The Dawn Wall – El Capitan’s Most Unwelcoming Route | Hacker News Reader

The Dawn Wall – El Capitan’s Most Unwelcoming Route

nytimes.com

80 pointslalmachado26 comments

The graphic is amazing, definitely one of the better implementations which help put the scale in to perspective.

Couple of details which I think help put this route in to perspective for the non-climbers:

1. Caldwell, one of the best climbers in the world, has been working on trying to climb this since 2007--the combination of longevity and perseverance is hard to match.

2. The easiest pitch (out of 30 total for the route, a pitch being a rope length usually between 100 and 200 feet) is 5.11 which is pretty hard but the real kicker is that there are 5 pitches 5.14 and of those 2 are 5.14d which is was the upper limit of difficulty until the last decade. Most 5.14 routes are short single pitch routes which take pros sometimes weeks or months of practice to climb. Not every pro can climb every 5.14 since they are dependent on a high degree of specialization. There are 10s of 5.12 and 5.13 pitches thrown which makes the whole project together the hardest complete free route in history.

Essentially this route is an order of magnitude harder than anything which has yet been climbed in rock climbing.

I'm kind of amazed to see this much press (multiple NYT stories, new channel coverage) on a big wall climb (or any climb not involving someone dying) and can't really remember something equivalent.

This is a pretty good article with more specific details about the climb: http://www.adventure-journal.com/2015/01/why-is-climbing-the...

I have a hunch that the field reporters are enjoying this because they are likely not camping, staying at the Awahnee on the company dime, not a whole lot goes on when watching the climbers try burns as there is a lot of downtime on a big wall. It is also likely that some of the field reporters are climbers and that the editors aren't so the story gets put into terms that no climber would say.

Maybe Alex Hannold and his free soloing.

I really envy you north americans climbing wise, Yosemite must be awesome... Maybe one day :D

I recommend everyone visit Yosemite once. The scale is mind-bending. The falls appear in slow motion because the water is traveling such a great distance. Enormous, ancient trees appear as peach fuzz atop the walls.

I can't think of another place where you can walk right up to something so massive rising out of the earth.

I climbed a much more modest, easy peak there 15 years ago, and saw the headlamps across the valley of climbers on el cap. Its an awe-inspiring scene in the literal sense.

If you go, take the time to hike away from the crowds. It's a zoo of cars but quiet and breathtakingly beautiful if you explore.

Indeed, the scale really is mind bending. If you start in EL Cap meadow and hike towards the base, you'll notice that the base keeps being farther away than you thought it was because the height is much greater than what you thought. This is even more pronounced when approaching the South face of Half Dome (from the South) as there are no tree to obscure the view. Also, if it's your first visit to the park, I highly recommend entering on Highway 41 (as opposed to 120). You don't really see anything until you pass through the Wawona tunnel, and then you are greeted with the amazing Wawona view [1]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_View

That's...interesting. I have a second monitor running Photoshop, and images from the second monitor (perhaps just from Photoshop) are being mapped onto the model of El Capitan, making the visual completely broken. This occurs in Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (using OS X, if it's not clear).

This does not fill me with warm and fuzzy feelings. :)

Doesn't appear to work in Firefox 34.0.5, although it works fine in Chrome.

Previous discussion of the effort [1] from a NYT article on January 5th [2]. I think this was mentioned in the previous discussion, but Tom Evans is doing a great job covering this on The El Cap Report [3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8836763

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/05/sports/on-el-capitans-dawn...

[3] http://www.elcapreport.com

Very cool. I was lucky enough to see them on the wall a week ago, and the scale and difficulty of it completely blows my mind. This visualization does a better job reproducing the in-person awe than any others I've seen.

I wonder if NY Times is using this 3D map of El Capitan? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130612-yosem...

Doesn't look like it. The article says it's using a 3D model by three students from the University of Lausanne.

Nice work from the guys at the NYTimes. They seem to have a pretty solid development team. My enjoyment of the graphic was somewhat diminished however by the terrifying thought of undertaking that climb.

I hope they are filming this somehow so we can soon enjoy the incredible documentary that would come of it.

Tommy Caldwell also recently made the first ascent of the Fitz Traverse in Patagonia. This route spanning an entire mountain range was considered classic before it was ever accomplished due to the sheer magnitude of the objective. His partner for that project was renown climber Alex Hannold.

There's a film of that ascent coming out later this year, the preview was just released: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOScetWwEwc

Why are they doing this in the winter?

Friction is higher in the cold. Especially for granite which faces the sun. You'll find lots of the hard routes are done in cold temps.v this is especially true in bouldering where the routes are very short 10-30 feet but with extremely hard moves.

Climbing is easier in the cold - your hands / fingertips don't get as sweaty and adhere better to the rock face.

Also, the dawn wall is full in the sun for much of the day, and the rock can get insanely hot during the summer. They need to climb before dawn on warmer than average days, or they would make no progress whatsoever. .

Other comments have covered the advantages. Disadvantage is that they have to face occasionally falling ice.

I haven't seen them mention the size of fragments they're facing, but they aren't wearing helmets. Either not large enough to be dangerous, or a helmet would make a finicky climb difficult and distracting.

Free climbing seems like the least forgiving hobby in existence.

Free solo climbing -- climbing without the use of ropes for protection -- is a no-margin-for-error hobby. That's not the style of ascent being done by Caldwell and Jorgeson here though (it would essentially be suicide!).

Free climbing (climbing without the aid of a rope but using it for protection in the event of a fall) is a quite forgiving hobby! I've fallen hundreds of times while free climbing and lived to tell the tale :).

The distinction between free solo climbing and free climbing is frequently a point of confusion -- especially in news articles!

Good clear explanation--your right totally different from what is happening on the dawn wall.

Here is a good article which goes a bit in to the most audacious free soloing link-up in Yosemite: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/sports/rock-climber-alex-h...

Have they had to rely on the ropes at all so far in this climb?

They use ropes at all times for safety, just not to ascend.

What is special about this attempt is that it appears they will successfully climb every pitch, in order, without using the ropes to ascend.

Probably worth clarifying: each pitch is being climbed in order, and for each pitch alone they not using ropes to ascend. But between these harder pitches (at least, and maybe all), they return to a base camp (on the cliff-face) before using ropes to ascend up to where they want to start the next pitch.

From alt link posted prior in comments: http://www.adventure-journal.com/2015/01/why-is-climbing-the...

These guys are falling a lot on their way up. Don’t they want to climb the whole thing without falling? Well, that would be nice, but in this case, it’s okay for them to fall. They’re trying to “redpoint” the route, which means each climber has to climb each pitch without falling. So, if Caldwell is climbing pitch #11, and he falls 40 feet from the start of the pitch, he lowers down to the start of the pitch and starts over until he finishes the pitch cleanly. Then that pitch is considered free climbed, and he moves onto the next pitch. Since each pitch can take a half hour to an hour to climb, you can imagine how ridiculous it would be to climb all the way up to, say, Pitch #17, and if you fell, lowering 1,700 feet to the ground and starting over.

Modern equipment has taken us a long ways from "the leader must not fall" but how forgiving a leader fall will be is still highly dependent on the route. For instance The Bachar Yerian [1] in Tuolumne Meadows (the Yosemite high country).

[1] http://www.alpinist.com/doc/ALP26/first-ascent-bachar-yerian

Alex Honnold is known for free solo climbing; e.g. http://vimeo.com/73901538

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