notable, also: the risk of free-solo climbing has scared off a corporate sponsor (Clif Bar) of Honnold and others.

http://www.outsideonline.com/news-from-the-field/Report-Clif...

Alex wrote about the topic after losing that sponsorship:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/opinion/the-calculus-of-cl...

It's a nice, quick read. Especially if you're even vaguely interested in climbing.

That's an impressive achievement. El Sendero Luminoso is rated a 5.12d V climb. For those who don't know, back in the mid 20th century when climbing started becoming very popular they invented the "Yosemite Decimal System" for rating climbs, 5.9 was considered the most difficult class possible. However, climbing improved and starting in the '70s or so people were able to climb routes that were much more difficult than 5.9s, so they just extended the scale. But whereas 5.9 is just one level, 5.10 is actually 4 separate classes (5.10a-d), as is 5.11. That gives you a sense of how difficult (technically beyond impossible from the perspective of a 1960s era climber) a 5.12d class climb is. Additionally, the V grade indicates that it is normally considered a 2 day climb. Honnold's climb is simply astounding.

I can grant you that the technical skill and all around.... I dunno what a good word is... lack of the paralyzing fear that I'd feel in a similar situation: that's _amazing_.

However, the fact that it was done quickly makes a lot of sense if you think about how much goes into doing stuff like that safely. A lot of things that might take a long time take less time if you have the technical ability to pull them off with a lot of safeguards removed.

Moving is much, much faster when you can get rid of a partner, not drag a rope or set pro, and especially not have to carry equipment for spending a night on the rock.

I don't know if these safeguards would be good for most people to remove, but it is a neat case where there is a massive gain by changing the system.

For anyone after numbers supporting the claim that this may be the worlds hardest free climb, consider this. The hardest climbs in the world (using US grading system) are graded 5.15c . These currently exist as isolated pitches of less than 150 feet.

The Dawn Wall has 19 pitches (15 have now been completed). at least 6 of these pitches are graded 5.14 and above, and most of the remainder are 5.13 . These are all very hard pitches.

The overall difficulty of a multi-pitch climb (using the US grading system) isn't really based on the grade of the hardest pitch. Completing this climb is the equivalent of doing 19 very hard climbs in a row, with 6 of them being accessible to a handful of very dedicated climbers in the world.

Here's some videos from 2013 (yes, they've been working on this for a very long time) http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/exclusive-dawn-wall-pro...

The Dawn Wall is actually between 28 and 30 pitches. Here's a good topo, for anyone interested: http://www.dpmclimbing.com/sites/default/files/uploads/image...

It's 28-30 pitches if you do Mescalito (The old aid route). The aid method usually limits practical pitch length. Doing it as a free climb, with 60m (180ft) ropes allows many of the pitches to be linked.

Diagram of the proposed route: http://www.rockandice.com/Article-Images/News-Photos/October...

EDIT: Looking at that diagram, pitch 19 looks to be very long. I'm assuming that they'll simulclimb that section as it's "only" 5.12 :-)

That's an old topo. They have since revised the pitch breakdown and plan. Also, it doesn't end at 19. The top of the photo is slightly foreshortened and low-definition, but if you look closely, you'll see that the topo says 19-Top (i.e. pitch 19 TO the top). There are still quite a few pitches between 19 and the top.

The topo I linked to was drawn up by the guys before they launched off for the push. It should also be mentioned that it deviates from the Mescalito aid route. This isn't pure Mescalito.

Well said. This is scary hard. The word 'gruelling' doesn't begin to capture it.

Also, 5.10 used to be considered the hardest climb humanly possible. Today, 5.12 is achievable by many climbers after years of practice. 5.14 routes are doable by a small subset, this is where anatomy and sheer innate talent begin to elevate the elite from the hard workers. Beyond 5.14, it's the best of the super climbers who also have some amount of luck in that they had the right nerves and physical preparation to dyno a 5.15 move once, but perhaps not every time. These are the climbs that can't be consistently repeated successfully even by the best.

Every grade at some point is considered the hardest, but what I suspect you're referring to is the Yosemite Decimal System [1] which postulated 5.9 as the hardest grade possible (5.1 and 5.10 are the same from a numeric point of view). I always thought the Australian system (start at one and go up) made the most sense, but the context the the British grading system [2] provides is wonderful.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_(climbing)#British

5.12 is a grade that someone needs to be fairly dedicated and skilled to achieve.

5.13 is something that very few dedicated climbers will get to.

5.14 is elite territory and you are in the top few percent of climbers world wide.

5.15 is like climbing glass, hung at a 45 degree overhang.

the dawn wall has 7 pitches of 5.13 climbing and 7 pitches of hard 5.14 climbing... plus "filler" 5.11 and 5.12 climbing for the other 20ish pitches. I have been climbing for years and have only climbed a handful of 5.12 climbs... it's really, really hard. to say that this is hard is an understatement.

edit: the grades came from the YDS which was the yosemite decimal system(actually started at tahquitz before royal robbins went to yos). there are classes of climbing grades where class 1 is walking to get the mail, class 3 is some scrambling but if you slipped you'd be ok usually, class 4 is where you'd probably get really hurt or die if you fell at the wrong time but the climbing is not super hard, class 5 was subdivided into a decimal rating from 5.0 to 5.9. There were climbs in Tahquitz that were the standard of difficulty for these grades. The trough was 5.0(modern 5.4) all the way up to open book which was 5.9 and considered to be the pinnacle of human achievement.

After a while humans got stronger, and the equipment got better, and technique got refined so they opened up the YDS to be open ended as it is today with grades greater than 5.9. they initially stuck with whole numbers but eventually they decided that there needed to be a finer grained approach to grading. thus every grade after 5.10 was given a letter grade from a to d. each letter grade is roughly equivalent to a number grade below 5.10(going from 5.8 to 5.9 is roughly equivalent to going from 5.10a to 5.10b in terms of relative increased difficulty) and each letter grade can take months or years to get strong/technical enough to ascend.

all this was said to drive home the fact that what they are doing is amazing and defies belief. they are climbing multiple pitches of climbs that are 24 "grades" harder than what was once thought of as the hardest someone could ever climb.

Yeah, and it's more than just the grade too. The Steck Salathe [1] is "only" 5.9, but I suspect it would rebuff ~60% of "5.12 climbers"

[1]: http://www.supertopo.com/rock-climbing/Yosemite-Valley-Senti...

oh yeah. anytime you look at a grade you have to look at when it was put up first. never trust a valley 5.9 put up in the 50's. also, never trust an old climb that is 5.9+ as that's likely 5.12ish.

also, that route is heinously hard with a majority of it being offwidths and runouts. the crux, mandatory free, pitch on it has some really airy 5.9 squeeze chimney with large cams as pro... to the point that the large cams you brought are not big enough so you leave a tipped out #6 and climb for another 50' above it.

edit: derp. I was talking about the salathé wall on el cap.

Here in Australia we have a similar problem. The local climbers had no international input for quite a few years and the "official" hardest climbs were around grade 21 (on the Ewbank system). Some of those 21s (5.10-ish) have now been upgraded to the high twenties (5.12d - 5.13c-ish).

It was really the visit from Henry Barber in 1975 that introduced chalk, and a more gymnastic style, that allowed local climbers to realize that some of the more recent "21s" were actually a lot harder.

This visit was a perfect example of why it's important to have global communication and cross-pollination within any niche interest. It accelerates progress immensely. This is why we go to trade-shows and meetups :-)

It's not that the Steck Salathe (and other long traditional climbs) are mis-graded, it's the breadth of competencies required by them.

That's a pretty good summary - though I'm more used to the French and Middle-European scales. As I have been searching for something like that for a while already, do you by any chance have a link to something like a cumulative distribution for fraction of climbers that can do grade x? Something like 90% of all climbers can do 5.9, 65% can do 5.10, 30% 5.11 and so forth? Percentages obviously picked out of thin air. Just out of curiosity as a climber and data nerd.

Not a distribution, but probably a useful data set, is the first year a particular grade was climbed. http://web.stanford.edu/~clint/yos/hard.htm

For an approximation of what you're after, I'd recommend comparing number of first ascents of climbs of a particular grade in the last 3 - 5 years. This time frame should include enough data to get a reasonable answer, and won't be too biased by advances in equipment and ability over the last few decades.

The Crag (http://www.thecrag.com) have an API that may be useful for an initial data set (http://www.thecrag.com/article/api). Other online resources are http://www.8a.nu and http://www.supertopo.com/ but I don't think they have easily accessible APIs.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/graphs.html has some stuff and you might be able to scrape the rest.

I believe 8a.nu also has some public data on this kind of thing but for a more global population

I assume Caldwell and Jorgenson haven't proposed a grade for the entire climb, since they've not redpointed it in a single push.

While I am excited to see Caldwell succeed on this thing, I'm probably more excited for the day when it sees a single push redpoint ascent without portaledges and haul bags....

I've been following Tommy and Kevin's progress closely on www.elcapreport.com, and one thing that fascinates me is how much travelling up and down the wall the two climbers make beyond the scope of the actual ascent. For example, before attempting a single pitch, Kevin has been moving up the pitch on a rope in order to tic the holds (place small chalk marks beside them to make them visible). Also, having successfully climbed a pitch, they might abseil back down to the camp from the previous night to rest before moving up again the next day. Or Tommy might go up to help a cameraman get set up in a position before going back down and attempting a pitch.

In order words, their progress is not necessarily measured by their position on the wall, but rather the sequential 'freeing' of each pitch in turn with all kinds of logistics involved in between. It's very different from say mountain climbing, but of course at this level, there is probably no other way that it can be done.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0528_030528_...

An interesting side note about Caldwell is that he was held hostage, along with others, by rebels in Kyrgyzstan in 2000 while climbing there. He pushed a captor off the side of the mountain which led to their escape. Bad ass.

It must be Caldwell's left hand shown in the inset

"Caldwell accidentally sawed off much of his left index finger with a table saw in 2001. Doctors were able to reattach the severed portion, but Caldwell subsequently had it removed so as not to hinder his climbing career."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Caldwell

Some of the most interesting aspects of climbing to me are the mental and physical challenges that humans continue to plow through.

I mean, look at free solo climbing. You have to be so confident of your physical endurance, mental endurance and climbing skill that you are absolutely certain you will not fail, and then rely on sheer adrenaline to get through any rough spots. This after completely ignoring routine problems such as weather changes, holds breaking, animals/insects, physical injury, etc. How is it even possible for us to accomplish this physically, much less to work past the fear and uncertainty and keep the mind focused enough to work on complicated problems and accomplish a challenging task?

Other animals have no difficulty climbing walls. But typically they have some kind of natural advantage that helps them scale the nearly sheer surfaces... scales to provide friction, nails to dig into tiny pits, a high strength to weight ratio, hard friction-y pads and tough keratin hooves. Of course, we couldn't get very far without our specially designed climbing shoes, but even without shoes we still manage to lumber our weak, squishy bodies up complicated pitches. And the real kicker is we don't do it to avoid predators or reach food stores; we just feel like climbing.

Daily updates from Tommy's wife: http://tommyandbecca.blogspot.com/

edit: pronoun

Does anyone have a source with more technical details about the climb, the gear they use, the route they take, etc.? I have no experience rock climbing other than belaying once for a friend, but I know several climbers so I have caught onto the excitement.

Here's a piece about the legendary Bill Denz doing the Dawn Wall in 1978.

http://www.alpinist.com/doc/web13s/wfeature-bill-denz

(Alpinist is an awesome mag btw.)

Can't find any particularly good sources, but the comment section of [1] has good information on the route (essentially, winding around "Mescalito", a classic aid route) and well-informed speculation on the gear. Essentially a pretty standard setup for hard free climbing on big walls - trad, augmented with a mix of bolts and fixed gear.

[1] http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=605685

Gripped: http://gripped.com/news/big-push-dawn-wall/

Rock and Ice: http://www.rockandice.com/lates-news/dawn-wall-update-caldwe...

SuperTopo (like HN for climbers): http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=253096...

This blog post explains the different pitches and their progress day-by-day. It gives the difficulty of each pitch.

http://eveningsends.com/climbing/like-dawn-tommy-caldwell-ke...

Climbing big walls (that take multiple days) is a big logistical problem. This page explains the basics of big wall climbing climbing including planning and gear.

http://www.climbing.com/skill/your-first-big-wall/

ElCap Reports also has some nice commentary and lots of great photos. Seems a little light on the technical details you want but there is plenty of interest there.

http://www.elcapreport.com/

Climbing Magazine: http://www.climbing.com/news/dawn-wall-four-5-14-pitches-dow...

Evening Sends (seems to have more info than anywhere else): http://eveningsends.com/climbing/like-dawn-tommy-caldwell-ke...

For some good background on Tommy, and the project, here's a quick video overview: https://vimeo.com/58005535

Although not on the same scale, some climbs on Hoy in Orkney at the far north of the UK were originally done as multi-day aid climbs in the 60s.

Here is a trailer of a film for Dave MacLeod free climbing one of these routes a few years back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ds5LZel0WU

Rock & Ice has some daily videos which give a nice first-hand view of the situation: http://vimeo.com/rockandice/videos

I watched people climbing El Capitan when I visited Yosemite. Anyone who manages to get up that cliff face by climbing by any method is amazing. What these guys are doing is right at the limit.

Inspiring stuff. Such a pity that it is illegal to jump those Yosemite walls.

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