El Capitan’s Dawn Wall Climbers Reach Top at Yosemite
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
001sky clearly understands what 'free climbing' means. What is being questioned is whether we should lump such different things under the same term. Yes, of course everyone here understands that free is referring to the lack of aid in making vertical progress. But base stations, hauling food up, all that stuff, is just a different thing from a ground up, self sufficient effort. Why not look for a better term for that? When the Huber brothers do an ascent in a couple of hours we don't just call it "free" or "aid" (depending on whether they pulled on gear or not); we distinguish it by calling it a 'speed ascent'. Likewise, in the big mountains we characterize climbs as being 'siege', 'alpine style', and so on.
None of that is meant to put down the climbers. We still have climbs that require siege tactics, and that is fine. Why not look to be not just accurate, but also precise in our language?
Anyway, I agree with 001sky. If someone said they freed a route, I would not envision a base camp along the wall, even if it is accurate in that they used no aid. It's different, not better or worse, than what, say Lynn Hill did when she freed the Nose. A different term is perhaps warranted.
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.
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.
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...)
It's like how in my parts (west coast canada) we speak of top-roping when the brits would use the term "bottom-roping". We don't make a distinction between having the belay above or below. Free soloing here just means free climbing without a partner. We don't have a term for no-gear soloing, other than idiot. It doesn't come up much.
Aid climbing means using ropes as aid - you can pull yourself up on ropes (and associated tools).
Quibble about the details as much as you like, it is still the hardest multipitch, bigwall, free climb ever achieved.
If these 2 guys were alone ... they would have faced a significantly greater obstacle
Exactly. They, world-famous world-class climbers, wouldn't have even been able to complete it.
You can look at it like, they are advancing the "state of the art" of climbing. If you try I am sure you can think of parallels in engineering, where something never-before is achieved in the face of absurd difficulty, opening the doors to future engineers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re: aid climbing, yes, it's done on more dangerous routes, but with tons of gear to propel you. It's always a debate whether it's "real" climbing, and some people think that being proud of how dangerous your route is is a bit childish, but in any case everyone agrees that it's a different kind of climbing.
A 5.10 toprope is moderately difficult to a fit person with little experience, but it gets more difficult when you do it outdoors, up high, on a two week trip. It's like a jog and a marathon run - I can run a 7 minute mile, but not 26 of them.
Then there is the fact that ratings are subjective and Yosemite 5.9-10 is MUCH harder than what you'd get in a gym or really anywhere else. Also, the difference between getting from a 5.8 level to a 5.10 is two orders of magnitude smaller than getting from a 5.10 to a 5.14b-c.
Climbing at that level, especially big wall, gives you this sense of "what the f*ck are they standing on": http://www.dpmclimbing.com/sites/default/files/uploads/image... Imagine pulling yourself up with your hands and feet each on indentations less than a quarter inch.
Oh yeah, and Tommy Caldwell did it without his left index finger. Amazing.
And eh, news coverage is the same ol' story. Articles are written by people with no expertise in a field, so things are wrong. Most readers don't really care anyway, and Rock & Ice or Climbing should have a good article out about it next month if they do.
You're right that the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) doesn't really say much about risk or exposure (although there's the "r" and "x" indicators on some climbs) ("r" for "runout", if you should expect long sections without solid protection, and "x" for "you will hit something if you fall"), but that doesn't really mean a free climb can't be butt-puckering. Personally, I never did become a fan of flaring chimneys. But yeah, aid is pretty much an exercise in staying calm while your brain screams at you, "you 'bout to die!"
(ed: I only ever did aid once, practicing with a salty old trad climber I used to follow around a lifetime ago. It was only A0 on some pin-scars route in the Valley, but I'll never forget one particular moment. I couldn't get anything to stick nearby, and I was near the top and impatient, so I grabbed a brass #0, reached up, and made a blind placement, just about as far as I could reach -- and I'm not short. Pulled on it and it didn't fall out, so I said hell with it and clipped it. Stepped up in my aiders and came to eye level with the placement and the tiny little bastard was only halfway in, wedged against one very stubborn granite crystal. I made a very urgent next placement.)
The Dawn Wall climb is still pretty awesome for the amount of preparation and effort it took. No doubt someone someday will go back and do it faster & better, but for now, Caldwell and Jorgesen raised the bar for that particular climb.
NatGeo has a better article about the climb at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150114-climb..., which includes a video about pitch 15. Jorgesen talks about it a bit.
Actually, there is at least one free scare-fest on the Big Stone: Leo Houlding's route The Prophet [0]. For many years, Houlding attempted the route in proper British ground-up style, but eventually had to apply "sport" tactics on the hardest pitch. Note that while The Prophet is not as technically hard as Caldwell's Dawn Wall project, it is significantly more dangerous (run-out climbing...for example, Jason Pickles fractured his pelvis on a long fall).
I find this conversion chart useful. It's usually included in guidebooks. http://www.rockfax.com/publications/grades/
Basically a lot of these pitches would be E9 7b, which is insane. 7b is an 8b+ sport (indoor) technical grade. Very well done to the guys. Huge achievement.
Ever seen this photo? Dale Bard arrives at the belay station...
http://www.mountainproject.com/images/85/55/106368555_large_...
Though in reality it was a tongue-in-cheek setup :)
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!
Bathroom is "controlled" as you say. Solid waste is packed out.
Tom Evans posted daily updates here with a lot more detail: http://www.elcapreport.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/sports/on-el-capitans-dawn...
Short answer is they returned to their base camp every day, and then went back to their previous progress via ropes.
Typically it's assumed that "big wall" means you spend at least one night sleeping on the wall, and therefore the logistics change, as you rightly wondered. You have to have extra gear to set anchors for your port-a-ledge (for sleeping), and usually extra ropes for your haul-bag (full of gear such as port-a-ledges, food, water, etc). The haul-bag is necessary because you will very quickly tire if you had to carry everything needed for the entire trip while climbing. Once you get to a safe position between pitches, you can haul the haul bag up.
For waste management, a typical solution is a 3-4ft, 4in diameter PVC tube capped at one end and modified to be able to be clipped into an anchor, and you pack out everything, for the same reason they require you to pack out everything on the Whitney trail: it's just rude to dump that stuff on the route, and there are so many people there that it would turn into the equivalent of a vertical Victorian street (ie, covered in feces).
I've not followed this particular ascent very closely, but I assume it went along the same lines, just with more gear and a bigger support network (much like sherpas for Himalayan mountaineering or marathon support crews).
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.
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...
Which, it should be noted, describes a lot of terrain in Yosemite. The glaciated black granite provides limited opportunity for protection.
Climbers in general care a lot about the places they climb, and often tend to them as well or better than many other groups. There are organized cleanups and trail management and self-policing, and relations between land managers and climbers are usually OK, with climbers willing to cooperate with access restrictions for the benefit of an area (with the notable exception of Hueco Tanks and probably a couple other places).
If someone unnecessarily bolts a route, they can usually expect to hear about it from other climbers, and the bolts might even be removed. Given that casual observers often don't even realize the bolts are there, climbers really do fuss a lot over relatively little impact.
Of course, like any other group, climbing has some jerks too. (But proportionately less than many other groups.)
And before anyone screams, the debate on "fixed protection" is something best left to experienced local climbers. Every climbing area has their own traditions on the subject. The first rule is most always: Don't change the nature of the route to suit your climbing style. Respect those who setup the route before you. Putting new metal on an existing route, camo or not, is akin to spray-painting a Rembrandt.
Replacement of old/weak hardware is a different matter. Absent immediate safety, this should still be left to experienced locals.
Bolts allow cliffs to be used for recreational climbing, much like how trails alter the landscape, but allow the land to be used for recreational hiking. No human activity is 100% impact free, unfortunately.
Second is the fact that sometimes a bolt is actually the lesser impact. Bolts last a pretty long time, and if a route is highly traveled, the bolt can help offload what would have been gradual damage to the rock, flora, and fauna.
For example, if you have six climbing parties a day rappelling off a tree at the end of the climb, that tree is going to sustain damage over time. A bolt placed nearby can serve the same duty easier, safer, and with less impact to the tree.
To draw on other recreation, have you noticed stairs on hiking trails? A popular trail can experience so much erosion on steep sections that something so blatantly "leaving a trace" as installing stairs is actually the lower impact choice.
Generally the decision to bolt is favorable only when it's unsafe to climb with traditional gear. The impact that bolting has is rationalized worthwhile due to it's (arguably) low direct impact on the environment and the fact that sport climbing proliferates lots of outdoor enthusiasts with the attention and dollars that brings.
Don't you think there's any worth in preserving the natural environment for its own sake? It sounds like you're saying if you can't put bolts into the rock to climb it then the rock is worthless and shouldn't be preserved anyway.
Maybe if you can't climb something without permanently defacing it then you should just not climb it.
The general idea is that at some point in the future, we might be able to protect these difficult routes. So we preserve it for that. This argument is more legitimate in some cases than others. For instance, maybe someday we'll have some non-destructive way to protect thin cracks and flakes. But it is very unlikely that we can say the same about a barren face.
The concept of "fair means" is based on the idea of setting limits on the artificial aids that a climber uses to reach the top. For example, pretty much every climber agrees that taking a helicopter to the top is not fair means.
It's context-specific, too. On El Cap, taking the hiking trail up the back to reach the top is not considered a "climb" on par with ascending the cliff. But on Mount Rainier, hiking the top counts as a climb even if you take the easiest way up (basically because the easiest way up is still not easy).
Free climbing itself is actually a form of fair means--ascending the rock using only what the rock itself gives you for progress. All gear does is provide a safety net.
Climbing without bolts and pitons--known as climbing "clean"--is also a form of fair means. It takes as its guiding principle to leave the rock as you found it. Under this approach, climbers will indeed leave blank faces unclimbed. Those bold enough to climb such faces with minimal protection are respected as having shown great commitment to their ideals.
i imagine the intersection of people who have both sides of that coin covered (in any sport) is vanishingly small.
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.
[1] http://www.mountainproject.com/v/the-edge/106105353
[2] http://www.mountainproject.com/v/bachar-yerian/106244878
EDIT: good account of a repeat of the B-Y here:
http://www.supertopo.com/tr/The-Bachar-Yerian-A-Three-Year-O...
To answer beachstartup's question though, I'd say confidently that all else being equal, a 5.14 climber is more elite than a 5.11 climber who has good mental fortitude.
The second number reflects the difficulty of the [hardest part of the] climb. I believe it originally went from 1-10, with 10 being the hardest thing a human could climb, but innovations in climbing shoes and better climbers have raised the max over the years, so now it goes from 1-15.
Imagine the scale as being of exponential difficulty. For the same climber who spent a week going from 5.5 to 5.6, it may take a year to go from 5.10 to 5.11. So you can imagine how elite a 5.14 climber is, let alone a 5.15 one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_%28climbing%29#Free_climb...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Decimal_System#YDS_cla...
The difficulty is rated as one pitch relative to another and certain pitches as benchmarks for a certain difficulty. e.g. pitch X is 5.13a and pitch Y is somewhat harder so it's 5.13c while Z is quite a bit harder making it a 5.14a, etc.
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.
More people will climb 5.14 & 5.15 in the future, but the progress of peak potential is slowing.
The first time I ever ice climbed was just terrifying. The entire environment, from the falling ice, to death cookies (if you wear crampons and step on a large piece of ice, your crampons become skates), to the slope is all designed to kill. One of my very first pitches, I was going up just great until I reached about forty feet. Then, the insanity of it all hit me...I mean, I'm afraid of flying in airplanes and there I was climbing a waterfall in the f'ing Rocky Mountains???
As the fear gripped me, my body failed. I started gripping onto my ice tools as tight as I could; so tight my arms spasmed until finally I had no strength left and I dropped. so, there I was on the side of a fricking waterfall, the ice tools (that I borrowed from a guy who bagged Everest) were six feet above me, and I had no strength left.
My fear created the exact situation I was afraid of...
But seriously, how'd you recover from that?
And it's not very nice to say someone is exaggerating their emotional state. :-) It's certainly possible for people to get very scared the first time they climb 40 feet up, even on top rope.
You just can't just be stronger than most and expect to finish the route. This isn't so different from other sports, they just have a different mix. A golfer needs a lot of technical skill, and a bit of strength, plus some emotional strength, to get through those tough shots. Can you think of a sport that requires less physical strength? How about a very intense gamer?
Emotional strength is a huge part of climbing. Think about it: you're 1,000+ feet in the air. The last piece of protection you have is over 10 feet below you - meaning, if you fall, you fall twice that distance. There's a slight chance that the protection that you've placed could in fact come off, as you fall, making you fall even farther (say, another 20 feet!). Can you keep it together, to make the move upwards, or are you going to freeze, thinking about what could happen? A fall of 20 feet isn't going to be fatal, but it could be pretty messy, if you get tangled in your rope. Now (in the case of the Dawn Wall), you've been working on this project for over 7 years. When do you say, "enough!" and move on? I mean, look at Tommy Caldwell - he mistakenly chopped his own finger off, which could have ended his career, but he kept going, and look what he accomplished!
Minor nit, but the ropes used in this type of climbing will be dynamic, not static. That means you'll fall the 10 feet to the last pro, that 10 feet again plus the stretch on the rope...more like 25-30 feet. I've only climbed lead in the gym, but those kinds of falls are still scary as hell. I can only imagine what it would be like that high up.
Also, good call on the finger thing. I know the story is about him doing something that no one has ever done before and his injury shouldn't be the focus, but not calling it out is insane and I've yet to see one story include that tidbit. Anyone who's climbed knows just how important fingers are, it's hard for me to fathom climbing an indoor 5.13 without my index finger, let alone this many outdoor 5.13/5.14s. It's utterly amazing that he's continued to be an elite climber after his injury.
Objectively, there is actually less danger to a climb like this which occurs on a steep wall far from the ground since you can fall a long ways before you hit something. People have fallen for 50-100 m (the length of a rope) on el cap and been fine. The 10-30 foot "clean" falls these climbers risk are really not bad with a soft catch by a stretchy rope. It takes a bit of time for your mind to accept this fact but it happens rather naturally with time spent on the rock.
There are those who focus on climbing without a rope or doing climbs with ground fall potential. Some claim this is a mental challenge but I've found these people are largely idiots or attention speaker who have deluded themselves the can handle the danger or accept death. To me there is no real mental challenge and certainly nothing admirable in this sort of climbing.
FWIW I've free climbed routes of 5.11+ difficulty and ~1000 ft of length range which is sort of the "advanced amateur" of multi pitch free climbing compared to this routes 5.14+ difficulty over 3000 ft. Achieving this took years of climbing several times a week combined with dedicated finger strength training and numerous road trips to different climbing areas to practice on different types of real rock.
The kind of dedication that allows a person to train up to 5.13/5.14 climbs is, to me, just mind-blowing.